Matthew Padraic Barr

I've dealt with these submission websites a lot, and they all seem to support Vimeo links with a password. You attach the Vimeo link and the password for submission. The purpose of these websites, including filmfreeway, withoutabox, and shortfilmdepot, is to simplify the submission process across multiple festivals. For instance, I submitted my short film to Slamdance, Seattle, San Francisco, cinequest film festivals, among many others, all through withoutabox and I only had to upload the video once to Vimeo and fill out one form for all the submissions. It's very helpful. Only one of the websites I've dealt with actually required you to upload the video on to their website (not vimeo) which can take along time and is prone to errors. I believe that site was shortfilmdepot, and that was only for European festivals.

As always, Mr. Mullen explains things better and in a much more succinct manner than I do. :)

It is likely that this production used expensive lighting units to achieve the high key look you are referring to, but high key lighting can be achieved in a myriad of ways. For instance, in a room with many large windows, using certain camera placements can give you a similarly high key look without using any lighting units and using only available light. You would likely need a few fixtures to be used as a modeling light on the actors faces, but I'm simply pointing out that you don't necessarily need a ton of expensive lighting fixtures to achieve a high key look, especially nowadays with the fast film stocks and the sensitive digital sensors available to us. From what I've heard -- since Supergirl shoots on the Warner Bros lot and does location work in LA -- they shoot primarily on the Arri Alexa, and for some of the VFX work they shoot on the Red in 6k. Given that Supergirl employs a good deal of VFX work it is extremely doubtful that they work at a high ISO. Both the Red and the Alexa work well in the 400 to 800 ISO range, so that is the range they likely work in. Shooting in a high ISO in low lighting will give you a tremendous amount of noise and it will not help retain colors in the image. Colors only exist in our perception due to the reflection and absorption of light rays on an object, therefore colors need light to be vibrant both in our perception and in their reproduction with digital systems.

I would also like to add that testing is extremely important. Testing lenses, cameras, filters, LUTs, and the overall look including the lighting, color schemes, overexposure and underexposure limits; when/if actors become available for you, you can test lighting for that individual -- every face is unique and responds uniquely to different colors and qualities of light -- this is especially important if they are female. Testing is always important, even for seasoned veterans. I think it's even more important early on when you might not have the experience; you can make up for that by testing a lot. Even if you can't test a lot of the things I mentioned above, you can be vigilant in pre-production, thinking up problems, and possible contingencies, scouting locations and taking lots of pictures and pre visualizing lighting approaches.

Oftentimes, directors work with much of the same crew on every movie they make, which is probably what they meant by "tight crew." I know from my own experiences that shows always run much more smoothly when you work with a crew that you worked with before, so I completely understand why directors do that.

May I ask you why you're inquiring about this? I might be able to be more helpful if I knew what you were trying to accomplish. This particular story was made in 1991, so the technology involved is quite outdated. If you're mostly interested in the ethics and general legality of hidden camera news stories, I can only speculate based on what I've heard while working for a new station. I was merely a camera operator, so I'm not sure how helpful I can be.

I think you might have forgotten to attach the video, Harry. I used to work for a news station so I might be able to help answer your questions, but I would need to see the video to properly answer.

I appreciate the sentiment, Adrian. I felt as though I was stepping out of my purview. Im hardly qualified to comment on getting into the business. I just got lucky: I was born in the right place.

Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that it was a common occurrence. Richard asked if there was any examples. My impression was that he thought it was a myth, I just remembered Trost as one example. no doubt it's an extremely rare occurrence. I shouldn't have chimed in. Still new to this forum.

What about the Boy Wonder Brandon Trost? Im pretty sure he was just 26 when he shot Crank: High Voltage, which was a 20 million dollar Hollywood action movie. I am not a fan of that movie at all but it's a good example. I do like Trost's work with Rob Zombie a lot though.

You mentioned Spring Breakers, which was shot by Benoit Debie, AFC. In that film, they shot on 2-perf film, and Debie claims that you can't get the same amount of in-camera color on digital, you need to do a lot of work in post to get the colors he achieved largely in-camera with film. As Satsuki already mentioned, gels work great. And I love Storaro gels as well. But don't forget about lens filtration. Again in Spring Breakers, Debie used Blue/Yellow and Blue/Lime Varicolor Polarizers during the first part of the film, the music-video part, and that's how he got such interesting colors in the sky and the sea for those scenes, which were lit only by sunlight.

