Justin Hayward

Looks fantastic! And I watched the whole thing which I never do when people post shorts on this website.? I’ll second the above comment about the backlit red bags. Great choice. Nice work.

Oh my goodness, are you the same Anne Bauchens that worked with Cecil B. DeMille?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bauchens

55 minutes ago, Anne Bauchens said:

n't think blowing 200% to get a close up is considered recom

? Just joking around ?

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Happens all the time. It got so bad on "Heaven's Gate" in Montana that Zsigmond had them shoot a shot of the sun going in and out of the clouds to explain why the light kept changing even in mid-shot during a dialogue scene.

Probably one of the first shots the studio suggested they lose out of the five hour cut.?

This podcast is bonkers.  I listen to a s--t load of movie podcasts and this one has become my all time favorite.  I'm a sucker for inside Hollywood books from all decades.  I can't get enough of them.  Roger and James Deakins are tapping all their well-earned resources to bring an inside look to all of modern studio filmmaking to smalltime folks like me in a way a book could never do.  Every episode is more insightful than the last.  I really appreciate it, especially in this post-covid world where painting my house is less frightening than going to the grocery store.

18 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

In older video transfers there was concern about a 10% loss or so on the sides of CRT screen images due to the age of the tube so titles were sometimes slightly windowboxed to make sure every bit of the image would appear on any CRT screen. You see this more clearly on titles for 1.37 Academy movies in 4x3 video transfers. It’s why later in movie cameras there was a “title safe” area on the ground glass so that important information would be framed inside these lines.

Learn something every day.☝️

I grew up in the Midwest and that green light before a tornado is actually really creepy. There’s a lot of yellow in it too. Like a sunset without the sun.  I haven’t seen it for probably 20 years, but it’s a really weird, impending, look that feels like it just washes over everything when you’re outside. Now you got me thinking how I would re-create it. If it were exterior (I see your shot is interior so that’s a little easier), I’m not being very creative, but I can’t think of how else to do it other than shoot in overcast and add an overall green/yellow tint in post. Or maybe a light green filter if you wanted to do it in Camera? But you would obviously have more control about where you want it heavier and lighter if you did it in post.  I don’t know. Your shot looks good, though.

I like how he compares everything to food.  I feel like that's my only point of reference these days. ?  Maybe because almost everything we like or don't like in the world comes down to personal taste? 

Great discussion.  Thanks for posting.

On 8/22/2020 at 8:22 AM, Gregory Irwin said:

 It used to be that actors would be held accountable for their part in hitting their marks and finding their light. They would also have the awareness to find the lens every time and understand frame size. Those days are over. Now we have to pander to their whim of where and when they move, try to unbury them from behind another actor who has also missed his/her mark. A lot of my success is knowing when and how the camera will move to compensate. 

I don't like it, but I get it.  Film language changes from decade to decade.  It just feels a little like, for the sake of art, redesigning a house right when construction is starting.  Is the juice worth the squeeze?  I don't know.

But isn't that what movies are?  It's all writing and staging performances to camera work and lighting all to bring out an emotion.  If one of those things are lacking, then all of it suffers.  Instinct only goes so far when you're working with 40 other people to accomplish the same goal.

51 minutes ago, Justin Oakley said:

And what about with a really shallow depth of field? I guess that’s what I wonder the most. When it’s a game of inches is it ever just a guessing game? Again, for shots with a lot of energy. You’re watching the actor...the hips, etc. They bolt up, lean in, and bitchslap the other person across the table in like a second and a half. Then as soon as they got up, they’re back in their seat. You throw the wheel that fraction of a millimeter or whatever, and hope and pray they’re in focus?

It's relative.  Do basketball players react differently to lay-ups they thought were going to be dunks?  I think so, that's the game.  But if an actor suddenly "bitchslapped" another actor out of the clear blue sky, I think everyone would understand if the AC might have missed the focus and maybe we should do another take.

I’ve always thought of focus pulling as a kind of athletic ability. There’s a lot of hand-eye coordination involved that some people are just better at than others no matter how much or how little they practice.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the best focus pullers out there are also pretty good pool players.?

14 minutes ago, Giray Izcan said:

Justin, are you surprised that those young DPs get crappy images when shooting on film? Most young DPs don't really know proper lighting and ratios etc. Why should they? They can just shoot a safe and bland image and make it look like anything but their photography during post. The lighting for most nowadays seems to be only for exposure not for shaping. Just my 2 cents

I didn’t say some of them get crappy images... Grieg Fraser did.? It’s funny though, I’m old enough to remember a time when I was afraid to shoot video. Film was easy. As long as you have the right ASA in your light meter, the rest was just taste. Then these big fat HD cameras came along with all their stupid menus and settings... made my brain hurt.?

On 8/5/2020 at 2:56 PM, Satsuki Murashige said:

Was listening to Roger and James Deakins’s podcast yesterday, and on a recent episode with Greig Fraser, Mr. Fraser mentioned how his young 2nd Unit DP on a recent project was raving about film. He watched some of her celluloid-based projects, and said they ‘looked like crap.’ He went on the clarify that the images were grainy, underexposed, and generally rough looking. 

