Mathew Collins

That shot has barrel distortion, could have even been the 35mm C-Series anamorphic instead of the 40mm.

 

A lot of the movie used longer primes and anamorphic zooms, which is part of Scott's stye, so barrel distortion would not come into play. There aren't a lot of super wide-angle shots and the few there are don't necessarily have a lot of strait vertical columns or lines to show off the barrel distortion.

>That shot has barrel distortion, could have even been the 35mm C-Series anamorphic instead of the 40mm.

Thank you David.

How did you analyzed that this shot used 40mm?

Hi,

I was watching Alien(1979). I am referring to a subjective shot of the character played by Harry Dean Stanton while searching for a Alien. I could see very minimal Barrel Distortion at the edges of the door. But in many films which shot in anamorphic, i have observed easily noticeable distortion.

How could have DoP Derek Vanlint reduced this?

And there is no closeup of Harry Dean Stanton preceded or followed by this subjective shot. Would it purposefully eliminated?

Thank you David and Stuart.

As Stuart says, both the 81EF and 85B are warming filters and shift color temp in the same direction, but the 81EF is weaker, so it won't fully correct 5500K to 3200K, unlike the 85B filter. If you use the MIRED values to calculate the shift in color temp, knowing that the 85B filter has a shift value of +131 and the 81EF has a shift value of +52, you end up calculating that the 81EF will convert 5500K to 4274K. So on tungsten film, a daylight shot will still have a cool cast if you use the 81EF instead of the 85B.

I had a look on the following link before posting the about question.

http://www.tiffen.com/displayproduct.html?tablename=filters&itemnum=5881EF

Here in the bottom of the link,it is given that

81EF 3,850 to 4,140 K

Here is an old paper I wrote on the topic:

 

HOW TO DESATURATE COLOR

By M. David Mullen, ASC

 

NOTE: there is generally a correlation between lower saturation and lower contrast and softer blacks, since the black density can affect how saturated we perceive a color to be (just as in painting - to make a color more pastel, we mix white into it.) The exception is when silver retention processing is used (see below.)

 

The various methods used to achieve desaturation of color in motion picture photography are:

 

Art direction. The best way to control color is by using less color in costumes, set dressing, wall painting, etc.

 

Use a less saturated film stock. Current examples: Kodak 5229 (Expression 500T), Fuji Eterna 400T.

 

Filters. Filters that allow bright highlights to bleed (?halate?) or wash into the shadows not only lower contrast, but soften colors. Some types of light-scattering filters: ProMist, Fog, Double Fog, Low Contrast, GlimmerGlass, Smoque, Frost, Supra-Frost, UltraCons.

 

Smoke. Smoke has a similar effect to filters in that contrast and color are lowered because light is allowed to wash over everything. However, smoke is dimensional and affects objects in the background more than objects in the foreground due to the increasing density of the smoke that one is viewing the object through as it recedes from the camera position.

 

Lighting. The general rule is that frontal lighting emphasizes color; back or cross-lighting emphasizes texture.

 

Developing. Overexposure and pull-process developing can lower saturation and contrast a little.

 

Flashing. Again, like filters and smoke, flashing lowers color saturation by adding a wash of white light over the image, also lowering the contrast. The advantage of flashing over filters is that it doesn't soften definition or produce artifacts like halos around light sources. Flashing can be achieved through the lens using an ARRI VariCon device (which fits into a 6x6 mattebox) or a Panaflasher (which fits over one of the magazine ports on a Panaflex.) Some labs will post-flash the negative before development but many do not like to get into this because of the chance of damaging the negative through over-handling, or making a mistake. You can also flash an internegative. Prints and interpositives can also be flashed, which lowers contrast by darkening the highlights, not lifting the shadows ? it also slightly softens colors but not as much as negative flashing.

 

Exposure. Underexposure is not really recommended, but a thin negative printed up will generally produce weaker colors and blacks, plus show a lot more grain. Some slight overexposure usually increases saturation if the denser negative leads to printing down the image ? but EXTREME overexposure will also wash out colors (and highlight detail unfortunately) because most of the picture information is placed along the flatter shoulder portion of the characteristic curve.

 

Using incorrect color-balance. When shooting in daylight on tungsten-balanced film, removing the 85B color-correction filter will create a very blue-ish image on the negative that tends to reduce the saturation in reds, including skintones. However, blues and greens will get more exposure and possibly more saturation. By leaving the final timed image on the cold side, you can keep skintones desaturated. In some color-correction software, trying to compensate for a missing 85B filter can add a brownish cast to the image.

