Twan Peeters

Wow, thanks so much all for these in-depth responses, this has been a really helpful. I haven't been replying on purpose since I enjoyed seeing this discussion unfold. Thanks :) I guess I should just keep doing what I'm doing know, following my intuition and fighting for my shots when collaborating with a director. You made me laugh, Phil. I guess this is very true. I haven't seen it, didn't know it existsted. Will watch it, thanks!

Hi there, I've been working as a freelance cinematographer now for just over a year. I've been lucky enough to shoot quite some films as a DP already, and to get guidance from experienced DP's. But one thing I'm struggling with for a long time is how to develop my own unique cinematography style. Everytime I shoot something, I simply inspire myself on other films, shots or photo's I have seen. But most of the time I feel like I'm just copying other cinematographer styles. Now one thing I've been taught is that when you start out it's OK to copy others peoples work to learn, as long as you don't put it online as 'your work'. Apparently this is how most artists learn their trade, not only cinematographers, but also photographers, painters, designers etc. At least this is what the book 'Steal like an artist' says. My question is, do you have any advice on how to actually start developing your own visual style? Are there any clues on finding what suits me as a person, and what does not? It's very confusing and hard for me sometimes. I don't want to end up creating a film where people will critic me for copying someone elses style. Where is the line between using inspiration out of other peoples work, and literally copying one cinematographers unique style? Thanks in advance :) Looking forward to your thoughts.

Lovely work Ivan. I love the colorgrading. I'm also curious how you created the lens effects?

Thanks guys, fortunately we ended up being able to afford the FS7 for the whole shoot. So I didn't need to worry about the difference in quality anymore. David, I can't give you a solid answer on this, but what I do know is that you will need to plug in an external recorder to the F3 to be able to record 10bit prores 4:2:2. If you decide to record internally with the F3 you can only get 8 bit 4:2:0. So here there will be a quality difference.

Thank you so much Carl and David, We ended up choosing a green screen studio since we needed to change a lot of the background. We figured that a white limbo would have not be sufficient. I put the actor on a green cube, slanting a little bit, and filming the talent from a high angle. This way he could let his arms and legs float, and it does seem like he's actually floating. So the solution was quite simple after all. @David: The background needed to be a cloudy enviroment. Grey, like an endless foggy nothingness. Thanks a lot for the advice!

Hi there, On my new film we have a Sony F3 available to shoot with with Superspeeds Mark II lenses. Now we also need to shoot some slowmotion, but this camera doesn't. Due to the low budget we are thinking of hiring a FS7 for a few days and shoot the rest with the F3, but I'm not sure these images will match up? Does the Sony image line up well when mixing with other cameras of their product line? Hope someone can give me some advice here! Cheers, Twan

Hi there, For a new film I'm shooting we need to shoot a 'limbo' scene, where one of the characters in our movie is essentialy floating through empty space, nothingness. Now I'm new to visual effects cinematography, and my question is: how do you do it? I have two possible scenario's in my head: 1. We hang the actor in a theather in a special harness, and we film him infront of a white screen / green screen. We use a steadycam to float in a subtle way infront of the actor, so it will seem like he is floating. Problems: Our actor is quite heavy, and you will probably see it that the actor is hanging? 2. We put the actor on a green cube/table on the ground n front of a green screen, in a laying position, with his legs and head free above the ground. We will then film him from the side, maybe with a steadycam so we move the camera in a subtle way, so it looks like the actor is floating. The actor will have to be quite strong for this I guess to sell the effect. Problems: Will this sell the effect of a floating person? He doesn't have to look like there is no gravity, but the character is just floating there. Hope someone here can give me some tips and advice! Cheers, Twan

Hey there, I own a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera with a Metabones Speedbooster on it. Now I am a lucky man, because I am able to get my hands on a set of Zeiss Superspeeds Mark 1 & 2 glass, which I would love to use on my BMPCC for shooting fiction films. I know it is possible to buy a PL mount for the BMPCC MFT mount to PL, but how does this work with the Speedbooster in between? The speedbooster converts the MFT mount to Canon EF, and reduces the crop factor to 1.7. Would it work nicely if I just buy a EF to PL mount adapter now and put that on my speedbooster? Or would this create focus issues? How could I make this work? Thanks for your help in advance! :) Cheers, Twan

Thanks a lot for the information. I did not know that the car has to drive at different speeds to make the cuts look realistic. Unfortunately we are not using a trailer so we cannot change the speed of the car, because then we would hear it in the audio (the engine of the car will make a different sound). That said, I think I will just make the 2shot through the windshield really tight, so it will be harder to tell the speed as you said Adam. Thanks!

