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Big Sur


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By the end of the day, we got back to Bixby Bridge for a dusk-for-night shot, but we managed to get this other scene where Jack gets picked-up by a truck near sunset (any banding around the sun is due to my Photoshop files, not in the original). I was happy that we managed to grab this shot so quickly:

bigsur48.jpg

 

Even the tighter B-camera shot on the 135mm Ultra Prime turned out pretty well for a last-minute set-up:

bigsur49.jpg

 

We shot until the last bit of magic hour for this shot. I added some stars quickly in Photoshop. It was too windy to raise any sort of lights to shoot this night for night, plus there are too many restrictions on pointing lights at drivers along Highway One, so it had to be done at dusk for night:

bigsur50.jpg

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The end of the next day, when we got to Nepenthe restaurant to shoot a dusk shot of the group (otherwise the landscape behind them would have been black):

bigsur51.jpg

 

Then we got back to Anderson Canyon and lit this wide master:

bigsur52.jpg

 

In general, I've only been posting the wide shots.

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Some frames from the second to last day, the last day with the full cast, at the beach under Rocky Point Bridge. The first and second shots show why we picked Rocky Point Bridge instead of Bixby Bridge for the scenes underneath, even though Bixby Bridge is slightly bigger/longer -- first, you can see the Rocky Point Bridge from a distance as you walk up (Bixby Canyon is choked by trees and brush right up to the ocean), and second, there's some actual beach area to walk around (and you can drive up to within 100 yards of the ocean, not hike in for 20 minutes as with Bixby Canyon):

 

bigsur53.jpg

 

bigsur54.jpg

 

That last shot was done just before we broke for lunch at 4:30PM -- when we got back, we finally got some moody weather, which was great for this scene where Jack is thinking some dark thoughts:

 

bigsur55.jpg

 

Only trouble was that now we had freezing winds to put up with...

 

We ended the day on the beach for a bonfire scene -- you can see how strong the wind is from the way the bonfire looks:

bigsur56.jpg

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can you describe your lighting set up on that last beach set up.

 

There was an 18K HMI on the top of the cliff in the background with two doubles in it (I could have probably gotten away with a 4K HMI but I didn't know how far it would be). I took a 1.2K HMI way off on the right side of frame and raked the wall of the cliff so it wouldn't go black. The people are lit by the real fire. There is some fill from 4' 4-bank daylight Kinos near camera.

 

I had two orange-gelled 1K Woodylights off camera left, not to light the people, but pointed towards the camera in case one of the actors walked all the way to the foreground, so they would have an orange edge-light on them. But they never did so those orang lights weren't really doing anything in this shot.

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From the end of the final day, doing some shots of Jack walking in the woods... The backlight looks almost like it is right above him, but it was actually an 18K HMI very far away on the roadway above the canyon, so the shadows it created through the tree branches were quite sharp. We had a lantern rigged with a quartz globe, I think 200w, run off a power drill battery hidden in his rucksack (you can see the zip cord going from the rucksack to the lamp along his arm if you look for it..) The real railroad lantern was abysmally dim, like a child's flashlight bulb in it, so it wasn't really usable.

 

bigsur59.jpg

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Keep in mind this is cropped, reduced, and highly compressed as a JPEG by me for this post, but here is an example of a frame pulled by Dane with our basic desaturation applied:

bigsur16.jpg

 

The interior was just lit with a 800w Joker bounce off of the ceiling, otherwise, it's mostly available light. You can see how much the Epic is holding detail in both the interior and the exterior, and this was shot with HDRx on, so in post, I'll have even more overexposure detail to play with than what this frame shows. But it demonstrates how good the dynamic range of the camera is.

 

David,

 

These posts of yours are incredible! Thanks for the wealth of information and the incredible

photos. Love the backlit shot of the actor playing Kerouc seated at the bar in daylight.

 

It goes without saying that you are giving away too many of your secrets. :) Hope you compile

all of these posts into a book - you deserve to be compensated twice for your hard work.

 

Watching Norfolk again for some inspiration, by the way - so this is a real treat!

 

I'm not sure you have any idea how many of us are looking forward to seeing your film when it is

released.

 

 

-Jerry Murrel

Little Rock

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:) Hope you compile

all of these posts into a book

 

It's not a bad idea. I mean, you’ve been writing these things for a long time. All that practical/technical information chronicling all these films (coupled with all these pictures) would be a great read. I’d buy it, as any film student probably would.

 

This stuff tends to disappear in old posts on the internet. In a book, students could read them over and over, year after year.

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Dang, I wish I had known you where working with Henry Thomas on this, I would of sent you my ET poster for him to sign :)

 

Would you mind explaining your exact lighting instruments for the moon lit shot in post #52?

 

Thanks

R,

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The main problem with lighting the woods is that trees can quickly bloke up your far-off moonlight source. So basically I had to use a couple of units separated by a few feet to get through gaps between trees. At the top of the frame, up a steep hill, we managed to get one 4K HMI and two 1.2K HMI PAR's. I think it's the 4K that managed to get through and light the main area where the two guys are standing, and the two other 1.2K HMI's hit the river further in the background. Up the hill on the left side, off-camera, was an Image-80 Kino, and up the hill on the right side was a 4-bank Kino, all daylight. Then in the foreground, behind camera, was a 4-bank Kino that was flagged a bit off of the foreground tree trunk.

