Sraiyanti Haricharan

Yea. I sent out the stupid "his own" thing before realising the ironic gender exclusiveness.

For example, taking something like the documentary Leviathan into consideration, could it be said that most of the footage you see is directorial and/or cinematographic? Or would you say it's based on a solid storyline?

While it's true, Tyler, that there's a whole new level of post production dependency, I do think that there are good, relatively fast, cheap, dps. In the indie film circuit alone you see sooo many films that clearly seem low budget but with good framing, composition and shots. If you had to choose between a good, cheap, relatively fast dp who would give you well composed, well lit digital images and a cheap, fast, not so great dp who just wants to get the job done and is of the "we'll just fix it in post" attitude, who would you pick? Obviously the more efficient one. This doesn't have to be a Lubezski. I honestly think a lot of the dp's work is just to make sure that the image can be the best it can be given the project constraints (and most projects that aren't of unbelievably epic proportions have them). I could be biased but to me, this seems crucial. Yes, your argument about post production being able to do wonders in today's age is valid to a large extent but I personally feel anyone who's doing their job well won't pass the buck on to the next person in line. I have seen footage of another dp's go from flourescent yellow because of bad white balancing to regular skin tones in post. If you're of the argument that time is money, what then saves more time? Taking a few minutes to make sure you've got your white balance right? Or correcting each shot in the grading suite? And the argument that it's a given that a dp should know how to white balance isn't solid simply because there do exist those who don't. And honestly a badly composed shot can have very little done to help it in post. Yes, I'm sure anyone can pick up a camera today and shoot a film. But there is something that differentiates visuals that evoke a certain emotion from visuals that just don't do anything for a story. And that, in my experience, comes mainly from the collaborative effort of the director/dp. I cannot even begin to think of a film working without a competent director. Frankly, you are only letting a story down by not caring enough about the visuals on set. My main point is still why would you not want competent crew members in every department? Especially when there are so many aspiring, talented cinematographers out there right now. It's not like there's a lack of them so why even think about hiring a below average dp? Just like you would want the best you can afford in every other department as well. And like David Mullen said, this argument could be made by singling out any other department in a film as well. I could even argue that some films can be made with absolutely no fixed story in mind beforehand and actually brought together by the director at the edit table. My argument would be stupid but I could argue that.

Or her own. :)

So it comes down to semantics then, I suppose. I think the confusion was that a lot of parallel points were addressed within the original argument. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the fact that cinematography isn't synonymous with storytelling. That's not what made it seem like you're undermining the importance of cinematography. The other statements about lighting not changing much in terms of story was what we were hashing out. Either way, to each his own, yes.

I disagree with this. I definitely think certain things come across better when shot a certain way. I don't think there is one particularly right way or the best way but I do think certain things are more effective one way rather than the other. No, I don't think The Office would be as funny without the fake interviews or looking into the camera. And I think it would ultimately bizarre if it was shot film noir style or with just one spotlight on an office desk with two characters shot across it with perfectly symmetrical compositions. I am not sure if it would be as funny then. It may be more stylistic and interesting to observe from a filmmaking perspective but the intentions of the film would be diluted in this case. For example, if you're shooting a scene in a totally dark room at night and there's absolutely no light source visible in the frame that has been set, but the dp has lit it all over the place and gone extremely high key with it, you'd be a little confused. An ordinary viewer may not know what is bothering him or her about the scene but most likely something is and that is a distraction. It takes out of the viewing experience. It most likely will seem unrealistic and out of context from the mood the filmmaker(s) wished to create for that scene. And from a totally different standpoint of the argument, what is really wrong with putting in effort into the visuals? Why are we arguing that bad aesthetics won't make a difference when most people here are here for the reason of creating good aesthetics? :) And for that matter, coming back to the original thread, what is wrong with wanting perfection on screen? I personally don't have a problem with striving to get the best looking shot every time.

Sorry but The Office UK is a mockumentary. It is purposefully shot in a "documentary style" in the old school sense of the word. So in that manner of speaking, I'm sure a great deal of thought went into making it look the way it does. The atmosphere you're getting from the "lack of stylised lighting" is also very much a cinematographic and directorial decision. I'm slightly newer to this field than a lot of people on the forum but I have never once worked with a director, even in film school, who hasn't been concerned with perfecting the visual elements of the story. I'm yet to find someone who says they don't really care how the visuals turn out as long as the story is good. And for me personally, sometimes even if I absolutely love a story but don't like the cinematography, I do think to myself that I wish that it had had better visuals. Recently, I was at a preview screening of a film where the camera work was just really, really bad. After a point, I stopped paying attention to the story and cringing at the visuals. This could just be because I'm personally passionate about camera work, but I've also heard of curators at film festivals walking out of film screenings because of sloppy camerawork. Either way, I am also not of the opinion that cinematography alone can make or break a film. But if you're going to break it down to individual departments, I feel like you'd find that no one department can carry on a film solely without support from the others. That's what makes a great film, in my opinion. When everyone is on the same page.

