Daniel Mindel - Lens Flares

[Matthew Cruz]

Hi,

 

I'm new to this board. I'm currently a film student at USC and was curious about Mindel's use of lens flares in a number of his works. However, I'm realizing he usually only employs them when working with J.J. Abrams (and they are fleeting moments, difficult to capture in a single frame).

 

 

In the new Star Trek film:

 

 

 

In Mission Impossible: III:

 

 

This one is harder to see, look top right.

 

My question: Is there a way to get this effect on a low budget? I'm not even sure how Mindel achieves these brief lens flares, but I really love the effect. I'd love any tips anyone can offer. Thanks in advance.

[Kevin Zanit]

Looks like anamorphic flares to me, try a search on this forum as it has been talked about a ton in the past.

 

Kevin Zanit

[Josh Silfen]

There are some filters designed to produce the anamorphic lens flare effect, but I don't know where you could find them to rent. I wanted to use them once on a film that I wanted to shoot in 2-perf, but we ended up shooting Super 16 instead, so I never investigated them further.

 

http://www.vantagefilm.com/en/news/news_2005-09_01.shtml

[Christopher Arata]

His flares are probably coming from the use of anamorphic lenses....On a lower budget you can rent 4x5 streak filters, many lower budgeted music videos use them and can be found at rental houses around LA. They are far & few between however and mostly checked out all the time so they might be hard to get. Call around to different camera houses or give Tiffen a call. They come in different mm to so you can get the size streak that you want. You can also do it in post, it doesn't always look that great though & I would not recommend it.

[Gus Sacks]

Apparently they had crew on either side of the action with high-powered flashlights going right into anamorphic lenses.

[Karel Bata]

Apparently they had crew on either side of the action with high-powered flashlights going right into anamorphic lenses.

You have to be kidding! :D

 

I would have thought it was done in post - there are some excellent tools available.

[Phil Rhodes]

Better done by hand, I think:

 

 

This is of course completely unsubtle, it's a corporate presentation, but you can get pretty much any effect you happen to find amusing by playing around in After Effects.

 

You can also tie various properties of the flare to some random artifact in frame, which produces a result that seems convincingly tied to camera orientation with respect to the light source.

P

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I was at a 600 screening of Star Trek and Daniel and his Gaffer were there. He explained to me that the Primos were hard to flare and they did lots of experimenting to get the right effect. I believe he mentioned they used a 60mm (i could be wrong on that length) that he said was easy to flare and it looked interesting. Lots of the flares come from small bright LED lights built into the set and aimed at the lens others were made by various hand held lights just out of the frame.

[Steve McBride]

Pick up the American Cinematographer issue with Start Trek on the cover, he talks all about it. It was a combination of having lights built into the set like Lamar said as well as having people run around the set pointing high powered flashlights down the barrel of the lens.

 

Not all of the flares in the movie were done during production though, some were added in post.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

You have to be kidding! :D

 

It's in last month's AC Mag