Manure

[David Mullen ASC]

I arrived back in town on Saturday from shooting “Jennifer’s Body” for nine weeks and began my five days of prep before I begin shooting “Manure” for the Polish Brothers next week.

 

This is a moderately small union shoot with a very ambitious multi-character script to be shot in only 25 days. And if that wasn’t hard enough, with dozens of scenes on the call sheet each day, all but a few shots will be shot on stages, including a lot of day “exterior” scenes. I’m dealing with a lot of sets to be lit with a minimal amount of lights and crew people to do it (but then, Clark Hunter, our production designer, is dealing with building a lot of sets in a minimal amount of space and turning them around day after day). This is in stark comparison to my last movie where I had more or less the correct size crew, equipment package, and schedule to pull it off. So I expect this shoot to be a tough one -- but creatively exciting.

 

Being a comedic tale about the struggles of old-time manure salesmen competing with new aggressive modern fertilizer salesmen, set in the early 1960’s, the Polish Brothers, in a twist on the all-grey color scheme of “Northfork”, have imagined this movie as being only in brown tones. And I mean literally, down to skies and plants and food, etc. being painted in shades of brown.

 

The movie will star Billy Bob Thornton as the lead manure salesman and Tea Leoni as the woman who inherits the ailing manure company from her father. Kyle MacLachlan will play the lead fertilizer salesman.

 

We are shooting at Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, just down the street from the stages where “Big Love” is beginning their third season of production, a job I turned down out of loyalty to the Polish Brothers.

 

The other twist is that the Polish Brothers have gotten independent financing for both this movie and a second one, to begin shooting only two weeks after this one wraps. That one is called “Stay Cool” and is a throwback to a 1980’s John Hughes comedy, about a high school reunion. To be shot mostly on location.

 

So I plan on being very tired for the next three months…

 

Having enjoyed shooting on the F900 for “Jackpot” back in 2000, the Polish Brothers felt that these two small indie features would be a good opportunity to shoot digitally again. They asked me for a rundown on current digital choices. I sort of narrowed the list down to what I’d like to try out these days, from the new Panasonic HPX3000, to the Sony F23, the Panavision Genesis, and the RED ONE. I listed the pros and cons of each. They decided to go with the RED ONE, based partly on the ability to buy the cameras outright for the production company they are forming with their investor/co-producer, an expense that doesn’t have to be part of the movie’s budget. I warned them that the workflow was a bit new and under development, and there were stories that they heard about various bugs that I couldn’t deny, but they were willing to take a risk with me. This is one of the advantages of working with the Polish Brothers, that they trust me and they are willing to take risks with me, technically and creatively. On other productions, I’d be more likely to push a tried-and-true method just in order to not be blamed if things went wrong. With them, I can propose shooting in anamorphic, doing a skip-bleach process, whatever seems right for the movie or interesting artistically, visually. And being an independent production, there’s no studio that has to sign-off on everything we do.

 

So the big downside to this is basically that I’ve only had a few hours with the RED ONE in prep to get to know it, on top of the general lack of prep I’ve had on this movie. Knowing that a lot of important decisions would have to be made in advance while I was shooting up in Vancouver, especially since we are buying a lot of the camera gear, I suggested that the production hire DP Jim Mathers (founder of the Digital Cinema Society) to prep the movie for me, and then serve as 2nd Unit DP once we start shooting. Jim has already shot two RED features and owns a RED camera. Jim, in turn, suggested hiring Conrad Hunziker as a B-camera operator – Conrad has experience with the RED and will help the rest of us get familiar with the camera.

 

We are renting the rest of the camera gear, including Zeiss Ultra Primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms, from The Camera House. Theo Pingarelli will be A-cam operator and Marcus Lopez will be A-cam 1st AC. We have a 2-camera RED package (with a back-up third body) but, due to budget, there won’t be a B-camera 2nd AC, just a Camera PA.

