Adam Frisch FSF

I've stopped using fixed ISO. I now regularly shoot the ISO as low as I can, as it makes for a cleaner image, and I like the look a lot better there. But I will vary it if it's easier than switching an ND. 800 is noisy. No point for that on a bright day lit exterior.

Spike Jonze directed that one.

A good ad is no different than a good film. We're still getting sold something. In the first it's a product, in the second it's the film itself. I refuse to distinct the two. I used to have fights with the snobbism of record companies etc when they always asked for deals because we were making "art" when we did music videos. It can be art, but ultimately, we're selling something. In this case music.

Perhaps a broader view: Equipment don't matter, skills matter somewhat, but what matters more than anything else is taste. Your taste has to be aligned or ahead of the curve for your work to get noticed. You have to have good taste. And good taste is not a constant. It's arbitrary and varies with time and person. "Film is fashion", as David Fincher once said. He's absolutely right. If you light a film like they did in the 90's today, you won't have a career. In another 20 years time, if you light a film like we do today, you won't either. Light and frame with conviction. If you feel strongly that it's right, then it probably is. Even if convention says it's not. Try to avoid cliches and don't copy too much. Just do these things and all will be fine.

Use them all the time. I normally pepper them in sometimes with a cooler or bigger soft sources. very often might sneak them in low as a lower sun hit, but still have a daylight balanced soft push. They're dead cheap to rent, so I always carry at least a few. In fact, the longer I do this, the less fancy lights I seem to need. It's like Eduardo Serra once said, all the brings is a bunch of blondes and then book lights it. That said, There are exceptions of course. I'm in love with many of the newer LED things. They're changing the game.

Because unfortunately, brand ads don't have the same measurable impact. They require a more long term approach to marketing. What I mean with brand ads is where there's an overarching theme or concept or association they want to do, often long term, to build the brand. Most ads are product ads there to tell you the price, that they're on sale or how they clean better than brand X etc. Unfortunately that works. It's much easier to come up with those and not have to spend money on expensive creatives and ad agencies when it doesn't increase measurable sales as much short term. It's the sad truth. We as consumers are dumb and we buy the products from those shitty ads. If we didn't, those ads would not exists. Only good ones would.

You certainly can. 30 seconds is tight, but you can get lots of emotion into that space, but normally the 45s and 60s ads reach further. When commercials work, they work beautifully. I have too many to list, some are just gorgeous or visceral experiences, some are funny and some are profoundly human. Here are just a few of the more human or emotional ones that I can dig up now: This super bowl ad from a few years back had a profound effect on the buyers and sparked the whole Imported From Detroit campaign. Everyone loves an underdog or comeback story and there is none better than Detroit rising from the ashes. First time I saw it i have to admit I got emotional. It's brilliant copywriting, making Americans proud of their car building history, something they hadn't been in a long time. Here's one of my favorites directed by Seb Edwards for Hovis bread. A farmers lad begs to come along and help his farmer dad, who's a tough hard working guy. He runs the lad into the ground, but it has a very emotional ending. Excellent, yet simple filmmaking. Great casting. Or this xmas classic from dir Dougal Wilson for John Lewis. A boy that can't wait for christmas.. This Apple classic has perhaps the best copywriting ever. Here's a recent ad for swimmer Michael Phelps, directed by Martin De Turah that's pretty powerful. https://youtu.be/Xh9jAD1ofm4

Now, there is a possible scenario I can think of when it might help to use tilt/shift. By using a T/S that's stopped down and "help the focal plane" along to connect two objects that might not otherwise both get acceptably in focus. Could be two miniatures that are too far apart or something. But this would need experimenting and might not work at all in all scenarios. But in theory I can see how it could help on rare occasions.

Is this a force perspective set? By using a shift focus lens you will achieve the opposite of what you need. It's what they use when they want to do that fad effect of making a full-size set look like a miniature. See example. No, the right way is normally to use a wider lens, stopped down. The ASC manual has a good chapter on shooting miniatures, but huge depth of field is your friend with miniatures.

A reverse perspective lens from Elite. Look at examples in the pictures. Very bizarre. Wouldn't know what to use it for, but maybe could be useful for some force perspective stuff or generally compressing backgrounds into foregrounds in a flatter manner... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unique-Elite-Reverse-Perspective-lens-Arri-PL-mount-/191792425124?hash=item2ca7b828a4:g:Iz4AAOSw9KpXABVd

There are four basic ways to achieve lighting: 1. Lightning Strikes units. Very good, industry standard. Expensive. 2. Atomic Strobes from Martin. Cheap and useful. Only problem is you can't control strike time like on the Lightning Strikes, so they're very quick to discharge and sometimes the shutter misses them and look a little less convincing. But certainly if you're on a budget, this is a good option. 3. Venetian shutters. You've seen those old war movies where ships send morse code by activating a fast acting shutter in front of a light? Exact same thing. These units are very often buried in storage at the lighting houses as they don't see much use, yet they are extremely effective and very cheap. If you're on a budget, this is an excellent option. 4. Carbon Arc lamp and manually striking the rods. This is old school and how they used to do it in the silent film era. Not many of these units working today, but if you have access to one, it's probably the most convincing look.

I suppose it varies, but I almost never get paid for down days. Then again, I charge them a "healthy" daily rate, so it kind of is expected that I won't nickel and dime them for that.

Travel days in US is half rate. Scout/recce days are full rate. Down days are unpaid.

A little trick - if you get normal fluorescent tubes and fixtures, and dim the incoming voltage on a normal inline dimmer, they will start to flicker. It will kill the the igniters pretty fast, but it's a cheap way to achieve that look. But it's all random, you can not predict when or at what voltage they will start to flicker. Nor can you control any sort of sequence etc. Don't do it with Kino ballast though, or you'll probably destroy them.

