Stephen Sanchez

It looks like the building is south-facing and they plotted the shots around the sun to give a back light. So the shot of her exiting with the plates would be late in day. The profile shot of her walking through the tables would be like 1pm. And her closeup like at 10am. They planned that well. And clearly she's been filled with a stronger wrap from key-side (sun side). The thing about fill is it's done to taste. And in backlight situations like this, white surfaces can be anything (ex. styrene, ultrabounce). But I imagine they used 8x8 or 12x12 white frames behind camera. Someone here mentioned draping a single or double net over the ultrabounce to control the fill ratio so it's not screaming. Those plating shots are done with a diffusion frame intercepting a backlight hard source. Either the sun or a light. If I had a big light on set, then I would prioritize the people first, and get these cutaways with the light during unusable sun hours like near dusk. The frame could be half-grid, 250, or perhaps one of the soft frosts. The diffusion is right out of frame on the far side. Again, fill to taste. The guy in the cabin. So his light is somewhat softened and directional. The reason why the walls aren't filled by spill is because they don't see the light. So his source may actually be outside the door, which is easily achieved with a big light and diffusion. You can see it hitting the wall behind him on the right, so it's not JUST on him. The wooden rack casts a decently intact shadow, so his source may actually be through a soft frost or opal. (As a side note, softcrates are a way to create directional soft light but they're expensive.) They may have placed a fill surface, but that's an easy placement, and again to taste.

That falls under personal preference. I've gained a lot of lighting preferences. You will too as you shoot. Just don't allow them to become rules. I think our work is flexible enough to allow us to, in a way, make the scenarios fit our preferred lighting methods. That may spark some arguments. But my point is three DPs with the same script will light it differently, based on their preferences. Some prefer windows only, some shut windows and rely on lamp practicals, some like the overheads motivated by chandelier. The same DP with a different motivation will even light differently (compare the two Justice League versions). There's lots of great shows with top light by the way. David Mullen's work on Mrs Maisel had a lot of top-sourced light and that wasn't out of place. There was a lot of top light in The Dark Knight as well. And I think they were motivated well. And when you get into scifi, light will come from all over the place. As long as a motivation exists, whether natural or otherworldly, I see no problem.

There is something called an Ergorig. The cam rests on a support brace that arches over your shoulder. The design looks height adjustable. Perhaps that design might work for you? Google Ergorig and you'll find various offshoots of the design.

Technicolor Cinestyle picture profile does a good job. You must download it and load it onto your camera. Otherwise, this video explains the in-camera approach. But Cinestyle I think is flatter.

Looks nice. Thank you for not making their faces fall into blackness on the fill side. It looks natural.

Lovely work Miguel. I agree with Satsuki on more daylight stuff.

To get that realistic shadow play, not really any, despite the feature being in some panel lights. Although in an AC issue, for Infinity War, they used several Chauvet COLOrado Batten LED light banks and built a softbox around them. It was used in the scene below, and it was beautiful. They controlled either each bank, or each individual LED, thus the shadows were not static. I'd love a reason to do that!

Hey Jim, american E26 socket bulbs max out at 300w. You may have ordered the larger E39 Mogul base bulb.

Like Mark said, use larger flags. As your sources get bigger, your cutters scale with them.

@Satsuki Murashige I didn't consider the director's contribution. When you put it that way, this makes much more sense.

Looks good Mark!

Looks like a practical lamp inside and hard light outside shooting in. The frame shadow is casting on the inside curtains, so the source is outside. The hard source outside is low enough to light up the curtains to the ceiling, which can explain why the frame shadows are not lower. I think the light is at eye-level or lower as if from car headlights.

For you narrative shooters out there. As you go through a script, how do you come up with shots that you can't see in the script? For example, the script outlines a group getting out of a car. Five people complaining, one hiding a gun, another is sour at the driver, passenger 2 mocks the sour guy, passenger 3 stares at the driver. And each one has a line of dialogue before, during, or after their exit. Do you simply follow the main character and not draw attention to all the script's other action/dialogue unless important (like the gun)? Or do you get "full coverage" and nab shots of everyone running their lines and action? What is your process that guides you through chaotic scenes with lots of elements? See, I work in the commercial world, which is like an assembly line. You're given a shot list designed by the writer/producer with a specific purpose to sell products. So the shots are very predictable: A WS is the human with the product, MS is the product only, and CU are elements of the product (say the scrubby heads of a vacuum). And my creativity lives in the camera moves and angles for those shots and lighting. The action is simple. There is no character motivation or story. On shorts I've done before, I could see the shots, and made blocking and framing action easy. But I've read narrative scenes in other scripts with lots of separated action or dialogue and I don't see it. Recently, I saw a shootout scene between soldiers and ghosts riddled with dialogue lines and complex action and I thought to myself, "There's no way I could come up with those shots." To break down the soldier scene for example, there was a 180 line that camera lived on. And while it was no doubt multi-cam for each direction, there were lots of soldiers. And some of those shots were individual passes to get closer to each character. The movie was Spectral (2016) on Netflix, end of first act shootout. Motivated character scenes with dialogue or action is easy. I can see them. But larger scenes, especially with general action and brief lines written into the script leave me with nothing to see. I get nervous and think I should stick to the mindless assembly line when I encounter scenes like this. How do you deal with this?

A lot of times I see guidance questions, then the topic ends. Do you mind posting your results, along with lessons you learned from this experience?