 

The tight budget has made a lot of things harder than they really should be, starting with lighting the sets. We have a huge day exterior set inside a soundstage, somewhat bigger than the backyard set in “Big Love”. As a form of comparison, that set on “Big Love” took three weeks of rigging to hang 150 spacelights, plus put up cyc lights, four Dinos, four 20K’s, four 9-lights, and a lot of sky pans. Well, everything I proposed to light this larger set was struck down as too expensive or too time-consuming, manpower-intensive to rig – like hanging 250 spacelights. It was frustrating because it wasn’t my decision to make the space so big, I just was trying to light it for a daytime look. My demands were all reasonable, just beyond the budget, which had seriously underestimated the amount of lighting that all these sets would need. For example, we have a second soundstage with another day exterior set that is half the size of the large one. We ended up lighting the main stage with about 20 Kino Blanket Lights, plus lighting balloons along the perimeter to light the cyc. Since the RED prefers daylight-balance over tungsten, I decided, since I was not using spacelights anyway, to use daylight Kino tubes and HMI balloons. For my hard sunlight effects, I have tungsten 12-lights (for a warm sun effect) and 18K HMI’s hung near the corners of the set and some more 18K’s in the middle of the long stretch of the stage. The stage doesn’t really have greenbeds, just a few catwalks and a lot of ceiling beams & rafters, so my lights are hanging a bit lower than I wanted, limited by the rafters, cutting into the cyc painting area, to the dismay of the production designer. The balloons also cut into the top of the cyc a little – but they were cheaper to get a deal on than hanging Lumapanels or more Kinos. But at least those would have been more flush to the ceiling.

 

I am rating the RED ONE at 320 ASA. Even with Light Grid covering each individual Blanket Light, I am getting nearly an f/4 from all the Kinos above, which is great. I can switch them to low-output mode or switch off individual tubes when I want less from the overhead softlight.

 

Kino Blanket lites:

 

HMI balloon:

 

We are shooting with Build 15 loaded in the cameras (Build 16 comes too late for this production but maybe the next one in July will use it). 4K RAW 2:1 mode, framed for cropping to 2.40 : 1. Since everything is painted in shades of brown, and all the clothing is also brown, I don’t have to do much in-camera or post manipulation to the colors to get this desaturated brown effect, it happens naturally (i.e. it already looks manipulated.) We are going for a softer look, so I will be using some diffusion. In this case, I am trying out the new Schneider Classic Blacks, a combination of Classic Softs and the #1/8 Black Frost. We may also do some digital diffusion in post. Right now, Plaster City in Hollywood is handling our dailies workflow.

 

We shot a test on the main stage this Thursday. Because we were still finalizing the equipment deals, I only had the big lights hung above to light the test, plus a few small lights on the floor that Jim Mathers loaned us. I tested both the warm strong backlit effect and just the soft Kino overheads alone for a cloudy-day look. The set is somewhat stylized (and not quite finished being dressed here), so I have some flexibility to stylize the lighting, which is necessary anyway since I have to be creative with less, essentially. I took this Nikon still photo (this is not a RED frame) of Mark Polish in costume under just the overhead soft Kinos (this shows you the normal colors of the set):

 

 

I did a little post softening using my crude Photoshop Elements skills; it’s somewhat indicative of the general look we’re going for:

 

 

Sorry that the stills are so compressed-looking.

 

We looked at the RED test footage over at PlasterCity, in 2K projection in a D.I. theater. It looked great, I thought, though the conversion to Rec 709 for viewing caused some red channel noise to appear in the shadows if you weren't careful while color-correcting. The dynamic range was nice; it handled some bright backlighting I was doing. Seems better in that regards than any HD camera I've used so far. The resolution was great, even with the Classic Black diffusion. We also looked at some 3K slow-motion footage that seemed to match the 4K stuff pretty well.

 

Obviously this is not going to be a normal-looking movie so don't expect it to show-off just how sharp or richly-colored a RED image can be... maybe on the next RED movie that follows this one, I don't have that look locked down yet, but it's a contemporary story in real locations.

[Michael Nash]

Thanks for the notes David, and best of luck with the next project.

