Switch Prep-Production

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · April 11, 2007

Finally this movie is a go. We had our first production meeting today and I got to meet my gaffer who I haven't seen in a year. He's a really talented commercial Gaffer/Key Grip. A lot of commercials, up here in Vancouver, use one crew as swing grip and electrics. I think its perfect for this project. It defiantly makes things simpler for me because sometimes I have difficulty communicating with two people when the crews are small. Often times a gaffer will be near me while the key grip is setting flags on small crews like this and you need to be constantly tracking people down to repeat something you just told your gaffer. Plus commercial crews up here are really elite because it?s a small community and they get paid more then grips and elx on union shows. The union up here has a lot of dead weight and its great to be able to work with a crew that when you call for a light that needs to go up in the air they will actually run, not walk, to the stash and nab a light, all the do dads he needs to rig it, and just throw the whole thing up and focuses it in minutes. I find it?s a much more efficient way, for me at least, to work.

One problem I?m having is setting up camera test to coordinate with a post color-grading house. The executive producer is so focused on getting the project in the ?can? that he doesn?t want to pick a post house yet. However on this film we are going for a unique look, which is going to be generated in post. I really want to go to this post house called Digital Film Central whom I?ve had a lot of meetings with over the year and seem extremely good and have a brand new place. I want to build a relationship with them for future indie projects. They have an Arriscan, Arrilaser, and a Baselight color corrector. Not sure of the color management they have but I?m sure its good. They have a 2k DLP Projector to grade off of as well. They work in tapeless 16-bit TIFF workflow, which is ideal.

I'm concerned about this testing thing. Why go into color correction and create a custom LUT/"Look" after the shoot when we can do it before? This way I can light to that calibration and latitude saving us time and money later on, and we will end up with a better looking project. This applies to a film out, HD DVD, DVD, and digital projection. It will also allow me to self color grade the dailies and offline edit so the director can become accustom to the look of the film from start to finish using that custom LUT generated in prep. Without that knowledge on set we might as well have a DIT because I will just be lighting to the camera's latitude rather then the end product, which will still be a figment of our imaginations before then. I think we would all sleep better, especially our nervous executive producer, director, and producer knowing we got a great picture after each day.

Digital film central is not the only option but they are the best in my opinion. With tapeless workflow's we save our self from compressing our image numerous times and if we end up doing a film out we will notice sampling errors which will show up on film as squares of color rather then picture detail.

The test consists of two test days at Clairmont where I would program the Varicam camera with setting to best suit the film and save those on an sd card. I would need to do lighting contrast tests with a stand in, after which the Director and I would need to go to our post house with the footage and create this custom LUT for our Whistler look and Tahoe look for the film. During my test at Clairmont I would also do latitude test with a chart. This chart we would apply our custom LUT to and would let us know our new log space latitude for the picture. Then we could store these charts and pictures of our stand in on our computers to have on set as uncompressed TIFF's. I would take these Tiffs and go into final cut and mimic the contrast and color using the software?s own color corrector, giving me a, sort of, custom LUT for the offline edit and dailies.

I think if I'm able to get the Executive producer to meet with Digital film central guys that that would convince him that they are the post house for our project. The shoot days are approaching and producers seem to not want to deal with this right now. Which sucks, but it that?s the case I?ll just have to color correct the dailies and use that as a rough template for what we will have to do in post.

Advice anyone?

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · April 11, 2007

The style and mood of the film evolves all the way through out, but for the ?Whistler? act I want it to feel much harsher and moodier. Each location seems to have at least one dynamic developing shot that is done on steadicam in which will reveal almost every corner of the room. I think the plot of having one large soft single light source through large diffusion frames, w/ lite tools, will work to our advantage in this regard. As well as I'm not concerned about back lighting each character, I really want this film to feel as if everything is lit from natural lighting.

For practicals I was feeling that if we put higher output bulbs in and placed some heavy diffusion in the lamp shades we could glow our practicals as well as use them as soft light source. From memory, in the magnum house the interior lighting is mainly from pot lights and I really hate the look of pot lights, I would rather motivate light from a practical on the ground. But I foresee moments where the only place to motivate light is from above and I would really prefer a soft source from above.

Gel colors needed for the film are very basic CTS and CTB. But on the club scene I?d like to experiment with different types of blue, but staying away from the CTB look.

The Varicam is rated at 320asa with the pro35, but a lot, if not all the time, I will be exposing the key light .5 ? 1 stop over. I?d really like to have consistency with contrast and have the key lights so soft and directionless that fill is not needed. Were going to a higher level of lighting with this part in the script and I?d like to under expose the backgrounds, and keep the characters shrouded in darkness. I want to portray whistler as an unfriendly environment.

Not a lot of color temp mixing. The final look will be monochromatic, de-saturated, cyan/blue split, which we will do in the color grade. RGB/White light records the best (without noise) on our camera so all the scenes, except the club scene, should be white light.

Dmitry Kichenko · July 5, 2007

It's hard to give any particular advice since it is not clear if you are asking a question at all. Good luck?

Also, it is probably a bit hard to give advise when you clearly know more than I do. :D

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · July 6, 2007

Heh. Shoots done. It went really well. I wish I could show some footage, but I'd be breaking rules. I have write-ups for each week of production as well as I'm cutting together some clips of footage that I talk about in each write up. However I cant post it till I get the ok from the big boss in LA... Unfortunately I probably wont be able to do anything till the movie is released, when ever that is.

MikeyWilliams · October 22, 2009

Heh. Shoots done. It went really well. I wish I could show some footage, but I'd be breaking rules. I have write-ups for each week of production as well as I'm cutting together some clips of footage that I talk about in each write up. However I cant post it till I get the ok from the big boss in LA... Unfortunately I probably wont be able to do anything till the movie is released, when ever that is.

Any word on when this might be happening?