 

Silver-retention processes. Generally done to the print, but some techniques can be applied to the negative. A certain amount of black silver normally removed in the developing process is left in the image, increasing contrast and blacks, but also softening colors. Skip-bleach / bleach-bypass, CFI's Silver-Tint, and Deluxe's CCE process are the most extreme techniques, leaving all or most of the silver in the print; Technicolor's ENR and Deluxe's ACE processes are more subtle, allowing the degree of silver retention to be modified. The greater the level of silver left in the film, the greater the desaturation.

 

NOTE: Often a contrast-lowering technique like flashing, pull-developing, or filtration is used in conjunction with a silver retention process on the prints to keep the black levels and contrast to normal levels but also desaturate the image even further.

 

Optical printing. From the original color negative, both a color interpositive and a b&w positive are struck and then both elements are recombined (overlaid) in two exposure passes to create a new, desaturated dupe negative. How desaturated the image is depends on what percentage of the total exposure came from the b&w or the color I.P. "The Sacrifice" and "Sophie's Choice" (the flashbacks) used this technique; so did the opening scenes of "The Natural", which rephotographed the color record out-of-focus over the sharp b&w image, creating a diffusion effect.

 

Digital color-correction. Color is easily manipulated in the digital realm. This is done all the time for film material transferred to video for television presentation; it can also be done for film that is scanned to a digital data format, color-corrected, and then recorded back to film (i.e. a digital intermediate.)

 

CONCLUSION

 

All of these techniques can be combined in various ways ? and usually are. Most productions trying to create a softer color palette always begin with the art direction and costuming. One reason is that it is always better to use the simplest means to achieve a goal. Another is that primary colors tend to desaturate less noticeably than pastel colors when using some sort of desaturation technique ? and since skintones are generally pastel, they will lose their color much faster than a primary color in the frame. So controlling those colors in front of the camera is very important and allows you more options to alter the color with special techniques or processing without affecting the skintones too much.

 

Some examples of these techniques in use:

 

"Saving Private Ryan" was shot on 5293 pushed one stop to 400 ASA, flashed with a Panaflasher (generally), and used the ENR process on the prints. Some shots used filters or just foggy skies to wash out the image, plus the lens were stripped of their coatings to increase flare, and of course, the subject matter was naturally low in color saturation (overcast weather on a beach, actors wearing army costumes, etc.) Also, exterior scenes were shot with the less-strong 81EF filter instead of the 85B filter, creating a colder image.

 

Looking at DP Darius Khondji?s work, we see that "Seven" used negative flashing combined with Deluxe's CCE printing process. "Evita" used a VariCon and diffusion filters combined with a 30% ENR printing. "Alien Resurrection" used a 50% ENR printing.

 

"Ronin" used pull-processing of the neg combined with CCE printing.

 

"Heaven?s Gate" used negative flashing and print flashing together to soften the colors and contrast ? plus a lot of smoke and dust in the scenes. "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", also shot by DP Vilmos Zsigmond, used underexposure, push-processing, negative flashing, and diffusion filters (mostly Double-Fogs).

 

"Kansas City" used Kodak?s EXR 5287 stock combined with CCE printing. (5287 has since been updated to 5277.)

 

"High Art" was shot on Kodak?s VISION 320T (5277) and flashed with a VariCon ? but no silver retention printing techniques were used.

 

"Payback" used the CCE printing process, combined with shooting without the 85 filter outdoors on tungsten stock, and using a blue filter indoors ? the overly blue image on the negative ensured that skintones would be consistently desaturated. This was combined with careful color control in the art direction ? even yellow taxis and red fire hydrants were painted down. The print was timed to the blue side to keep any reds from becoming more saturated.

 

"Sleepy Hollow" used smoke on the sets and the CCE process in printing, plus a very monochromatic design.

>"Saving Private Ryan" was shot on 5293 pushed one stop to 400 ASA, flashed with a Panaflasher (generally), and used the ENR process on the prints. Some shots used filters or just foggy skies to wash out the image, plus the lens were stripped of their coatings to increase flare, and of course, the subject matter was naturally low in color saturation (overcast weather on a beach, actors wearing army costumes, etc.) Also, exterior scenes were shot with the less-strong 81EF filter instead of the 85B filter, creating a colder image.

David,

Is there any mistake in my observations?

5293 is tungsten-balanced color negative.

81EF filter converts 3850K to 4140 K.

85B filter converts 5500K to 3200K.

81EF and 85B perform conversion in opposite directions. In this case how could we compare 81EF and 85B?

That's a subjective call. Most cinematographers care less about continuity than they do about making each shot look good. An example would be doing a shot-reverse shot sequence where one person is heavily backlit and in the reverse the person they are speaking to is also backlit or lit very softly from the side. Strictly speaking, they should be lit frontally with the same hard light that is hitting the back of their friend's head. But nobody usually cares or notices.

