Albion Hockney

Yea if you want detail on those items in the FG of your shot you need more light on them. Right now you have them right at the noise floor with what looks like slightly lifted blacks. Keep everything out of purple and crush a bit in post if you want clean blacks.

yea @Satsuki Murashige I think he's a control freak! I think there are good bits and bad bits to that, but I do miss the looks of his older movies. Even social network to me looked better then the newer ones even though Cronenweth shot both of those. @charles pappas Zodiac was shot on the viper (same camera as collateral) ....but Savides shot it and you can tell alot of his tastes are involved in how it looks....IE why it looks so good! It does have some of that cold fincher vibe that newest stuff has, But I think Savides added a sense of realism to it that meshed really well.

I agree with all of that, But I' i think Fincher is falling into the trap of being wowed by what digtal tech is capable of. its good at some things like the face replacements in social network, but not good at other things like imitating the feel of an old b/w film.

I think fincher is just off base with his idea he can shoot on Digital and emulate looks in post. he did the same thing with a fake anamorphic look on mindhunter that looked totally fake. that said I think this sorta plasticy look is part of his thing. Gone girl and his other films have it too and it works in those cases.

The colorists at the post house's do have immense experience and often a lot of creative input in the grades. They spend their whole day grading, every day. So what you pay for is their eye, just like a DP. That said....yea like everything in this industry lots of BS/Politics/Smoke and Mirrors too.

There really isn't any difference any more on the tech side between pro and amateur colorists. Lots of professional colorists use Resolve. They have panels to control everything faster, professional calibrated monitors, super fast computers, but other then that it's the same thing.

Your plan sounds good. I would agree 4x4ft (1x1meter?) floppy's, one or two, will cover close up and even medium close up shots. so if you don't have any wide coverage of a scene that might be quicker, The bigger frame will do a better job though if you have the crew to move it around and I'd guess it'd cover you about waist up or even a 2 shot. For direct sun your plan sounds good. with 35mm stock you could get away without much fill light I think, but if you want some extra light on faces you can bounce the sunlight back from the side. You can even do a big bounce on one side and add negative fill on the opposite side to create contrast on the face, but you might not need all of that, it depends on the look you go for. if the sun is in a good position and the location is good, you could be in great shape. Just keep in mind the sun moves fast, timing is key. When I was starting out I would always have trouble with these scenes because on the day it'd take an hour to get a take with the right performance and we'd be loosing light or it'd be changing. I always ask directors with sun critical shots to try to get rehearsals in and knock it out quick when the light is right. Some people might use light diffusion on the sunlight, but I never do that. Roger Deakins is very anti sun diffusion and I always loved his outdoor work so it just depends on the look you want. Do as much scouting and planning as you can. If the location is close by I might try to see it on both sunny and cloudy days and shoot reference pictures with a stand in. leave the lights at home. Unless you are shooting blur hour or have night scenes. for daytime your better off working with the sun unless you have much bigger lights and the crew to help.

thats great!

I was wondering what the purpose of that was...I've seen that scene and from what I remember it doesn't feel like it has multiple color temps going on. even subtly.

The setup appears much more complicated than it is. she just has lots of frames of diffusion and lots of various lights bouncing into the room. A lot of that comes from adjusting the light for each specific shot. It might be easier to Just think of it is as a big soft light coming through the window.

Ughf, rates are getting tough out there these days! ?

Miguel, the one one the left sure looks like film to me.

If you plan to make your pathway through working as an AD or in production in general the best thing to do is to keep getting on set and befriend those people. Ask for advice and do a good job. I often see PA's move into production coordinater/manager roles or into 2nd AD roles over time working with the same producers. Be the most thoughtful person on set and show you can do more than whats expected and just have a good attitude. That said people do get trapped into one type of work and if you want to move away from commercial or reality into narrative you need to meet people in that world. At first that might mean just working on low budg short film with out much pay. Directing is it's own thing, though production and experience on set is great and those connections can help you that is not the way you actually get work. Lots of directors don't even have a great deal of on set experience, but what they do have is strong creative foundation and a vision for what they want to make, and a good portfolio. Know the type of work you want to direct and start working on making it... even if its commercials, go make commercial specs or make your low budg shorts. Working in production can be a great way to support yourself while you try to build a directing career

Love the look of this film. Such a simple approach underexposing the overheads just a touch and adding in the brighter edges with kino's

A big HMI far away with some large foggers/hazers will do the trick. The talent in the still you sent is silhouetted so the light isn''t hitting them it's just on the background. If your frame size is about that size it might be possible to use a couple 1.8k hmi's for this on tall stands hitting different ares of the BG. if you have more resources something 4K or bigger on a condor would do you even better. You may want multiple sources hitting different area's of trees, or one big source backed far away could also work. I think the color is just a camera balanced for warmer light 4000Kish, so the hmi's appear cool. You can dial in more green in post our put something like 1/4 green gel on the lights.

Oh sorry noticing the 2nd high window I thought you were suggesting the decorative framed windows. what entices you about coming through the higher window? just the naturalism of an angle more typical of real sunlight?

Really interesting to ready about your suggestion here David. so you'd have separate sources for the bottom and top windows basically and the top windows would slightly harder? A couple questions: is the shoot multicam? how many on your g/e team?

are you talking about for wide exteriors of the car? In that case I agree with Satsuki, that stuff has to be done natural light, shooting in overhead sun is going to suck. If you're talking about narrative moments inside the car stopped then yea bouncing light back into the car makes a lot of sense. I would probably work with reflectors and small diffusion frames though, but 12x could work.

Thats a really good analysis. Though naturalistic lighting trends are for sure also a product of growing realism and camera tech that allows you to make "polished" looking images with less need for artificial lighting

do you have examples of this you could point to?

There are always trends and fads but underexposure has been used in ways people found extreme through out much of cinema (from the Godfather to Harris savides work on "Birth" and now with the likes of Bradford Young and others) There is no true "correct" exposure and sometimes the expressionism of a dark image is most effective...or sometimes a DP is just being trendy, looking for something to make the work stand out, and it doesn't really fit. you win some you lose some.

There are infinite amount of possibilities. A good place to start might be some reference's you like and if you can share pictures of your location and describe the actors positions that will help a lot too!

Your welcome! It also wasn't the only point. There was a whole paragraph of text before that ya know ?

excellent point. Which is also why soft light is effective ...you can keep the light directional and have contrast on the face while having soft shadow. That is if you're concerned with skin texture.

Haha, I'm guessing this was directed toward my comment! I don't think the goal is always realism, but it is immersion in a realized world. Hard frontal lighting brings attention to the fact you are watching a movie....sometimes that can be good or intentional of course. Again I think the Safdies are a good example, because things are often far from realistic, but they aren't going after conventional beauty standards either. Also you must agree that you can often make a more interesting picture from a purely aesthetic POV if you don't need to light a face flat and can add more shape/contrast.