 

Way, way in the background, down the canyon and then up the access road that came down into the canyon, I built two levels of parallels and put a 12K HMI PAR on it... but after we struggled to get it up there and turned on (it was acting up), it turned out that, despite being up the next hill, it was still downhill of where we were shooting, and it was so far away and so blocked by trees that all it did was put a tiny glow in the top middle-left corner of the frame -- in truth, if it hadn't been for all the trees, the unit would have been in the shot anyway. But with the smoke, it did create a bit of separation in that small area. But it wasn't worth the effort. I had hoped with it being way down the canyon, it would have created more depth but it's really hard at night to judge distance and to see where the trees are that are blocking the light.

 

bigsur52.jpg

 

Funny thing is that way back where the 12K HMI was on the parallels, just above it, was Highway One -- a bridge was built over this canyon. It would have been great to use the highway bridge to light the back end of the canyon from, but that wasn't possible without closing the highway since the bridge had no space on the sides to pull over. Trouble with the Big Sur coastline is that it is basically a one road area, Highway One runs north-south with almost no east-west roads crossing it.

 

Here's a brighter, uncropped frame that makes the lighting more visible (ignore all the jpeg compression artifacts, they aren't in the original):

bigsur61.jpg

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I just wanted to say I really appreciate these production diaries. They are pure gold! I am a strong believer in that generosity pays it self back multiple times over, so I think you'll benefit as much as we do from your efforts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks so much David. It's going to be a joy to see this film.

 

Quick question: Do you rely on the cameras internal exposure tools, like false color, which I'm not even sure that the Epic has.

From looking at your images, I imagine that the contrast has been upped a bit and the blacks crushed? Is that the case? Would love to see some raw images.

Also, I see that you vary your ISO quite a bit depending on your setting, I never went further than 800 with the MX, how is the camera's noise at 1200, 1600 ISO and do you use a light meter? in other words, do you set your lights and stop according to your meter readings at any given ISO?

 

Thanks again, sharing your knowledge is such a blessing for all of us.

 

Francisco

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I used the histogram and traffic lights to check for clipping.

 

Yes, the frame grabs had a gamma added and were further crushed by my attempts to add a blur overlay in Photoshop to glow things.

 

I used my meter only to rough in lights, or to decide how much ND I might need outdoors (or what ASA to use.) Never to set exposure.

 

Noise was acceptable at 1600 ASA, even 2000 ASA, but what's acceptable is a matter of personal taste. Since you are underexposing the sensor, you have to be more accurate with your exposures when working at a high ASA rating.

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David, thanks again for sharing all of this with us. I just had a question about one of your explanations of a lighting set-up: what is a "raking edge" light? The term sounds like a light that's specifically used to give dimension to a given surface, but I'm not quite sure...

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Some frames from our little pick-up shoot. We shot in an abandoned hospital in Boyle Heights for a dream sequence where Jack Kerouac imagines a community of "Vulturemen" and sees an image of the Cross. I basically had three lights (1.2K HMI PAR, Source-4 HMI, and a Kinoflo) and we used house power, and a lot of available light as well. We used a Red One, 4K 2:1, recorded to CF cards. 800 ASA to 1600 ASA, 3600K setting, 50% desaturation. I mostly alternated between a 16mm UltraPrime and my Lensbaby (which is like a 50mm). I used a #1/4 Double Fog filter -- and I sprinkled some water on the filter before every take, flicked it on with my fingers. Most of the shots were handheld, making it difficult for me to walk around, operate, AND pull-focus myself on the Lensbaby, which requires squeezing the lens forward and back to focus, but since it is an entirely creative act of playing with focus, it's hard to leave it up to someone else.

 

The RAW files show more highlight detail but I was aiming for a lot of blown-out detail and added a lot of contrast to the stills, plus additional diffusion:

 

bigsur69.jpg

 

bigsur70.jpg

 

bigsur71.jpg

 

bigsur72.jpg

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nice frames David, I like the results of the lens baby.

quick question:

What compression rate did you use on the Epic

also, if you were going for a gritty look, would you increase ASA to say, 1200 or 1600 or would you prefer to stay at 800 and underexpose the sensor, I guess in a way you are under exposing either way, I'm just curious about your approach

maybe do noise increase in post?

 

this movie I'm doing, we want it gritty and dirty, like Pietro's work with Iñarritu

 

Thanks

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  • 3 weeks later...
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David, any idea what hazer/smoker unit(s) were used? From some of your previous posts, it seems you often work with an oil based unit like a DF50 - is this also what was used out in the woods?

 

Almost all of our San Francisco locations said no oil-based hazers but after a week of having problems keeping the haze even and consistent, we started sneaking in some DF50 stuff, which helped tremendously... in Big Sur, the cabin interior used the DF50 but the cabin was full of holes so it leaked out everywhere. The exteriors used a mix, mainly these sort of miniature handheld versions of an Igeba-type fogger that our prop man created. We generally had two going, plus if we had electrical power, the DF50.

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  • 7 months later...

I liked doing that because it seemed sort of old-fashioned. The low fill on Jack's face was from a Rosco Lightpad hidden behind the seat.

 

What size Lightpad were you using? For that matter, what size Lightpad do you find yourself most going for? Something bigger like a 12" x 12" for fill or something smaller like a 3" x 6" for an eyelight?

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