Dear fellow filmmakers, For the first time in my life I am shooting a car scene next week. We are using a carrig with suction cups to attach a C100 to the side of the car. Now since we do not have a car trailer, our actors have to drive and act at the same time. We want to make sure that it is as safe as possible for the actors to do this. Luckily the scenes will take place on empty roads at the countryside. In addition I would like the actors to drive as slow as possible, yet it still has to look realistic. Now my question is: Do you really see how fast a car is going? On the road that we will film people typically drive about 50km/h (30m/h). Let's say we let the actors drive 30km/h (18,5 m/h), will you notice that they are driving a lot slower? I am shooting mainly close-ups and two-shots (through the windshield). Any tips or advice would be much appreciated! Cheers, Twan :D

It's always tough to make something in such a short amount of time. Cinematography wise the quality of the shots seems to differ a lot. There are some really nice shots in there, and I would recommend you to try to pay attention to such detail in every shot as much as you can. Something I always try to do is search for a nice composition, then search for something better. What kind of jib are you using for the moving shots? Like in the shot at 3:39. Are you shooting on a DSLR?

You are right that a big crew doesn't necessarily mean a better crew. We had a relative small crew, but also for some functions it was not really clear what their specific function was. For example we didn't really have an assistant director, which I think played a huge part in the timing of the production.. This summer I am working as a production-assistant on another 48 hour film, the crew will be around 38 people. However, since this production only consists of professionals and everybody has a specific function I expect that this will go well. If there is one thing I have learned it is that there should be clear rules of who is in charge and who can contribute to add ideas or give suggestions to improve the film. In the production last weekend everybody of the crew was argueing and explaining their point of view, which caused a lot of delay. I guess this happened due to the fact that a lot of the crewmembers were not professionals. Same here, the last 48 hour I worked on we shot on 2 camera's. We did this because this would be 'faster', but I still really doubt it if this is really true. I don't think shooting with one camera takes that much longer. Thank you! :) I looked up some information about Premiere's Channel Mixer. Did not know this existed, it looks really helpful. About the desk shot, I did knew this one, although I did forget to use it in the shots. Will probably use this next time!

Ok, so I placed the result in the 'critique my work' section, for those who are interested! Click here to see the result: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=63846

Last friday I made a new thread in the lightning section to ask for tips an advice on how to shoot a film noir. (http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=63816) I'll first explain something about the project. I participated in a dutch 48-hour competition this weekend as a cinematographer. 48 Hour is a competition held regularly in The Netherlands in which numeral film-teams compete against each other by creating a short movie from concept to completion in just one weekend. During the kick-off of the event every team get's randomly assigned to a genre. We got Film Noir. I was really excited that we got this genre, because I could do so much with the lighting! All the participating teams get a different genre, but they all have to incorporate the following things into their movie: Prop : a red dress. Character: Julia or Jules Mendez Line of text: "Do you always use the same side?" Unfortunately our edit pc crashed during rendering, causing us to be disqualified for entrance because we didn't make the deadline by 10 minutes.. (I still can't believe it, it sucks so bad.) But nevertheless I am really happy with my results, since this was my first time as a d.o.p. in a crew larger than 3 persons. Man this was a challenge to shoot in so little time. I think I slept a total of 8 hours during the whole weekend, but it was definitely worth it! I am really interested what you think about the movie and I would love to hear feedback from you all to improve my skills in future productions! I was responsible for placing the lights, choosing the angles and movements, operating the camera and doing the colorgrade in the end. So every advice regarding to these aspects is welcome! The film can be watched here: www.vimeo.com/twanpeeters/thedarkestdance (pass: thedarkestdance) How the scene was set up: I lit the scenes using 3x 350w Laniro redheads, two dimmers and a small dslr led panel. We didn't have the time to find blinds, so instead we carved out a blind pattern in cardboard. Harsh keylight coming from behind the blinds, fill coming from the practical and the wall. I wanted to place the back-light more behind her, but then the light would get in the shot unfortunately. I am not completely satisfied with the colorgrade yet, so I will make a better version soon. I was under so much pressure from the deadline that I had to do the whole color grade in 30 minutes. I think in some of the shots the shadows are too crushed and in others the highlights should be more or less bright. The ending shot is made on a bridge, a smoke machine, a car and one redhead. I wetted down the wooden bridge to make it a bit more shiny. Doesn't look so bad in color either! Since we had to incorporate a red dress into a film noir, I thought it would look really cool if I would remove all of the color, except for this bright red dress. We shot it infront of a black bed sheet, with two red-heads lighting our dancer from behind (one from above on the right and one from a lower angle on the left. I wanted to keep the dancer mysterious and not recognizable. As you can see on the original shot on the bottom I had a lot of noise issues with these shots. I was shooting on ISO 1600 since increasing the light intensity would take away the shadows that I wanted. (I need to get a better camera!)