Is there a recommendation for a 1st AC in Houston? Remote focus, 30% trinity-style gimbal movement. Ultra low budget union rates. Feature, either in July or August. Thanks folks!

I would avoid ND for windows. It sounds great in theory, but it's expensive, and the work is useless when clouds roll in. It sucks when you can't record because it's so dark outside, but you don't want to pull the ND off because it may get brighter again. I've found it easier to work around the limitation or lift the room and add sheers/blinds to break up the overexposure. You can't choose to shoot on a cloudy day. So, I'd suggest to choose a location where you can shoot toward windows that don't visibly change exposure during the day, and use the skylight as your baseline. This will vary depending on the house. North-facing windows are great because it's consistent skylight. East or west side is great when the sun isn't punching through them. But south can be good if you can top the windows with floppies to cut sun from inside. But none of these will work if there's a white fence or building in the window for the sun to burn out. So be aware of what the sun will hit. I've shot at a house with tall trees encircling the yard, giving me an f8 for window exposure. I've shot at a house with no trees and sun-blasted fence that gave an f16 window exposure. So location matters. After that, sheers and blinds are a great way to add texture and mood to your scene. Even half-pulled shades. You can blue the skylight either with ctb gel or white balance to 3200. This is a creative decision. Some folks like it bluer than others. Keep in mind CTB also cuts light (1 2/3 stops I think). Then make the practicals bright enough to be believable. (Yes houselights are warmer than skylight, so I'd keep them warm.) Add to the practicals with motivated set lighting for talent, like normal. LED sources make this very easy to adjust when clouds roll in. Perhaps look into the Philips Hue bulbs for practicals to control their intensity and color balance. Blue hour is when the sun is gone, so there wouldn't be a need for exterior lights, unless for something specific to your situation. If you want a sodium "streetlight" through a window, for example. These are my thoughts on the matter.

@Ben Kahn, in the Shutter menu, you should have 3 options: Shutter Speed, Shutter Angle, and ECS Mode. ECS mode will allow you to scroll through the frequency in .1 increments. You can find your balance that way. I know this option is on Sony FX7 and FX9. The Venice should have the same mode. Keep in mind that an excessive change from say 58 to 93.2 translates the same in light loss, as you're simply manually controlling the cycle rate of the shutter.

That's a wonderful bit of info. I noticed that effect when CTO-ing a window and punching a 4k HMI through it. I assumed it was due to the lamp's age, but an inherent spectral green spike in the metal-halide mix makes a lot of sense.

Agreed. But I'll expand on point 1 about selecting ISO. For dark scenes with lots of shadow, set your ISO at a stop under the native ISO (or more if you prefer). This sounds counter-intuitive as others suggest raising it. But shooting at 400 when your camera is 800 native, this forces you to add more light to the sensor and overexpose the log footage. The result is cleaner shadows in post. I do this all the time on Sony cameras with dark scenes. Their cine EI mode makes it easy. Why overexpose by a stop? Because if you're in a dark scene, then the highlight latitude isn't being utilized anyway.

Maybe a sun axis placement where it shows the sun path and you slide it across to the position you want. Also, a toggle option for each fixture to show the beam and have those rays cuttable by walls, trees, and window blinds in realtime. I'd love the ability to replace the icons with custom art. I like the idea of something like this. Like you exemplified with the 3D program, if you make this too complicated, it'll become a deterrent.

Does your softbox have a baffle inside? If so, then a heavier front diffusion like magic cloth would be unnecessary. In no baffle, then refer to David's response. I'd go with a 1/2 grid to start. Most softboxes come with a couple diffusions like 1/4 and 1/2, because realistically, there are different cases for both.

Correct. For the soft source measurement, there's math involved that somebody will eventually nail down, whoever has the time and ability, in a simple enough form for others to use. But even with hard light fixtures, we don't run a calculation involving the reflector, bulb type, and lens, to determine output. We look up the photometrics for that fixture or refer to our experience. A soft source is no different. Make your own measurement cheat book if it works for you. When first starting out, I had set a 4x4 bounce card five feet from a Joker 400 and 800, and metered five feet from the illuminated card. That helped me for a while until I grew used to the intensities by feel. A friend told me another way was to "find your f11." Knowing where f11 is with any light gimmick, you will know that half that distance is f22 and double that distance is f5.6.

Of course that's for the whole 40' run.

Okay so for a 9k 40ft cyc (1k IRIS every 4 feet), the wall spot-metered for middle gray at f22. In-camera, 30p at 1250 ISO. Monitoring on a Rec709 LUT, this read as: f8 at 80 IRE, f5.6 at 90 IRE, f4 at 100 IRE. It seems that one stop on the FS7 is 10 IRE. 500fps is around 4.2 stops more than 24/30 fps. If my math is correct, if you want to be at f4 and a 100 IRE cyc, the 4 stops needed for slow-mo would be 144,000 watts, or x14 10ks. Oh my...

You're worried about flicker with tungsten? I've never shot that high FPS in tungsten light before. Are you able to run an FPS test with some tungsten light on a wall somewhere? As for the cyc level. Given that it's white, it doesn't take too much power to make it hot fire. I've set 9 of those IRIS cyc lights for a 40ft cyc with 14ft height and 250 diff in each. I think I had set the IRE of the cyc to 80, which brought the iris to f16. At 1250 ISO, 30fps. I'll have to double check if that's right.