Well, I'm not sure threads about taste or deficiencies are a good idea to begin with…. But a recent trailer really surprised me. To see just how unpleasing certain esthetics are to my eye. The night stuff in particular - I personally find it very ugly. Like a bad film school short from a DP who might just be starting out. This cinematographer is stylistically uneven - sometimes I might see a great image from him, and the scene right after might be a disaster in lighting. His aesthetics are always so wildly varying. An enigma. But a little tip to perhaps up and coming DP's: Learn from beauty or hair commercials: hard backlight on hair only produces frizzy imperfections and is not always a good idea. As in 00:14 in to this clip. https://youtu.be/pwU7rbCrksY

Used Low Cons a lot in my days. They have a certain look. I prefer Ultra Cons these days, as they don't scatter as much. Watch out when you get direct sun onto Low Cons - they milk out completely. They're not well suited for shooting into low sun and backlit situations. But I would say that any camera that doesn't shoot raw, they're a must. Always used them on 5D's, Sony A7's, C300's etc where there's way too much contrast "baked" into the frame. Here's an old test film I shot for a friend director many years ago on the little tiny Sony Nex 5. I had a no 3 Ultra Con on the lens and Zeiss Standards. The reason it looks surprisingly 'Red or Alexa-like', is the Ultra Con in my opinion. That flattens the contrast out to where you get more dynamic range, so you can grade it better in post. https://vimeo.com/74776832

Preston is industry standard for a reason. Every other system I've worked with has had problems - Preston almost never. That said, I understand $20K is a lot of money. But, all my AC's who have them say they're able to pay them off in about a year of steady work. So if you can borrow from a bank the difference, I think you're taking a very low risk. You could always sell it and get back most of your money.

Never liked the D21, Viper or early Red. For me it was when the Alexa came along. Today I go back and forth between Red and Alexa depending on project. Most projects today need high speed, and here Red shines. We also encounter a lot of "how much can I zoom in to frame" post stuff, again here Red Dragon and 6K shines. But the look of the Arri has always been a little bit more organic for me. And now that they're finally 4K, the gap has closed. Horses for courses. Haven't shot films in 3 years. I miss it, but less than I thought. Still think it looks superior, but all the stuff around it I don't miss. Today, with the new generation of directors who grew up watching a HD monitor, it would be really hard for them to adapt to a s*itty NTSC ground glass videotap.

There are very few zooms that have front or middle anamorphic elements, i.e. making visible ovals. The AWZ and LWZ from Panavision are two (great lenses, btw), I think Cooke's new anamorphic zoom does it and the Hawk zoom. That's it, pretty much. None of the old "anamorphizied" Angeniuex or even the new anamorphic Optimos do it.

Great lights. Hard to find outside of LA. Mole rents them, but decided not to make and sell them. They saved my ass many times. Last was a set at a hospital on like the 10th floor. Couldn't get a Condor high enough to light outside the windows, so I just hung a bunch of those just above the windows, cropped them out of the frame and it looked like sunlight coming in.

I think there's a general misunderstanding here that a DP is somewhat a stylistic or artistic constant. A good DP serves the story and the style of the film. A very good example is Phedom Papamichael, ASC, who is a brilliant cinematographer with extremely stylistic work under his belt like Mousehunt, Million Dollar Hotel, The Weather Man, 3:10 To Yuma, Identity etc, but he's also shot Sideways and The Descendants - both very simple, plain looking films. Not pretty in any way. Because that's what was right for that story or what the director wanted. Phedon himself has told me at an ASC clubhouse breakfast that he deliberately avoids having a style and getting type cast. Type casting for DP's is as real as it is for actors. And it can be a trap. Masanobu's work in Spotlight is very simple, almost all just enchanted reality. Bland to some perhaps, but it reinforced that film and that story very well. Made it feel real. He did great and more stylized work in Out of the Furnace, Warrior, The Grey, so there's no doubt in his capabilities.

There used to be this whole Nouvelle Vague French theory from I forget which DP: he used to put little eye lights either low or high, different numbers depending on mood. I do recall low was for sadness, but can't remember how many lights. Not sure it makes much sense to be honest, but it's a curious idea.

I was talking commercial rates, drama is a completely different ballgame. I got paid £500/week for my last feature this summer. Obviously, nothing you could ever live on, it's pure charity.

For commercials with with in demand and experienced DP's, the rates are roughly: US: $2000-5000/day UK: £1092 Europe: 1500-2500 Euro In the UK, the APA, producers association, set a max limit that they all follow. And since the union is non existent and toothless there, the UK pays less than anyone else does for experienced DP's. Pair this with the highest cost of living anywhere in the world, an being a DP there can be hard financially unless you're in high demand. Most commercial DP's work maybe 2-4 days a month, and sometimes not at all. Hard to pay rent, have a family and live in London for that.

Let's be a little pragmatic here and break it down. 1. Revenant is for me certainly a tour de force that should be awarded, without doubt. It's groundbreaking in many ways. But. Lubezki won two years in a row, Academy is not going to go for a third win right now is my guess. 2. Richardson won't win, because it's a theatre piece and he's done it too traditional for today's trends. 3. Carol could win just because it's a film right up the Academy's street. I haven't seen it yet, but Lachman is always solid. 4. Sicario - yes, Deakins has never won, so he's got good goodwill. But the films subject matter and the fact it's just not a traditional Academy film will preclude this, I think. 5. Mad Max. Again, not an Academy film, but sometimes they award leftfield stuff and especially if they feel it might be the last works of that individual. Seale is retired, so they might sway that way as a farewell. I think Carol or Mad Max are the contenders.