 

Keep us updated. I've been offered B-camera/2nd unit DP on an eight-week feature in Vancouver using the RED, so I'm interested in hearing about the quirks and limitations you encounter. I worked with Conrad a few years ago on a feature I gaffed and he was 1st AC.

[Kevin Zanit]

Welcome back David! With all this stage work you are going to need to work on your tan when its all said and done.

 

It sounds like a really cool show. When you were telling me about it I was wondering how you were going to light all these sets, then the food came and I forgot to ask you about it ;) the Kinos were a great idea.

 

Good luck with it all, I have no idea how you have the energy to do all these back to back, one hell of a mental exercise.

 

Kevin Zanit

[James Steven Beverly]

Really interesting. When you said "all brown", I was pretty skeptical, I mean a movie called Manure? with a color scheme of nothing but browns....quite frankly it sounded a little gross and somewhat in poor tastes....especially the brown food part, BUT after seeing the pics, I find it sort of mesmerizing in a way. The stylized look of the shots you took is really unlike anything I've ever seen before. I don't know why but for some reason the first thing I thought of was "One From the Heart" I guess because of the high stylization of the realistic. It's like looking into a world if it were in some other dimension or something. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this thing comes out.

[Guest]

Thanks for the notes David, and best of luck with the next project.

 

Keep us updated. I've been offered B-camera/2nd unit DP on an eight-week feature in Vancouver using the RED, so I'm interested in hearing about the quirks and limitations you encounter. I worked with Conrad a few years ago on a feature I gaffed and he was 1st AC.

 

Holy cow you guys keep coming to Canada, I guess my only option is to look for work in LA :blink:

 

R,

[Mitch Gross]

Looks pretty -- no need for Chocolate filters on the lens.

 

Good luck with using the RED One; i"m sure you'll make it sing. And if you need any hign speed footage I know the perfect companion camera...

[Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC]

Looks wicked david! I love the painterly style!

[Mike Williamson]

Looks great, David, I love the stills. I'm curious to hear your impressions of the Red camera as the shoot progresses and you finish the film, it will be interesting to get your take on it. Good luck!

[Tim O'Connor]

Wow, those are some amazing images. It looks like you're breaking new ground with this camera.

 

The tight budget has made a lot of things harder than they really should be, starting with lighting the sets. We have a huge day exterior set inside a soundstage, somewhat bigger than the backyard set in ?Big Love?. As a form of comparison, that set on ?Big Love? took three weeks of rigging to hang 150 spacelights, plus put up cyc lights, four Dinos, four 20K?s, four 9-lights, and a lot of sky pans. Well, everything I proposed to light this larger set was struck down as too expensive or too time-consuming, manpower-intensive to rig ? like hanging 250 spacelights. It was frustrating because it wasn?t my decision to make the space so big, I just was trying to light it for a daytime look. My demands were all reasonable, just beyond the budget, which had seriously underestimated the amount of lighting that all these sets would need. For example, we have a second soundstage with another day exterior set that is half the size of the large one. We ended up lighting the main stage with about 20 Kino Blanket Lights, plus lighting balloons along the perimeter to light the cyc. Since the RED prefers daylight-balance over tungsten, I decided, since I was not using spacelights anyway, to use daylight Kino tubes and HMI balloons. For my hard sunlight effects, I have tungsten 12-lights (for a warm sun effect) and 18K HMI?s hung near the corners of the set and some more 18K?s in the middle of the long stretch of the stage. The stage doesn?t really have greenbeds, just a few catwalks and a lot of ceiling beams & rafters, so my lights are hanging a bit lower than I wanted, limited by the rafters, cutting into the cyc painting area, to the dismay of the production designer. The balloons also cut into the top of the cyc a little ? but they were cheaper to get a deal on than hanging Lumapanels or more Kinos. But at least those would have been more flush to the ceiling.

 

 

I'm doing some calculating here and, being not one who works on bigger productions, I'm impressed at the scope of the equipment. I believe that spacelights typically are 6K (unless they have some lamps shut off.) Would you ever have all 150 spacelights on at once or is that rigged that way for shooting in different parts of the set?

