Albion Hockney

Blue always confuses me. I've had skypanels at 10k blue and balanced the camera for daylight and it didnt even feel that blue.

You can always just push the camera white balance warmer and put your tungsten sources at like 2K kelvin too.

your lamp plan seems good.

if you have windows with a translite or something keep that in mind too....that might be the hardest part to sell.

oh wow —vintage film scans. it really is 2025

business (which is an unfortunate part of this game) is about leverage. if you are afraid to lose the movie because of pushing back then your are in a bind. That said a good producer wants you to be happy so that you are excited to work on the movie so they should negotiate. if you feel you are highly skilled, the director wants you and your better then other DP's they may be talking with then you are in a good position. Do you have an agent, at this budget levels agents might be interested??

I'm sure there is someone with more experience who will weigh in though good luck!

Oh Wow—love that "It’s perfectly likely that a S35 lens might have less distortion" ! thanks for this information

So interesting that there is this huge misconception around this. Someone let Corbet and Crowley know LOL

—IMOP the use of it in high end films (IE Nolan, Anderson, Star Wars, w/e) is partly pretension and money —IE if you have the money why not used the biggest and bestest thing. Its like using leicas or something. Not to say 70mm or vista aren't going be beautiful... the movie looks epic!

yea him and Brady both said that larger format gives less distortion because longer focal length have a wider FOV.  I donno why this still such a widely expressed piece of mis information

I wonder if there is some minute difference's here in the lens optics IE there is less edge distortion on large format 25mm then on an equivalent super 35mm focal length.

On lower end production I think people often don't understand the distinction between mineral and water based haze.

The dp asks for a DF50 and whatever juice comes with it gets put into it. I was always told the DF50 is water based....but thats not true...it can take either.

For documentary I know the C400 is also a new contender and something to look into. Also the Fx6 is hugely popular and I wonder how the image from fx6 compares to the Burano after color grade.

can't speak to the lenses! with lenses just make sure to buy something you think will hold value—that way you can always resell if you need/want something else.

I think ultra primes are pretty out of fashion other then for wide angle work, but maybe they will come back and be worth a fortune one day.

Great hat.

thanks for sharing this. Ed Lachman is very impressive!

Hey Matthew.

I often hear generalizations like "all action movies seem to look a certain way" or "why do American movies and European movies look different"  the problem with these kinda generalizations is that there are SO many elements that go into the look of a movie.

From the locations, art direction, wardrobe, the camera/lens choices, lighting, even the look of the actors themselves.

I'd recommend looking at the films you are comparing it to in your mind and picking out the specific details you notice.

in the stills you sent I notice a lower contrast look with shallow DOF on vintage lenses. it looks like it was shot digitally to me. I notice a lot of greens and earth tones —and yes noticeably warm and nice looking skin tones.

cool transitions with the project footage!

you should really shoot in a studio with a proper cyc wall then.

generally you just blast the cyc with soft light from the top or both sides. it will depend on the size of the wall - and your camera iso/f stop to assess how much light you need. 

You need a white cyc. If you’re going to see the subject sit on the floor you’ll need a fairly large space. If you don’t see the the talents feet on the floor you could do a 12x or 8x seamless.

you put enough soft even light on the backdrop to overexpose it just under the clip point.

generally you want enough space to light the talent and the background independently but if they are sitting on the floor that of course won’t work and you’ll have to balance a bright exposure on the floor while keep the talent from being blown out

overexposing a bit is a common practice- not everyone does that though and its really dependent on the final look you want to achieve. if your happy without having detail in the shadows and want them to be true black in places OR you like the added grain or noise you get when lifting them a little then thats great. If you want clean blacks with lots of detail in the tow of the curve then you might want to over expose.

Do some tests.

for sure technical limitations.

old 40mm anamorphics have strong distortion. the 40 and 50 often feels very different for this reason with the 50mm being much cleaner looking.

40mm is pretty wide though —it has the width of a spherical 20mm

this is all standard AKS for modern filmmaking

the new cameras are way better then the 5Dii —but film is still film

Are you trying to shoot magic hour or blue hour after the sunsets? no need for 500t unless your shooting faces in magic hour into mid/late blue hour.

for actual sunset/sunrise 50d would be ok.

looks good. seems like you dont need to buy any lights.

Wish I had a reason to buy this rn. Love this camera. I do wish they made it a little shorter though.

The rigging possibilities!

regardless of what you think of the look. I gotta say—its an impressive feat to DP and Direct a movie of that scale. That said I still say he should hire a dp...and I don't ever love the look of his films

yep compensating with ND filters is the best way.

If you want to know the difference just look at tests. 16 and 35 each have different size grain and dof characteristics.

they can look similar if you for example shoot at a deeper stop and use grainier film like 500t or push the film...it wont be the same. but similar.

day for night if you need to see windows is annoying. you need to fully tent the windows w/ black out and space around the windows —then you can add in some small light effects like twinkle lights, car lights,  slash of street light, etc —Ideally you'd have a translight out there + some foliage and stuff to to give it depth.

Frosting the windows could help too, but w/o details outside the window it will always look artificial.

Na, I agree.  Pshhh Roger deakins —what does that guy know.

In the still above they are underexposing the daylight environment through the window (look how the man by the water is almost a silhouette). Then they did blasted that talent with light in the FG to get reflection in the glass). the talent in the glass is much brighter then the background.

by doing this your turning the glass into a mirror by underexposing (imagine if they shot this scene at night, the glass at  would turn into a mirror)

to create this without lighting I would look for a window that faces a shaded or darker exterior and then I would need the sun to come in through a window from a direction that hits talent without lighting the background.

Another way to pull this off is to shoot at blue hour. a twilight exterior with just a little light on it and then use a lamp inside to light the talent.