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Andrew Ko

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Posts posted by Andrew Ko

  1. Hi guys,

    So I know that a lot of LED sources are more energy efficient than tungsten sources, and so could output more light with similar or even less wattage.
    I'm planning on purchasing some lights next year for a short film. I'm used to using Arri 650s from my school, and am trying to get some kind of frame of reference for how much light I'll be getting for my money, and just a general way to "compare" lights and have an idea what I could be working with.

    My instinct tells me I should be comparing lights by lumen or lux, but I know that generally on set people refer to lights only by wattage.
    So should I be thinking in Watts or Lumens?

    Thanks!
    Andrew

    To give an example from school, I generally worked with a set of 3 Arri 650s (Tungsten bulb) along with a 1.2K HMI (LED source).
    How could I calculate how many 650s I would need to equal the output of the HMI when their sources are completely different?
    The HMI, although it was only 1.2K seemed to output way more than all 3 650 lights combined!

  2. On 8/3/2020 at 4:33 PM, AJ Young said:

    Did you just graduate? If so, congrats!

    ....

    Yeap, I graduated pretty much right when Covid hit. Thanks so much!
    And thanks for this detailed feedback, I'll definitely consider every point you mentioned. I appreciate it, especially the specifics you went into, this will help a lot.

    Andrew

  3. On 2/15/2020 at 6:26 PM, AJ Young said:

    Hi Andrew! I'm still in the non-union narrative world and haven't shot a feature beyond a $500k budget, but here's my story so far:

    Holy poop. Thanks so much for this! I was looking for something like this, but never thought someone would give such a detailed post. Wow, a lot of your story is very enlightening and helps a lot!

    Much much much thanks for taking your time to write this.

    I will be studying this post for awhile.

  4. On 1/31/2020 at 2:38 AM, Adam Frisch FSF said:

    Owning gear has always been a trap, in my opinion. Do you want them to hire you because you come with "free" gear, or because you're good cinematographer? Here's the followup to that, if they do hire you because you come with gear, then they're loyal to that "free" gear, not to you. So when they get the bigger job with the better budget down the line that's much more creative, they'll get the DP that has the good reel, not the DP that has gear.

    Now, I'm not saying you can't get ahead with a little gear in the beginning. But it shouldn't be viewed as the ticket into it - your talent is that.

    True, talent and knowledge does seem to be the most important. I guess when I look around I just see that people require a certain standard for what you have experience shooting with (ie., it might be hard to get work if you only have experience on Canon prosumer DSLRs no matter how good the work is). In other words, it seems like a requirement, not necessarily your selling point.

     

    On 1/31/2020 at 8:15 AM, Stuart Brereton said:

    You mention looking for work on "medium-high level productions". I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but I think that even when looking for work on something like lower budget TV movies, you're going to find that a nice demo reel isn't enough. It may impress the director, but the producers are going to be more concerned about your experience. Can you help the director with blocking ensemble casts? Can you manage both the camera and G&E teams effectively? Can you light quickly without having all the latest gear? Can you get through 8-10 pages a day, every day? Producers are often willing to take a risk on an inexperienced director, but almost never on an inexperienced DP.

    I'd say the best approach is to find work as an AC, or perhaps in G&E, so that you have a steady income, and then to shoot as many short films, passion projects or whatever as you can on the side. Working on professional sets will teach you a lot about how other DPs work, not just in lighting and camera, but in how they manage their crews, and how they deal with other departments. You'll be learning more every day, and at the same time practicing your skills on your own projects.

    I guess what I mean by "medium-high level productions" would be anything with an AD. In other words, nothing like small corporate videos that you would make with a DSLR where you do every job including editing.

    Interesting, yes I do plan on joining the union (just got in as a permittee) as an electric so good to know that it comes as such a recommended route. Thanks!

  5. 22 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

    I will add that I didn't have much student debt -- CalArts was only $9000/year in my first year, and even though tuition went up $1000 every year, by my second and third year, I had a 50% scholarship.  Don't remember what I borrowed, maybe $25,000 total, but my parents helped me pay it off.  And my wife helped support me for that decade after film school when I wasn't making much.


    Wow, thanks so much David for your detailed reply. Actually, I was hoping for a reply from you!

    Times may be different, but I like to think there are some universals that are always relevant, so I'll definitely keep everything you've said in mind. Reading through your answer, it did light up some bulbs in my current thinking for what I plan on doing this next year when I graduate, so your advice is very much appreciated.

    - Andy

     

  6. Hi there,

    I've been finding it a little hard to find practical advice about acquiring a first paying gig as a cinematographer -- key word, practical.

    So I'd like to throw it to you guys and ask, how would you go about finding your first paid gig as a cinematographer in medium-high level productions.
    (this discludes one-man team type content such as wedding videos, videos for small businesses, etc.)

    Here are the assumptions:

    Student X:

    1. Has just graduated film school with a decent reel with at least a base "sellable" quality.
    2. Does not own a cinema camera, and in fact has some school debt to deal with.
    3. Does not have any "free-ticket" connections, such as a family member or friend in the industry.

    Now, I have some guesses. Let me know if any of them ring true:

    1. Join the local camera union, and work as an 2nd/1st AC for 10+ years until one day you get thrown a bone to work as a cinematographer.
    2. Do something else for a living for 5+ years until you acquire $40,000+ to start with your first camera package, then sell yourself with that.