 

If you had 150 spacelights on at once, that would be 900,000 watts? WOW! Plus, if you used some of the other lights, you'd have over a million watts?

 

 

When you rate the RED ONE at 320 ASA, do you find that it stays consistent to that speed throughout the spectrum of light levels and stops? I use way, way

less expensive cameras so it may be different but I find that even when a video (or digital cinema as people like to call it!) camera can be rated fairly reliably

at a given speed, it is often not consistently linear in its response like film stock across the whole range of stops and will often get "slower" at the more open end of the lens. I use my Spectra a lot but because I know that the cameras I use are going to vary in "speed" between the response to the light levels for an 8 as compared to a 2.8, I measure footcandles and find that a good way for me to work. Then at some point I'll go to the waveform monitor (on the occasions that I actually have the use of one) or else the good old zebras.

 

Good luck David and take care of yourself. You're working pretty hard!

[David Mullen ASC]

On "Big Love" we only had the spacelights rigged for three globes on. That gave me about an f/5.6 at 400 ASA, which I needed when I was inside looking out the windows and wanted an overexposed view. When I was actually shooting in the backyard, I had them dimmed to about an f/4.

[Tim O'Connor]

On "Big Love" we only had the spacelights rigged for three globes on. That gave me about an f/5.6 at 400 ASA, which I needed when I was inside looking out the windows and wanted an overexposed view. When I was actually shooting in the backyard, I had them dimmed to about an f/4.

 

 

Cool. When you dimmed them, did you actually bring them down with a lighting board or did you shut some off or do something else, as I imagine that

using a dimmer would lower the color temp.?

[David Mullen ASC]

Cool. When you dimmed them, did you actually bring them down with a lighting board or did you shut some off or do something else, as I imagine that

using a dimmer would lower the color temp.?

 

We usually dimmed them on a board. It didn't get too warm, every fifth spacelight was gelled with 1/2-CTB to give the sky a cool bias anyway. I sometimes shut off individual spacelights, though more the other way, at night, I'd turn on one of the blue-gelled ones for some soft top ambience.

[Brad Grimmett]

I'm about to do a feature on the Red as well as "B" camera/steadicam and 2nd Unit DP, so I'll be interested to hear how things go. The shooting conditions will be very different on my feature though. We're shooting in the Bahamas and doing a lot of water work. I'll be interested to see how the cameras handle the heat, humidity, sand, and water. We don't have the luxury of a backup body, so I really hope the cameras hold up well! If not, I guess I'll spend a lot of downtime drinking Mai Tai's on the beach while we wait for another camera to be shipped to us.

[Jayson Crothers]

Such a small world David - I was just on your set last Thursday. I was scouting Melody Ranch for an upcoming production and the person giving us the tour was showing us both your day exterior stage and a smaller stage where there was some furious building going on. I was speaking with your gaffer very briefly and he mentioned you were going to have 8 balloon lights to light the perimeter - looked like a blast.

 

I feel a bit dumb that I never thought to ask who the Cinematographer was. That'll teach me to get more sleep and drink less coffee. =)

 

I just finished a feature on the RED (hopefully I can get something on it posted soon with some stills) - you should have a great time with it; the 12-1 Optimo makes that little camera a beast!

 

Hope you have a great time with the shoot.

[Alex Worster]

It's interesting to hear that Red is getting a tried out on bigger things. I really look forward to seeing these films down the road to see what top notch talent can get out of these cameras. I've been ACing a 1 camera feature with one for the last couple weeks and we're on our 3rd body and 2nd hard drive. There has definitely been some down time while trouble shooting this camera. Not to sound like too much of a bummer Brad but it might be a good idea to have a 1st call up Red Tech Support and get to know one of their senior techs or make sure they have a good contact number for someone at the rental house the cameras are coming from just so if stuff starts going down your show can get good personalized service. For all the headaches the camera has caused me over the last couple weeks the Red techs have been very nice and helpful which definitely counts for something. Good luck to the both of you.

