Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos

Then there’s that thing that if you just go there and press “Record” and don’t know much about what you’re doing, it feels like you aren’t really doing anything. Anybody can do that. You need to know what you’re doing to get the image that you want to get. If I do this, this, this, I’ll get that, that that. And I know it. It’s fact. I know it because I know theory and how theory becomes practice. Which seems banal, but I just had to write it down. So in my view, I just think, or it just seems to me, that you need to know a whole lot of stuff about a lot of stuff to know what you can do and how you can achieve it.

I understand. But look at this. Just a few minutes ago, I searched for discussions about Ansel Adams and his zone system on cinematography.com. I knew that surely there are at least five threads about it. So why ask when it’s already been covered? Bam!, there pops a thread, in which you reply like this: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=70275&p=447291 I haven’t understood a word of it. I ran as if pursued by a bunch of wild wolves. Yes, I could badger you about it, but there is no point now for it, for various reasons. Everywhere you look, a thread eventually, in quite a bit of cases, ends up being somewhat “technical”. Which all makes me think that you need to be pretty damn versed into everything from lamp filaments in the 19th century to semiconductor physics, de-Bayering, lens optics and all the rest of it to be able to record an image. When you say that how else will you know how an image will look unless you go out with a camera, mount that lens, and record an image, I keep thinking how I was under the impression that a cinematographer needs to know something like all the lenses available today and what sort of an image those lenses would give coupled with a particular sensor or film stock. For example, here’s a question: You shot with Alexa 65, correct? I think you did. So how did you know what it will all look like before you had the camera in your hand? Does renting that camera start much before the film starts shooting in order for a cinematographer to do a couple of tests to know what he or she will end up with? Sometimes the discussions are downright intimidating. You feel like you need a whole lot to even think about stepping into this whole business.

This article is on top of the home page of The New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/business/media/greed-passion-lust-betrayal-and-the-olympics-in-between.html It’s an interesting read. What’s fascinating about these shows is how awful the scripts, and sometimes acting, are, but how gorgeous the sets, costumes, and cinematography can be, which is quite often, in a big majority, the case.

Thanks, everyone! :)

Let me then rephrase: can you know what a picture will look like if you know zilch about the optics of a lens or some basics of digital imagery or how to calculate the difference in exposure between two T-stops? Which is this, I guess. In any case, whether it matters or not, the question is do they. Or do they not.

I see. I imagined some sort of feud happened or something. Thank you.

Goodness me, this is one of those things where you realize what you’ve just asked only when someone replies. I have no idea how I forgot that there’s a schedule here and pretty much the same things as working hours elsewhere. So it’s not difficult to determine how much you need to pay someone. :)

I’m a bit confused, since your table is pretty much the same as the SnapSort camera comparison, only in different form. :)

Before I say anything else, how exactly is time measured? Who holds the “stopwatch”? Does the hourly rate mean every hour begun or is it possible to be paid for, say, 7.88 hours?

How much of semiconductor physics and optics does a cinematographer’s education include?

I was surprised than an editor gets more than the DP. I would’ve thought he/she earns either less or the same. Is it standard for an editor to be paid more?

What a coincidence! :D Thank you, Tom.

Perhaps you two could join forces and create something like http://www.snapsort.com/? :)

My thoughts exactly. I was like :blink: . Yeah, I want to know that, too.

But I guess another cinematographer of that stature can’t really ask for much more? Unless, perhaps, it’s a really big project, something like The Lord of the Rings or similar. So I guess it’s $350,000–$450,000 for top-notch cinematographers? What spreadsheet? :)

So what happened with Rousselot and X-Men?

So I’ve just read the other day that Roger Deakins’s salary for The Village was $384,750. Then I thought that’s around what a DP earns per film. Of his stature. But then I saw that I forgot that DPs get paid by week so this amount probably doesn’t mean that much. All this under the condition that IMDb is right about what he got paid in the first place.

Thank you, Macks, for starting this thread! I always wanted to know this, but I hesitated about asking, thinking that this will show how ignorant I am about the film industry. :D

Here I am watching this video about Emmanuel Lubezki, and there are two things I don’t understand. First, the narrator says “One, he has a short _____. That’s when the shadow side faces the camera, ¾ lighting style.” What’s the word after “short” and what is “¾ lighting style”? Two, “The backgrounds are often darker by a stop or more, which he gets through the use of multiple flags” and “The key is often a stop higher.” Darker than what, higher than what?

Could some of you tell me why is Roger Deakins so much admired, so popular and so loved? At first, I thought that much of his popularity comes from his noticeable online presence, and that colourists, people in digital manipulation of images, and indie filmmakers loved him more than cameramen, but there’s much more to it than that. I had to ask after seeing this post by David Mullen: Why is Roger Deakins so special? What are some of his trademarks? What is he known for? What is some of his greatest work in your opinion, both whole films and particular scenes? What is it in his work that fascinates people so much?

Or so The Hollywood Reporter says: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/emmys-why-gothams-penguin-is-899214 They’re really writing a lot about cinematography these days…

In the video about Vittorio Storaro, what film are the frames at 1:19 and the two frames preceding it from? :ph34r: By the way, David, you got mentioned in the video about Janusz Kamiński, for labelling his cinematography as “impressionist”.

There’s also another link, as you see, to a video with “greatest cinematography of all time”: https://thefilmstage.com/news/watch-celebrate-the-greatest-cinematography-of-all-time-with-new-video-essay/

I’ve just bumped onto this: https://thefilmstage.com/news/explore-the-styles-of-the-greatest-cinematographers-with-video-series/ I haven’t pressed “play” yet so I don’t know how good this is. The article links to a series of extensive cinematography breakdowns of some recent Hollywood films: https://thefilmstage.com/news/watch-extensive-cinematography-breakdowns-for-hail-caesar-the-hateful-eight-fury-road-more/

Did he hold a presentation or something?