Tiago Pimentel

Hey guys, I'm looking for a set of prime lenses that will be my main narrative go to kit. My reference are the Zeiss Master Primes, but of course this is a kit that I want to own, not to rent. I was thinking maybe the Zeiss ZF/Contax might be a good alternative. Whatever kit I choose, must be adaptable to an EF Mount and must be great at rendering skin tones. A lot of people say skin tones are much more of a sensor thing, but I've tested lots of different lenses and they all perform differently on the same camera. Thanks!

Tyler, thank you for taking the time to comment. Yes, doing a film that tries to convey a lot of its mystery through a poetic and enigmatic VO is always a struggle and I understand a lot might be lost in translation. Not that the subtitles won't translate the feeling, but there are some things that need to be felt, instead of just read on a subtitle. We are actually thinking on doing an "international" version of this film by recording the VO in english. I know I'm biased, but I really like this project and I think it has a very powerful subject. Let's hope the english VO might help ? Cheers and thanks!

Nobody?

Hey guys, Just finished a new short film and I wanted to share with this forum. It's not traditional when it comes to its narrative form, but we took extra care to make it look very sober and elegant and avoided the hyper realistic look that is usually present in this kind of subject. Hope you like it and please, feel free to comment and also to share your experience as to which film festivals we might be lucky with this movie. pass: insidescreenerfc Thanks! Tiago Pimentel

Hello! We should have a trailer soon. Color grading work has just finished by our fantastic colorist Juan Melara. A few stills:

Thanks guys. The film has reached picture lock and it's currently going through sound editing which should finish by the end of next week. We have the grading going at the same time, so I'm counting on having the film completed by the end of this month. Here are some stills and BTS:

Thanks Giacomo. I am very happy with what we shot! I have a question for this forum, especially those of you who already worked with Alexa footage in post. Do you use the Arri LUT generator to bring the footage to 709 or do you grade from scratch in the raw tab and do the secondaries in nodes? I read somewhere (I think it was Arri website) that Alexa footage (LOG-C of course) should be used in conjunction with one of their LUTs, because it's the only way to uncover their color science. I've tried different LUTs from their website (including the one in Resolve) and they all look the same to me. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Thank you all for some great input. Most of the production is over and I was looking at some of the stills. These are just log to rec709 factory LUT.

Yeah, we'll definitely block the windows to shoot during daytime. Can this actually cause IR contamination? I'll take an IR cut filter and put it in all the time. Won't hurt to use it... Thanks

Thanks Stuart. Do you know if the REC709 monitoring in Alexa is similar (or the same) as the Arri Log C to 709 LUT that comes with Resolve? Thanks

Stuart, that was actually something on my mind. Have you ever rated the Alexa at iso400? Theoretically it should give some very clean shadows, so I'm interested in that. Never done it myself, though.

Hey Stuart! I want to shoot at a low T stop. I'll be using the master primes, so I'll probably want to shoot at T1.3 to keep a very shallow dof and accentuate the soft light look. To do that, I'll probably have to use at least a .6 ND. I was thinking of taking a set of IRNDs anyway. Shouldn't be a problem to use them instead of classic nds, right? Thanks!

Guys, just two more questions concerning the Alexa XT (camera that I'll be using for this shoot): 1 - for monitoring, do you simply use the REC709 viewing that comes with the camera? 2 - Not sure how's the IR pollution of the Alexa, but better to use IRNDs instead of simple NDs, right? Thanks

David, so you have the same opinion as Stuart. This was probably done with an iris pull to overexpose the lightest parts of the image. You also said they are already semi spot lit? How so? Edit: just got what you said. Would you say the only light source is that spot on them? Thanks

Thanks. My main question here is how did they concentrate the glowing effect mainly on the two actors. Is it a combination of a softlight source with eggcrates and the fact that they're using white (hence overexposure is faster than the rest)? And I wonder if the same effect could've been achieved without them using white. Thanks!

Hey guys, Very curious about how this simple, yet beautiful effect could be achieved (check from 1:10 to 1:50): There's obviously more light hitting the actors than the rest, so probably softbox on grids. Anyone knows if this kind of magical glow could be achieved on digital and with the actors not wearing white (which is obviously helping them to stand out in brightness levels). Thanks

Thanks for the heads up Giacomo! Actually, her hair is tinted, she is a natural brunette. I was looking at the pictures I took from the room and I think I'll need to get some diffusion on the lamps to attenuate a bit of the effect on the walls. Do you guys usually use a stronger diffusion on top than on the bottom part of the shade? Thanks

Guys, the rental house doesn't have any litemat available for the date of my shoot. They offered a smart light motion SL1 as an alternative. Anyone knows if it's any good? From what I can tell it's not bicolor, but I'll just need tungsten anyway...