[Chris Cooke]

Hi David, I'm looking forward to seeing this film. You do great work with the Polish Brothers.

Are you concerned about multiple light reflections on reflective surfaces such as the car in the sample frame you showed us? I'm sure that a DI could solve that problem but it's probably not an ideal use of budget to go that route. Will you just let the lens diffusion soften these reflections?

[David Mullen ASC]

When possible, I will turn off a particularly obvious Kino reflected in the windshield, but otherwise, my choices are to plan on some digital removal in wide shots, and in close-ups, fly a sky painting over the car and light that to get a reflection in the glass of the painting. I thought about a big silk, but I realized that the sky should be brown, not white, to match the cyc.

[Guest Billy Furnett]

I like this a lot.

 

It feels like visual metaphor for ?The world isn?t as simple as black and white and shades of grey as shady as ever, its really all just bullshit we?re selling anyways?.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

"I thought about a big silk, but I realized that the sky should be brown, not white, to match the cyc."

 

How about a big unbleached muslin?

[Kevin Zanit]

"How about a big unbleached muslin?"

 

Could work, but would probably suck up too much light.

[Mitch Gross]

One could always tea-stain a silk to make it brown. I've seen this done with the rinse cycle of a wahing machine to distribute the color evenly.

[David Mullen ASC]

Since Monday was a holiday, we just finished a four-day first week.

 

We basically have three soundstages at Melody Ranch to work with. Stage C is taken up with the big farm landscape set. Stage B is filled with structures, wall to wall, from houses to motels to diners, sort of bumping into each other. Stage A is empty for now and will end up as our bluescreen set for shooting driving interiors. We are alternating between stages C and B more or less to give the art department a little time to swap out or alter sets on the opposite stage. It’s a relatively small crew and equipment package to handle all of these sets and movements between stages.

 

Because the RED prefers daylight-balance, I’ve been lighting all the day scenes with HMI’s, daylight Kinos, a Xenon, plus some tungsten lamps for a warm late afternoon color. It’s a little unusual to be lighting a soundstage shoot this way and while on the one hand, using HMI’s has given me more stop than I’m used to for stage work, the soundman isn’t necessarily happy to have a stage full of singing and buzzing lampheads and ballasts… not to mention the fan on the 2K Xenon whenever I use that. Doesn’t help that most of the interior sets have only partial to no ceilings. And because the RED has a pretty decent color HD monitor image on set, I’m seeing all the subtle color variations between HMI heads and Kino tubes on these hot sets. When everything is painted in shades of tan and brown, you can see any green creep into a light.

 

Speaking of working stop, most of the time I’ve been around an f/4, which is nice. The sharpness of the HD output of the RED combined with 35mm depth of field means -- like with the Genesis and other 35mm-sensor cameras -- everyone on set gets to see every focus mistake, so it’s very frustrating for the focus puller. I can see the focus, even at an f/4, on a close-up drift through different eyelashes, so I can definitely see when it is even an inch off. Which is good and bad, good in the sense I can catch mistakes when shooting and not later in post. Bad in that it makes life hell for the AC while shooting close-ups. The operator isn’t much help in these circumstances because the image on the onboard monitors and isn’t big enough to see these problems, not like I can see on the 17” HD monitors I have back at video village.

 

The RED ONE has behaved pretty well so far, though not problem-free. We lost time on Day One dealing with the battery swapping and constant powering down. It seemed after lighting these big sets with the camera on, so I could see an image, and then doing a rehearsal, the camera battery would die or begin to fade on Take One, requiring a time-consuming battery swap and rebooting. Plus our occasional B-camera suffered a bug that never went away, a tendency to not record when you hit the record button, or even shut itself down when you hit the record button. We had to switch to our C-camera, which seems to work fine, just as the A-camera does, and send the B-camera back for servicing. By Day Two, we seemed to have the timing of the battery swapping much better timed, and I rarely even noticed when they had to switch RED drives on the cameras after they shot thirty minutes or so of footage. But I can’t wait for our hot-swappable 2-battery rig that we purchased to show up. The camera really should have some sort of internal power that allowed you to swap batteries without powering down, not when it takes 90 seconds to reboot plus then rejam the slates.