That is true, I observed in many movies.

Eg: The.Birds(1963)

The character 'Tippi Hedren' (played by Melanie Daniels) and reverse of her.

Thank you David, Mark,Brett, Satsuki.

Suppose the only light source in my scene is fire and I uses artificial lights for additional lighting.

Would it be a mistake if the lights visible in eyeballs?

Hi,

I was watching 'The End of the Affair'. I could see white patches in Maurice Bendrix(character played by Ralph Fiennes). I have few questions on on this. Could someone share their experiences on this?

Is it the reflection of lights?

Is it a mistake happens in movie lighting?

How could a cinematographer overcome this situation?

When you switch a tungsten lamp off, it takes the filament a short time (2-3 frames) to cool to the point where it is no longer emitting light. During that period, although the light is very dim, it's also very warm in color, which tends to ruin the lightning effect. In a recent movie, where I had to use a tungsten lamp for lightning effects, we had to color-time the flashes frame by frame to remove any hint of warm orange light.

Thank you Stuart.

I don't know the setting on the strobe, but we tried to use whatever the longest duration was possible, and then when we fired the strobes and rolled the camera (the strobes were going off in regular intervals), we could see on the monitors when the flashes reached a peak brightness without partial frames and then we called action.

David,

Could you explain 'partial frames'?

Why 'rolling shutter' is an issue here?

I haven't had problems with Paparazzi strobes and the Alexa.

 

With the Atomic strobes, what I've found is that you get a cycle where it falls into sync with the rolling shutter and then it drifts out and you start getting partial frames. So when I used them on a scene in "Extant", I basically had to call "action" when I saw the strobing sync with the shutter and we'd get a minute or so before it drifted off again.

Hi David,

Could you give some information about the requirement of 'sync with the rolling shutter' and 'partial frames'?

I'm shooting a student film and need to create a lightning effect.

 

The Magic Gadgets Shadowmaker flicker box is advertised as having a lightning effects programmed into it.

 

Has anyone used this effect, and do you have video footage of it that you could post?

 

Any advise on this would be helpful. The budget is too small to get Lightning Strikes or anything like that, and we're shooting on the Red so I don't want the rolling shutter from Atomic 3000's. Looking into a shutter effect with metal shutters, but if the flicker box works, I'd prefer that method.

 

Thanks in advance.

Hi Paul,

Could you explain "I don't want the rolling shutter from Atomic 3000's."?

Hello, I'm curious if anyone has used LED fresnels (Arri L7, Mole Studio LEDs, etc.) for a lightning effect. I'd like to be able to cue a lightning strike thru the unit's DMX control. I want to avoid tungsten because of the time it takes the filament to dim completely down between flashes. However, I'm not sure if there is a delay in the LEDs that would prevent an effective strobing or flashing effect.

 

I imagine I'll test it soon enough, but wondered if anyone had any experience or thoughts on the issue.

 

Thanks,

 

Tristan Noelle

 

Hi Tristan,

Could you explain "I want to avoid tungsten because of the time it takes the filament to dim completely down between flashes."?

Thank you David and Jonathan.

 

Can you post a frame that shows the fire in the shot as well.

 

Guy Holt, Gaffer

ScreenLight & Grip

Lighting Rental & Sales in Boston

I am not planning to show the full fire in the initial part of the scene. Still a part of the fire is visible in the shoulder shot.

Color Temperature - 3800K

Background window - Right window- 240W Kino

Character- Key light - 80W tungsten inside a softbox + fire

"Broad" and "narrow" refer to the wavelengths that the filters allow to pass through. Typically for a 3-color camera, or in post making b&w separations from a color negative, your red, green, and blue color filters would be narrow cut in terms of what color wavelengths pass through -- just the red, or green, or blue information for each strip of b&w film.

 

But with a broad cut filter, the red filter, let's say, allows some green and blue information to pass through too (basically it is a weaker filter). So each color separation onto b&w film is not pure, it has some exposure from the other two colors. So when recombined through filters onto a new color film, or in this case, when using the dye transfer process to make prints, you get washed out colors.

 

There's a video here on the dye transfer (aka imbibition) printing process:

http://100years.technicolor.com/entertainment-life/imbibition-dye-transfer-printing-process/

 

When making a dye transfer print, you run the b&w positive image (the matrix) dipped in either yellow, cyan, or magenta dye (yellow dye for the blue information, cyan dye for the red information, and magenta dye for the green information.)

 

See:

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

 

With regular color print film like from Kodak, the yellow, cyan, and magenta dyes are formed in processing after exposure using color dye coupler technology.