I'm a little confused by your question. I wouldn't recommend thinking in terms of zones for exposure. You might use a 18% grey card, which, when properly exposed, would be exactly zone V. When you start talking about skin tones and "reflectiveness" you're now talking about exposure, and I think the the zone system is confusing you a bit. You should be thinking more in terms of exposure. Here's some good material that I think might help you: http://www.cinematography.net/edited-pages/Philosophy%20of%20Exposure.html http://www.chrischomyn.com/documents/book/05-understandingexposure.pdf

I think you're slightly misunderstanding the Zone System. The Zone System is just a guide to help create a more aesthetically pleasing image through lighting and exposure. Normally, you would find something in the frame that is at key, which often time might be the face of the actor as you mentioned, and you would overexpose and underexpose other areas of the frame -- in a day interior you might blow out the windows, which would then be the most overexposed portion. You want to light the scene based on the latitude (aka dynamic range) of the film camera and film stock (or digital system), the desired look of the film, limitations of the location, time for set-ups, etc. For instance, you might not be able to create a perfect 10 zone system in certain locations, it might not be possible to sufficiently underexpose any area of the frame. The Zone System is simply a beginners guide to understand how exposure and lighting interact in photography. After a certain point, you don't even think about it, you simply light a scene and instinctively add or take away light to better serve the style of photography for that story. If you'd like to see how cinematographers actually use the Zone System I would recommend the book Reflections: 21 cinematographers at work. http://store.ascmag.com/product-p/10701.htm It's expensive but it's a really good book. -mpb

I second Tyler's statement. Great work. I only see one problem with the reel. It seems that most of the reel is commercial work at the beginning. I think some of the work at the end would be better fitted in the beginning somewhere. The beginning looks a bit homogeneous. It would be nice to have a mixture of different lighting styles and film looks right off the bat, showing off your versatility. You might look into having one reel for commercial work and another only for narrative work, which might help with that. That way you could also keep it as short as possible. But again, the photography looks great man. -mpb

I'm shooting a short film at the end of the month on the Blackmagic 4k system, and I'm not sure how the camera's timecode works. I read about how, when recording audio with the microphones within the camera, you can get a timecode from that data. But I'm not entirely sure how to do this in Adobe Premier CC. Does anyone have experience with this? Or can you explain to me how to use this audio timecode? We're recording location sound with a normal set-up. If it helps, here's the equipment the sound recordist is using: Sound Devices 664 Production Mixer with integrated Recorder Betso Sbox Time Code & World Clock Generator

Choosing the lens an aesthetic consideration, and a very important one. It sounds like the director has some ideas about what lenses he would like to use, but you should consider other types of lenses since those other lenses may be a better choice for the film. You mentioned Lubezki, but what film in particular? In Birdman and Tree of Life, Lubezki used much wider lenses than what you've mentioned. Tree of Life was shot mostly in the 14mm to 27mm range, which was a major part of the overall look of the cinematography. There are a few questions I have for you before the choice of lenses can be appropriately addressed. What is the story about? What is your intention for the style of cinematography? What is the budget for the film?

For an introductory book on the technical aspects of directing, I'd recommend "Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics" By Michael Rabiger. It's very thorough and will give you an idea of the basic processes of directing a film. After that, I'd recommend Sidney Lumet's book "Making Movies." That's a great book. For directing actors, a really good introductory book is "Directing Actors: Creating Memerable Performances for Film and Television" by Judith Weston. As for cinematography, these two books are a great introduction: "Cinematography: Theory and Practice, 2nd Edition Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors" by Blain Brown and "Cinematography: Third Edition" by Kris Malkiewicz and M. David Mullen. After an introduction, these books will give you a better understanding of the practical considerations cinematographers make as well as the more complex processes and techniques: Film Lighting by Kris Malkiewicz, Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers at Work by Benjamin Bergery (one of my favorites), The Art of the Cinematographer: A Survey and Interviews with Five Masters By Leonard Maltin, New Cinematographers by Alex Ballinger, Every Frame a Rembrandt: Art and Practice of Cinematography by Andrew Laszlo, ASC. These are only the books that I can personally attest to. You can look at the American Society of Cinematographers website for more; there's a section on their website entitled "The DP's Bookshelf."