 

Seeing an HD image on set is wonderful for me. And judging from how I’m lighting and exposing, the dynamic range is pretty decent actually, better than the F900 but not as good as film. But how it burns out is much more graceful and less artifacty than most HD cameras look when something clips. The live 720P debayered image does have some noise and pattern problems that’s not in the recordings. And looking at the RAW files, which have a somewhat flat and murky look before color-correction, the impression I get is that the camera really isn’t faster than 320 ASA; in other words, the sensor seems to like more exposure as long as you don’t go nuts with the clipping at the other end. It’s a little like film in that respect; giving the recording more shadow information helps lift low-end detail out of that murky noisy bottom. So I go back & forth everyday in regards to exposure. I use my light meter for a base reading and then adjust the f-stop based on the highlights, but I keep questioning whether to go up or down a little to either protect highlights or pull up the shadow detail above the noise floor. The AC’s are getting used to me changing my mind on the final f-stop by one-third of a stop all the time.

 

When shooting film, one aspect I have noticed is that it seems to constantly have buried areas of information in color and exposure that you can dig up or pull down when fiddling with the image in post. With digital, you see what you recorded when looking at the converted RAW files or a Log image, and there’s nothing there hidden, you see what you’ll have to work with in post. So on the one hand, you have greater control with digital images all through shooting and then in post, but on the other hand, you don’t have the same flexibility to work around mistakes as you do with film. Films constantly saves your butt, digital requires that you get things right more or less. But digital also allows this to happen because of how you can look at images on the set. However, when you are rushed, film does tend to give you the comfort factor of knowing that there’s stuff on the negative that can be played around with in post if you accidentally misexposed. This is mostly due to the greater dynamic range of film combined with a lack of data compression; as digital cameras get better in this regards, the more and more shooting digitally will be similar to shooting on film.

 

But I digress…

 

Day One was spent on Stage C shooting a montage of “Rose Manure” salesmen visiting different farms, and in one scene, discovering the invasion of the evil “Milagro Fertilizer” salesman. Many scenes were backlit with the tungsten 12-lights I had hung at the top of the backing, for a late afternoon look. The soft overhead fill came from the daylight Kino blanket lights. Sometimes the actors were deeper in the stage than the 12-lights could really reach, so I used a 5K Molebeam projector to backlight them and let the 12-lights backlight the ground beyond them. But since the sets actually touch the cyc painting, the transition from ground to sky always went a little dark, partially because I discovered that the more I burned out the sky backing, almost to the clip point, the more realistic the effect was, as if the sky were the brightest thing on stage (otherwise, the sky is painted in almost the same shade of brown as the sky.) So I ended up using HMI’s from off camera to try and punch up the sky. And by gelling the HMI’s, I could give the sky a warm bias if I wanted. Those HMI’s were flagged off of the bottom of the cyc, and I tried to rake the edges of the landscape with small PAR’s, but it was hard to not hit the cyc at the same time. I did the invasion scene without backlights for more of an overcast day look.

 

Day Two and Three was spent on Stage B shooting a montage of the Rose Manure salesmen now trying their hand at selling other products in suburbia. Then at the end of Day Three, we moved back to Stage C to shoot a small scene in a farmhouse kitchen set.

 

Day Four was on Stage C shooting a long sequence around one farmhouse, in front and then inside the house. I decided it might be interesting to play the sequence as starting in late afternoon and ending right after sunset when the characters re-emerge from the farmhouse. So the sky backing started out being lit with half-orange color and then full-orange for the sunset, plus I backlit the first part but went with only a soft glow from the sky on the ground for the last part, plus played the foreground darker against the sky by the end.