Thanks David. I'll take one or two litemats with softbox and grids then. For closeups I do love the softness of bounced muslin. Below is a shot lit by Deakins, from No Country for Old Men and I remember reading on his site, that he used bounced muslin to light his face. It's remarkable that almost no light hits the back wall. Any idea how he did this? Btw, since I'm shooting in a relatively small room (270 square feet or 25m2), I wasn't thinking of taking very potent lights (if using tungsten, I'll probably take 3 x 500w). If bouncing on a muslin frame, to get it all lit, it'll probably take all 3 fresnels, right? Cheers Tiago

Thanks David. The rental house where I'll be renting my lights have a Litemat 4 which looks big enough to use as soft source. In your experience, is this led as good with skin tones as tungstens? In other words, is it ok to use as key? If using tungsten, how big would you choose the chimera with grids to achieve the soft light similar to the AI clip? For shots where I have depth of field, I might try bouncing from muslin for extra softness (I believe Deakins does it all the time and he gets great contrast and moody interiors). Thanks for helping

Thanks David, that was insightful! Let's take this video from AI for example: I really like the ratios and contrast there. How would you light this admiting you weren't doing this with the big hollywood budget? I also like the pratical over the bed. Not so much for the practical itself but for the lighting effect on the bed and sheets. I might just cheat a bit and simulate that effect even without the over the bed lamp.

Hey Albion, thanks for that. I actually am going to take one or two flexible Leds with me for overhead or backlight and to light one or two things in the background. But when it comes to lighting my actors, I am still a bit old school about that and still light skin tones with tungstens. It's probably an unjustifiable concern from my part and current Leds are probably as good as tungstens, but I don't have much experience with them and wouldn't want to try them on this project as my main keys.

Thanks David. Just a few questions: 1 - When you're saying augment the practicals, you're referring to their effect on the actors, right? I love the effect of bounced muslin. So, maybe two or three 500W tungsten fresnels flooding into unbleached muslin would be great? My main concern here is with light spill and killing the mood. This is supposed to be a night scene being apparently lit by practicals. On shots that are away from the walls, it should be ok as soft light falls off fast, but when the actors are near a wall or when they're laying in bed, might be hard to control it without pulling out the c stands and the flags. What do you think? Would you use chimeras and grids for shots where the actors are closer to walls? Or maybe other technique? 2 - One of the shots that's bugging me the most is the first shot of the movie that is basically very close to the first picture I posted on my latest post (the bed and the two lamps in the back). I'll have the actors sitting side by side, in the bed, facing the camera (not laying in bed, but sitting with their feet on the ground and facing the camera). Light motivated by practical dictates I could get away by lighting half of their face (the half being "lit" by each of the lamps), but how to do that without ending up with a light sandwich and both faces becoming evenly lit (which is boring and flat)? 3 - Would you use any of the lights to augment the practicals on stuff like furniture or the walls? If so, I'd be interested in how you'd do it. :) Thanks for helping

Hello again guys. So today I went to the location with my camera to do some tests. It's important to say that these tests were done with practical lighting only and the lights were the ones available in the lamps. I'm going to take a few bulbs with dimmers and I'm still deciding as to which lights I'll take with me. I really like Kinos but the inability to dim fluorescent lights might be a problem... Tungsten fresnels with chimeras and grids seem like the obvious choice but the space they take and the temperature they reach is something that always makes me think twice... So I was interested in what kind of fixtures you might take to light this, knowing that I need control over intensity and I absolutely need soft light. I'm thinking I might get away with just lighting the actors and one or two details to create contrast in the room, but it actually seems like an uncomplicated lighting scenario. What do you guys think? Here are the stills I got (on the last one, my art director told me it was important to have a practical in that table and it will definitely be there in the shoot). This was shot at f2.8. When shooting day comes, I am still deciding if I'll take the Cooke S4 (which means I can shoot at T2) or if I'll take the Master Primes and benefit the extra speed. Thanks

Thanks JB. I wanted to avoid flat lighting on this one. I wanted to go kind of low key, so maybe having the actors sitting on a side of the bed instead of the bottom of the bed might be better. That way I'd only have one lamp that effectively works as key and the other lamp would motivate backlight. Got to do some tests.