This is a very interesting thread. I personally feel like the line between cinematography for documentary and cinematography for fiction has blurred a little. It's so often you see extensive, well planned, light set ups in documentary films and like someone pointed out, a lot less effort put into sculpting light in fiction. That may also have to do with the fact that psychologically we're programmed to think that documentaries are "realistic" and "ugly-pretty" and so are pleasantly surprised or confused when talking heads are lit up elaborately or there is very little hand held footage.

I totally agree with you both about the Go Pro. It's extremely hard to seamlessly incorporate Go Pro footage into a film if you're trying to make it blend in. It almost always shows as far as I've seen and is quite irritating. I was thinking of the A7s ii or the GH4 but the people I'm working for have an in-house 5D that they want to use. If I'm renting another camera, might as well go for the BMPCC which is only slightly more expensive than the A7s ii. Although, I'm aware of the issues the BMPCC has with regards to clipping the highlights. So there's really no way to upscale 720p without it going soft on me, is there.

Okay so I've posted a similar question before where I asked how to deal with 5d footage when half of it has been shot at 720p (for the 50fps) and half at 1080p. The best solution I found after all your suggestions was to batch convert to ProRes. There was a slight loss of sharpness in the 720p of course though but it did the trick. So this time around I wanted to know if there's a workaround this issue. I could really do with a few high speed shots in an upcoming shoot but it's a shoestring budget. The cameras we have at our disposal are a 5d mkiii and a GoPro Hero 4. Would it make sense to spring for an Osmo for a day or two? Or get a gimbal for the GoPro Hero 4? I've noticed in a couple of videos that it's extremely obvious when a GoPro has been used, even if it's been scaled and graded. I don't think that will work for the aesthetic we're going for in this shoot which is warm, soft and sunny. But my issue with the 5D is that I really don't want to have this issue of trying to get lower resolution footage to match higher. Also, this is mostly for web use. Do you guys have any suggestions to either smoothly blend 720p footage with 1080p? Does it make sense to spring for an Osmo instead? Because there's a fair bit of movement in the Hi Speed shots as well. Thanks in advance!

Happy ending. Streamclip was almost seamless and all the footage is now at 1080p ProRes 422. (My old computer couldn't handle AE and PP at the same time.) So far I've shown it to 3 other DoPs and no one has even mentioned resolutions. Safe to say the 720p has camouflaged. Phew. Thanks, guys.

That's great. Thanks a tonne. :)

I'm editing on Premiere CC so that's convenient then to use AE to scale. So, I tried upscaling some of the footage in Premiere itself and there's not so much the problem of grain but more a problem of sharpness. Especially in the closeups. I mean, at the end of the day, it shouldn't look like there was a focusing problem throughout the film. That's honestly the only reason I'm considering coming down to 720 but you're right, there's honestly a noticeable loss of detail in that case. If you had to pick between scaling on AE and using Media Encoder or Streamclip to convert to 1080, which would you say is the better option?

It's to be screened in a bunch of different places. I'm not sure what screening systems they're using as yet. Is there that much of a difference between upscaling before the import and upscaling in the software itself? I mean, do you get cleaner footage despite losing detail when you convert it externally? Ultimately, it's about 7 - 8 minutes of 720p footage and 7-8 minutes of 1080p footage. Because it was shot on cinestyle, the sharpness is down to 0 in the 1080 footage too so it may just seem like the 720 is slightly softer and not show too much. But generally speaking, is downscaling the better option if it's almost exactly halfway 1080 and halfway 720? I guess it's need specific, huh?

Hey, So if you had half your footage shot at 720p to get high speed shots at 50fps and the other half at 1080p, at a frame rate of 24, would you upscale or downscale the footage? The camera you've used is a 5d mkiii. I ask because images lose quite a bit of sharpness while upscaling but not having a full HD output might not be the greatest thing for projector screenings.

Thank you. :) Yes it was on 5D RAW. Not ML RAW. So not really RAW. Haha.