I hadn't thought of that. He might've meant that. I presumed he was talking about the technical problems of color film since that was what he talked about earlier in the article. I agree with you that colors are not defined by film stocks, but we aren't talking about the definition of color, we are talking about the reproduction of color in film. There have been many iterations of color film: the early additive processes, Technicolor's cumbersome two-strip process, the revolutionary Eastmancolor process etc. In the early days of color film, there were many problems in accurately reproducing color, and I wasn't sure exactly sure what process was being used at the time, especially in Italy. Many of those iterations were short-lived due to the problems in color reproduction, so I thought he may have been referring to a problem that arose in one of these processes. In any case, this is an antediluvian inquiry since all we have are digital projectors now. I need to just leave film behind and embrace digital acquisition. You're much better off than me, Carl, in the DIT position. :)

I was reading an interview of Antonioni by Godard -- unfortunately I couldn't find a version on the web to post on here, but it's in the Criterion Collection version of Red Desert in the booklet if anyone is interested in reading the unabridged version -- and he said something interesting that I didn't quite understand. When talking about Red Desert and his use of color, he said, "...I realized that certain camera movements were no longer possible: a fast pan works well if the main color is bright red, but it doesn't work if the color is olive green, unless it is meant to suggest new contrasts." I'm not sure what he means by this. I've never experienced problems with a fast pan when the main color is red; however, I've never shot on the film stocks and lenses of 1964. This phenomena might only have existed in the early days of color cinematography. Does anyone have any ideas or experiences regarding this?

It's important to coordinate with the make-up artist and to do some testing, if possible. At least that's what we used to do, and that's what all the best cinematographers of the past taught us young guys to do. Unfortunately, nowadays on low-budget productions and even on major films, less time is devoted to the testing process. Back in the day, when shooting on film was the only option, the testing process was a crucial part of preproduction. It seems that now -- and hopefully some of the more experienced contributors on here can elaborate further -- the testing process is much less common, or at least less time is devoted to it. I always try to do testing: for the look of the photography; for the lighting on the lead actors (especially females) which ideally involves a full make-up test; for any visual effects or unique photographic techniques. But I'm not always successful. Since you can look at a monitor on set and "see what you're getting" -- this is a misleading idea -- producers don't seem to want to spend money on testing as much these days. Again, hopefully some of the more experienced guys on here can back me up on this.

It depends on the ethnicity of your subject as well. If the individual has fair skin or light skin, the color added will read a lot more on their face than if the skin already has an orange pigment as can be seen in many of the more tan ethnic groups. Subjects with very dark skin often have a blue pigment in their skin, which would make adding orange or straw much more difficult. Every individual is so different, that it's always best to test before hand. You may find adding 1/8 CTS will be enough, or that you need 1/4, 1/2, etc. Also, I'm not sure straw will give you a sunset look. I would look into Coral. A straw filter is more yellow and less red, coral has more red, which is more like a sunset for the most part. Another important consideration is the geography. On my last film, I was shooting in Arizona which has a beautiful mixture of reds, oranges and violets at sunset. I found that adding some red to the tungsten source yielded wonderful results. I also used color grad filters to keep a constant color for the exterior shots for multiple takes since the colors were fading as we were shooting.

Kurosawa's "High and Low" Also, I use the Hollywood Camera Work System, which many of us on here do. It's a bit expensive, but I think it's worth it. I use the system on every film and it saves a lot of time. http://hollywoodcamerawork.com/mc_index.html

I just saw a re-run of the show, and I really like the use of the Black ProMist for the past scenes. Did you find you needed to vary the intensity of the Black ProMist from WS to CU? Or did you use 1/4 the whole time?

Yeah, I see it now. I like it. What other directors worked with George Barnes? I'm interested in seeing some more of his work. I haven't studied his work yet. I'm very interested now, though. -mpb

I can't believe I haven't seen this one yet -- I've seen most of Hitckcock's work. I'm intrigued about the Dali dream sequences. Can you elaborate on the glass diffusion filter being used? I'm not sure I see what you're talking about in the bokeh. Are you talking about the concentric lines in the bokeh? It's an interesting quality of diffusion; I'd like to know more about it. I love the Black ProMist -- especially these days when everything is so sharp, I like to use lens diffusion. -mpb