 

We’re using Zeiss Ultra Primes plus a few Optimo zooms on rare occasion (I’m not much of a fan of zooms.) Everything is composed for cropping the 2:1 4K image to 2.39. The final look will be quite diffused, though I’m using fairly light diffusion filters on the camera and planning on augmenting the effect in post. The wide shots are softened with only a Smoque #1. Then the medium wides are softened with a Classic Black #1/8, and the closer shots with a Classic Black #1/4, the most common filter we are using. For our leading actress, I’m sometimes using the Classic Black #1/2 to glamorize her a little more. I really like the look of the Classic Black filters, which is a #1/8 Black Frost mixed with whatever degree of Classic Soft you want. We’re using some smoke on our interior scenes. I want the overall effect to have something of a storybook quality, a warm fable of Americana.

 

The RED footage is being backed up to RAID’s in the production office and then backed up again at the post house (PlasterCity Digital), I believe to RAID’s and an LTO tape. So far, no problems, the footage seems to be traveling down the pipeline fine.

 

I’ve discovered that a RAW shooting and workflow process is different than both film and videotape. I guess that should be obvious, but it does have some advantages and disadvantages, just as film does and videotape does. Full daily 4K rendering just isn’t possible with large amounts of footage when shooting a feature, so we’re seeing the images at different levels of resolution and different qualities of debayering. On set, we see a temporary 720P image; editorial will get ProRes HD images. We’re also trying to get some DVD dailies made but the quality so far hasn’t been impressive, partly because you get used to looking at HD quality on the set. My main concern always is if I’m exposing properly and whether I should be altering my contrast ratios at all because I try to push myself to be more bold and striking with contrast when possible – the safe thing would be to just use a lot of soft light all the time.

 

Here are some Nikon snapshots I took, softened in Photoshop using a Gaussian Blur overlay.

 

The first shows the warm backlit field look:

 

This is the field lit for a hazy overcast look:

 

This is an interior scene where Mark Polish pretends to be a priest selling bibles to suburban housewives (the shaft of light is from a 2K Xenon):

 

This is the farmhouse kitchen interior scene:

 

Here is a wide shot of the farmhouse lit for late afternoon:

 

This is another scene with Billy Bob Thornton trying to sell vacuum cleaners to housewives (the shafts of light are from two HMI Source-4's -- the joke is that he dumps manure on her all-white carpet so I wanted the floor to really glow):

 

Here is a shot of the soundstage, showing the lights being used. Some of the Kino blanket lights overhead are turned off to kill the worst offending reflections in the car windshield, a major problem:

[David Regan]

Looks really interesting, very visually stylistic, I'm enjoying these stills. I particularly like the 3rd one down, it seems very painterly to me.

 

What final look are you going for with this film visually? I'm curious because it seems on the one hand to be very soft with the diffusion you are using, it all has this very brushstroke painterly feel, especially with the backdrop. Yet on the other hand, it has some very harsh, direct lighting, with the Xenon shafts of light beating into the house. I guess I've just never thought about combining two seemingly opposed visual styles, but it certainly seems to be working.

 

Also, I'm interested with working with a backdrop. I take it from your post you can manipulate the color of the sky and brightness by lighting it the actual cyc, how much latitude do you really have in changing the 'look' of the background, or is it pretty subtle? It just seems interesting to me, that you are lighting something that is pretending to be the light source.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, if you are going for a diffused look, you often want something crisp in the frame so that the eye still feels that the image is sharp. A very soft-lit image that is also diffused can end up looking mushy if you don't have enough contrast in the frame.

 

Here are some RED frames (reduced, compressed unfortunately) and some quickie corrections I did in Photoshop to the RED frames:

 

 

 

 

 

I realize my Photoshop diffusing is somewhat over-the-top, and doesn't reduce and compress well for website forums, but it creates the mood I want. I'm using mild lens diffusion so I have options in post for how much further to take things.

[David Regan]

Well, if you are going for a diffused look, you often want something crisp in the frame so that the eye still feels that the image is sharp. A very soft-lit image that is also diffused can end up looking mushy if you don't have enough contrast in the frame.

 

Valuable information thanks for that!

 

Stills look great, I really like the shot of the two men in the kitchen. Thanks for the detailed updates.