I had to re-listen to this because I did not remember that at all and after I did, I noticed he didn’t say that HER work in particular looked bad, he just mentioned that she was really pushing film as a lot of young Dp’s are these days.  Then he actually went on to say it’s an important thing for young Dp‘s to distinguish themselves these days even if that means they only shoot on film. Then he said, BUT a lot of Dp’s really pushing film tend to shoot crappy images basically because they don’t know what they’re doing. But he didn’t say her’s were bad, just a lot of young DP’s pushing film in general. 
 

I rewatched this movie because of this thread.  It's an engaging thriller with a pretty tight script and some genuine surprises in my opinion.  (I think my favorite part is when Warren Beatty runs onto a commercial plane and pays the stewardess cash after the plane is in the air like he barely caught a bus.:) 

I've been rewatching a handful of movies from the 60's to 70's era and it's funny to me how the string of paranoid dramas with ambiguous to very dark endings ("Easy Rider", "The French Connection," "Midnight Cowboy," "The Conversation," "The Godfather"... this movie, to name a few) practically teed up the blow-up-the-shark-and-swim-away-happily-ever-after movie to knock audiences socks off in 1975.  I sometimes imagine what the ending of "Jaws" would have been like if Steven Spielberg adhered to the style of the day.  Maybe they never find the shark and it ends with Roy Scheider sitting on the beach wondering if he imagined the whole thing in his head as he watches the waves crash over and over and over... roll credits?

Looks fantastic!

1 hour ago, Jarin Blaschke said:

 They can be effective "buttons" for closing emphasis

Martin Scorsese often ends scenes with a master shot that way... like an exclamation point on everything you just watched. 

It's an hour and a half of story stretched out to 2 hours and forty five minutes of extreme close ups of wrinkly, sweaty, men with suspicious looks.  Tell me I'm wrong.

On 4/18/2020 at 11:31 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

(not sure how short film animators came to be such a large group...)

It’s a pseudonym for “studio shareholders.“?

Since the reference picture is a shoe floating in mid air, then the client must know there is going to be some post-removal-of-something work involved.  As Stephen said, I would guess a combination of a rotator with motion control.  Only thing is their reference is gradual white to grey fall-off in the background and there's a shadow underneath the shoe (if they don't create in post) which we would need to see move and change according to the MC moves.  In that case, a rotator wouldn't work.  The shadows would give away this wasn't done with camera moves, but with a rotator.  

The worst case scenario is often the obvious.  They want to move a camera around a shoe with clear lighter and darker areas in the background without any post work?  You have to have a very big background and a lot more light than you would usually use to light a shoe. ?‍♂️

5 hours ago, Gregory Irwin said:

That’s a great story!

 I'll tell you another funny story related to me and big cinematographers visiting Chicago.  I was in my very early twenties and hired as a PA on a local job with a 4am call time.  I got there at 3:30am when it was still totally dark. I followed instructions and started loading this small van with all that it could fit which included not only lighting, but craft service, and everything we could possibly cram into it.  All of the sudden this dude showed up out of nowhere and started helping load the van with all this stuff.  He worked harder than me and I couldn't thank him enough. I just assumed he was another PA.

Then we got on the road and started shooting.  Turns out he was really good with the camera and some very simple, but exterior lighting that looked really great.  He basically brought "sunlight" to a cloudy day with a couple of 1k pars.  It was most impressive for a stupid corporate shoot like this. When we rode to the next location, I had to ask him where he learned some of this and where he came from....Then he told me... He was Michael Goi. And he was doing this as a favor for a friend he grew up with here in Chicago. I was shocked by that. Super freaking cool.  In my opinion.

3 hours ago, Gregory Irwin said:

Tonight’s selection:

Been watching about a half hour of that a night before bed for the past few nights. It's such inspiring cinematography.  Funny story, that movie was notoriously shot where I work in Chicago and before all this virus stuff happened, I directed a commercial with a couple local agency people.  On one of the rides to casting, one of the producers asked all of us who was the most famous person they've ever met.  And this guy in the back said Tom Hanks.  We all turned around and asked where he met him and he said he was an extra in the schoolyard scene of "Road to Perdition".  Which means he was like eleven or twelve when that movie came out... when I was out of college.  ?   Great movie though.  

14 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

it wasn't like Rinzler's books on the making of the Star Wars movies. 

Don’t know how I missed that one, but I won’t make that mistake twice. Just ordered it, thanks. ????

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

I read that book two weeks ago, will be rewatching "Chinatown" soon...

I like it so far, but I find my attention drifting when the writer talks about anything other than the making of the movie, which seems to be a lot in the first half.  But everything on making the movie from the script to finish is great. 

On the rewatch of "Chinatown", I was really surprised how close the camera was on all the actors.  It looked like tight shots were something like a 35mm lens (or wider) about a foot from the actor's face.  That was just what I guessed from watching it.  It makes for some really cool compositions, but I don't know how many actors would tolerate something like that these days.  But the movie looks freaking awesome in my opinion. Love the long takes and blocking.  Great movie.  "The Last Detail" is next on my list of movies I need to watch, but haven't.

What did you think of that book?