Having similar problems recently, I've invested in a filter set. http://www.ebay.in/itm/like/151731372088?aff_source=Sok-Goog This is going to make things SO much easier in the future and also isn't expensive. :) Hope the taping worked out.

Oh also, the car we were using had tinted windows which actually acted as a pretty neat ND for one or two shots during the mid day shoot. Haha.

Okay, all of that was quite helpful. I was able to find polarizers for a 50mm Youngnou lens that someone lent me but it was so terrible, it wouldn't even focus. Desperate times. No, I couldn't get my hands on a 70-200 either without actually renting one out which didn't work with the 0 budget. Ultimately I ended up having to go above f11 quite often and upping the shutter speed in a few cases but not by too much (never more than 1/100, mostly 1/60 and 1/80) so hopefully it should be okay. I am a little unsure if the documentary's subject demanded a lot of wide shots or shooting at a high f-stop made me unconsciously favour wides but those have come out pretty decently. I also shot quite a few cutaways at 60fps which helped, if slightly, with cutting the light. So it was a 5 day shoot for a short documentary about superstition in 4 villages in Southern India. Luckily, the schedule for one of them turned out to be at night, one of them indoors and one of them at sunset. The fourth one was mid day which was difficult but I took all your advice and tried to stick with shade, although the burnt out areas in some of the backgrounds annoyed me no end. Also, can I say that Cinestyle really cuts that strange sharpness the 5D has even at f11 and beyond? Maybe it's just the fact that it's all washed out and desaturated. That was quite helpful. Does anyone else find Cinestyle strangely addictive? The camera goes down to 100 ISO but I tried to stick to 160 in most cases attempting to follow Phillip Bloom's advice. But yes, overall it was quite manageable. Thank you all. Soot from burning rubber sounds like an interesting idea btw. I'm quite curious to see how that would work out. I shall send you all some footage if you're interested. The whole experience was overwhelming but quite eye opening. :)

I have a huge problem for which I doubt there is a solution but any tips would help at this point. I have a documentary shoot starting tomorrow, a large part of which will be outdoors. It is extremely extremely low budget. I will be using a 5D mkiii, a Tamron f2.8 28-75, a tripod and a very basic diy gimbal. My lights consist of a single on camera LED. The problem here is that I have not been able to find ND filters anywhere in my city. Whether to rent or to buy. I would really like the option of playing with my DoF. Is there anything I can do to have more control over exposure if I can't get my hands on an ND? A lot of the interviews will be shot indoors which is good. But what about outdoors in the middle of the day? Any advice? Side note:I know. I should have just ordered online. Rookie mistake.

It's really cool how much I'm learning in just this one thread. It's funny but some of the things you have all said have subconsciously been at the back of my mind but I haven't been able to put words to it and some are entirely new revelations. This. So important. Especially on lower budget and/or student films, which are really the only kinds I've worked on, an art department has almost always been missing. But the nice thing about shooting for documentaries is that the surroundings already work as the art direction. That's what I find so incredibly intriguing. The fact that you constantly problem solve and have new ideas for different ways of composing, often even while a shoot is happening. Bill, the hardest part was getting the horizon right because the boats were constantly moving, and a still photography tripod was the only form of stabilization available. That is one of the best experiences I've had though. It was for a documentary in the North East of India about an all women's market that has been running for centuries. Also, thank you both for your comments. It means a lot that such experienced people take the time to look at the work of new entrants. It's really encouraging.

But maybe I will experiment a little more and go over f/11. Thanks! :)

Oh sorry, I misunderstood your previous comment then. When you said have you never stopped a lens down, I thought you meant that most everything seemed to be of greater depth of field. That confused me a bit because as you pointed out most of that is quite shallow. I do agree with you. I feel like a lot of people directly equate being "cinematic" to the having the widest opening you can get to. That's not what I was going for though. Most of what is in my reel was shot on a Canon 5D and I tend to feel like the greater the depth of field, the more apparent "the digital 5D" look is. Not that there's anything wrong with that but it's personal taste I guess. Also, I tend to turn the sharpness down to 0 or just use Cinestyle. I do enjoy taking photographs on the same camera going above and beyond f/11 though. It's weird.

Hi guys, I would really like a fresh pair of eyes to take a look and give me some honest feedback. Thanks! Sraiyanti Haricharan

I'm more into documentary filmmaking than fiction. Shooting on the run with limited equipment happens quite happen. Especially since I don't own a camera or lenses of my own. And trust me, it's hard to find ND filters in India. A lot of people believe in filming on higher stops instead of trying to cut the light. I am not one of them.