    But the thing is, both of these paths seem rather unreasonable. I've worked on sets as an electric/camera trainee and I've seen fairly young cinematographers just out of film schools doing shoots for music videos and the like. Are these all rich heirs to cash that have managed to get themselves an ALEXA mini?

    There must be a better way!

    Furthermore, lets say you do manage to get yourself a decent camera package and a solid reel. Where do you even look for work? Kijiji? Facebook? Seems unprofessional.
     

    Anyways, what would you tell Student X? I would love to know!

    - Andy

     

  7. On 9/4/2019 at 3:41 PM, M Joel W said:

    I once graded film to match digital and paid special attention to vectorscope peaks.

    Even when the chroma and saturation matched, the digital vectorscope had a more diffuse point cloud, as if blur had been applied to the image. (It hadn't.)

    Subjectively, the film looked more saturated to me.

    This is just one camera and one film stock and one person's experience. But I noticed... something.

    2383 is a print stock, for which there are emulation LUTs. Never had the fortune to finish on film (well, except when I shot reversal) so I can't speak to how saturated it is or isn't compared with scanned film, an emulation LUT, and digital projection. Guessing the real thing looks better still, but I do post digitally so I may never know.

    There are other differences, too. Reversal/digital vs color negative film. Look up the "Linny LUT" for an interesting take on that.

    The spectral acceptance curves for some very saturated films (Velvia, etc.) are quite narrow compared with what I believe a Bayer pattern filter achieves. The "trichromatic" digital medium format back is similar in this regard, though the marketing is misleading and there is still a lot of overlap between filter acceptance curves despite what they imply. Regardless, look at images from it and compare with the standard back. The "colorspace" etc. is all the same. Just different dyes in the Bayer pattern and a slightly slower (ISO) sensor as a result.

    Could you just grade one to match the other with a LUT? I couldn't say.

    I've read a lot of information indicating a lot of contradictory things about this topic. I think you just need to trust your eyes. I think another part of it is that everyone is drawn to video or film for a different reason. If you like shooting in one format or another, embrace it, I guess. Or maybe not. I thought Michael Mann's style or Fincher's in Zodiac would be the future of digital cinematography, but instead the Alexa and a "film look" seems more popular now..

    Very interesting observation. The idea of the digital vectorscope having a more diffuse point cloud somehow rings true for me thinking about a certain flatness to digital compared to film that I notice.

    Thank you for your response, and everyone else as well.

  8. 8 hours ago, Bruce Greene said:

    I really suspect this is a bit of marketing BS.  2383 and vision camera original stocks to handle some colors "better" than digital workflows, but also handle some colors much worse.  Film has it's own "look", yes, but "color separation"?  I'm not sure this is really one of them...

    It's been my observation that film tends to force near flesh tones towards a "standard" flesh tone, removing variations of skin tones in a "pleasing" way.  And this seems the opposite of "color separation".  One of the first things I notice about a digital capture, vs a film capture is that the digital image shows more distinctly colored reflections/variations in the skin tones that don't usually present themselves as strongly on film.

    I see, interesting. They did mention in the article a lot of bout skin tones in reference to film and digital, something about "letting it go red," but I forget the details. Thanks for your insight!

  9. 2 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

    Modern digital cameras often do not see saturated colour very clearly, and there isn't a very good solution to it.

    The problem is that, instinctively, one would assume that the RGB filters on a Bayer-patterned sensor would be bright, saturated, primary colours. They're not. Often they're pretty desaturated, which helps with sensitivity (by not filtering out too much light). It also helps with sharpness, because the RGB images from the Bayer sensor are not as different as we'd expect; it's easier to infer where sharp edges are in the image since all of the pixels can see most of them.

    The result is a picture with rather reduced saturation. This can be corrected with what a specialist might generally call "matrixing," but which basically means "winding the saturation up." This works to a degree, but subtle distinctions between colours can be reduced; for instance, a lot of Bayer cameras can have trouble telling purple from blue, and it can introduce chroma noise if people try too hard to tease out the colorimetry.

    There are a lot of caveats to all of this. Higher end cameras are more likely to use more saturated filters, accept the sensitivity and sharpness hit, and achieve better colorimetry as a result. An Alexa is not a great example because it's far from the latest technology, but it was never a design which targeted massive sharpness or huge sensitivity. It does, though, have a nice colour response. Also, the human eye works very much in the same way; it does have red, green and blue-sensitive cells, perhaps better described as long-wavelength, medium-wavelength and short-wavelength because they have a very broad sensitivity that overlaps a lot, much like a camera sensor.

    I don't know if what you're describing is caused by all this, but it's likely it has at least some impact.

    P

    Wow! A very interesting answer, one that I've never heard before as far as the digital debate goes. Thank you for taking the time to write this, it certainly seems like insight with a deeper understanding of the systems at play.

    P.S. How do you even get to know this stuff?

  10. In the latest edition of American Cinematographer, colorist Yvan Lucas says that the amazing saturation achieved in Tarantino's latest film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" comes: "partly from the print stock, 2383. Kodak came out with it about 20 years ago. This film print is very colorful, and the primary colors are really separated and very pronounced. It's almost astounding. You get true red, green, and blue - and Quentin told me 'When I see those colors, that's when I know it's film.'"

    My question is, what exactly is meant by "separation" on a technical level? Is this not possible on digital? What qualities would this film stock have that simply shooting with 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 video wouldn't be able to achieve? I've also felt that color is what separated film from digital, but I can't seem to understand why.

    Does anyone have any insight into this? Would be very much appreciated!

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