Thank you so much guys for all of the replies, all the advice I got was extremely helpful. It was a really big challenge to create something good under so much pressure, but I am really happy with the results I got. I will let go how it went and post the result soon! I'm really curious for your reactions and feedback. Will open a new topic for that in the other categories. For now I am going to sleep, since I hardly slept this weekend.

It is late, but we just heard what genre we have to shoot an hour ago. These are the rules of this 48 hour competition. Thank you for the tip on this book. I will see if I can get an e-book version of it real fast and scan through it.

Hi there, This weekend I am participating in a 48 hour film competition, where my team and I have to create a short film around 5 minutes within 48 hours. Now the genre we got was Film Noir. Awesome, right!? I am really excited to film this tomorrow. I am the cinematographer on the project, and since I have little fiction experience and also no experience at all on film noir, I was wondering if I could get some lightning advise. We are working without a budget. I am filming on a Canon 60D and we have 3 350 watt redheads and 2 dimmers. I really want to make the best out of this no budget film as possible, and I think we have enough tools to archieve some great images. I am doing a lot of research now online on classical film noir styles and I notice that the lightening is often very harsh, with strong backlighting and really dim fill lights. I also am wondering of there are any key tips in film noir lightning, but also compositions, camera movements and frame rates. I am relatively inexperienced as a cinematographer. I mostly work as a camera assistant on short films, but I'm trying to work myself up in the industry. This weekend is a good chance for me to show I can do more then slate. All tips and advise are very much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I love it, it touched me. It looks amazing and for me it is hard to believe that this was all shot on a Black Magic Camera. You really inspired me, thanks! :) What other lenses did you use in addition to the Tokina?

That makes sense. So do I understand this correct that you lit the whole scene with Cinestyle and make it perfect before the post-production, without really colorgrading it in the end?

Thanks a lot for your help and tips Phil, this is really helpful. I did not know this about Cinestyle, but then I do not really understand why so much people out there are using this all the time. Even a lot of professionals swear by Cinestyle. I will switch more often to the neutral filter from know on. Thank you!

Thank you all for the fast responses!! I don't know.. The look did not really satisfy me and seemed very unnatural to me. Maybe it's because the available light in the classroom was horrible to begin with! I started using Cinestyle because people advised me too, since it prevents completely crushed blacks. Also I like to use the plugin Filmconvert on my footage to give it a more cinematic look. Cinestyle seems to work nicely together with Filmconvert. But if you have any advise on other color profiles I'm always searching for better options! Well it does seem to help to give my footage a more cinematic look in the end :) I do agree.. A lot of times my footage ends up in a way that would be sort of the same as the neutral color profile. I'm still trying to find the most efficient way of filming and editing. Cinestyle works for now. Is it true that Cinestyle gives your footage more noise? Lately I think my footage has way more noise than it used to have, but I don't know what is causing this.

Hi there, I'm a relative inexperienced colour-grader and I am having some issues with my footage. I was wondering if someone here could give me some advice to improve the outcome of the colourgrade! The problem is that I think that the colours look really 'greenish' in the end. Now as you can see, the raw footage that came out of the camera is really yellow. I balanced my camera by making a picture of a white sheet of paper and setting the white balance to custom (On a Canon 60D with Cinestyle). I think I should have just put the white balance to White Fluorescent Lightning. So the first thing I did was brighten the image up a bit with Colorista. Then I used Curves to add the contrast that I want. This makes the image even more yellow. To make the image colder again I added a 'cooling filter' by using Magic Bullet Looks. Normally this works perfect to do minor white balance adjustments, but in this case it seems to make the image really greenish. I hope someone can give me advice on how to fix this! From now on I won't be using 'custom whitebalance' on my DSLR anymore.. Cheers, Twan