 

Technicolor dye transfer printing wasn't like that, it's not a photographic process -- there is no light-sensitive emulsion on the print stock, it's just clear film with some compound on it that absorbs dye (called a mordant), and then the three color dyes are basically pressed onto it, just like printing a color illustration for a paper book or magazine.

 

Besides the three color dyes, which are enough all together to create black (see Subtractive Color again), Technicolor had a fourth pass in their early machines that printed a b&w silver image over the three colors to increase the density of the blacks, but it was dropped after a few years as being unnecessary, they got decent blacks with just the combination of the three color dyes. But in color printing for books, etc. this fourth black "key" printing pass is still used, hence the term CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Key).

 

See:

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

 

But Ozzie Morris was able to take advantage of this fourth silver pass in the printer to take his washed-out color images on the Technicolor print (washed-out from making his b&w matrices from a color negative that passed through broad cut filters), and restore some contrast to the print by adding back the blacks.

At a time how many roles of film used in the camera for shooting? B/W film is used?

Are these filters are used at time of shooting or in post?

>When making a dye transfer print, you run the b&w positive image (the matrix) dipped in either yellow, cyan, or magenta dye (yellow dye for the blue information, cyan dye for the red information, and magenta dye for the green information.)

Could you explain this part? How this b&w positive image is made? Is it printed from from the original negative?

What is matrix?

Garware?? This stuff? http://www.garwaresuncontrol.com/high-heat-rejection.html

We call 'Garware' locally as 'Butter paper'.

As shown in the video It is like a plastic paper. At the edge of paper which i have used, it is written as 'Garware'.

Thank you David.

Hi,

I could see lot of grains in the background of the church scene in Moby Dick. Is it the outcome of less lighting or film stock?

Just tried to light the scene with available lights due to the lack of budget. Kindly share your advice.

Right window- 240W Kino

Left window - 400 W metal halide (locally available - not very good for film lighting.

Character- Key light - 240 W Kino with Garware in front of it

Character- Fill light - 80W tungsten inside a softbox

Background of the scene - Warm 250 W(5x50w) self made Kino type light with Garware in front of it.

Above the character - Cool 250 W(5x50w) self made Kino type light with Garware in front of it.

Ozzie Morris is one of the most innovative color cinematographers in history; it's just that some of his experiments predated the 1970's when everyone was noticing.

 

Five must sees:

 

"Moulin Rouge" -- 3-strip Technicolor shot through Fog Filters, smoke, and colored lighting to create the textures of a painting by Toulose Latrec.

 

"Moby Dick" -- Eastmancolor photography but desaturated through unique Technicolor dye transfer process involving making b&w matrices with broad-cut instead of narrow-cut filters, causing separations to contain the other two colors, creating a pastel image when recombined. Then a silver key image was added in a fourth pass.

 

"Taming of the Shrew" -- one of the earlier examples of shadowless soft set lighting to create low-contrast painterly look. Colored soft lights and fog filters.

 

"Fiddler on the Roof" -- shot entirely through a brown pantyhose (stretched over the lens and held with a rubberband) for a soft, earthy palette.

 

"The Wiz" -- one of the most elaborate uses of colored flashing using a Lightflex device, combined with front-lighting sets & costumes using Scotchlite front-projection material (same as was done for Krypton scenes in "Superman: The Movie.")

>"Moby Dick" -- Eastmancolor photography but desaturated through unique Technicolor dye transfer process involving making b&w matrices with broad-cut instead of narrow-cut filters, causing separations to contain the other two colors, creating a pastel image when recombined. Then a silver key image was added in a fourth pass.

David,

Could you explain,

-broad-cut and narrow-cut filters

-causing separations to contain the other two colors

-when recombined

-a silver key image was added in a fourth pass

http://donmcveydop.com/lee-filters/

I found this link in cinematography.com.

Any other document in online which provides some insights into diffusion and diffusion materials?

Thank you David.

Thank you David.

The softness is determined by the relative size of the source (and when using diffusion frame or bounce, that becomes the source, not the lighting unit hitting that material).

 

I say "relative" because I'm not so much talking about the physical measurement of the source but how big it appears relative to the POV of the person being lit by that source.

 

In other words, to the person being lit, if a 4'x4' diffusion frame in front of them takes up the same area of their vision as a 20'x20' diffusion frame much further away, then the two sources would be equally soft in terms of the shadow patterns created.

 

The difference would be the fall-off speed, the bigger, farther light falling-off in exposure more gradually compared to the smaller, closer light. If a diffusion frame is only a few feet from a face, then the actor leaning towards or away from it would cause a visible change in brightness on their face -- but if the frame was several feet away, then leaning towards or away from it shouldn't cause much of an exposure change.

Does anything happens to the characteristics of light rays when it is passing thru diffusion frame?