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Makeup Forever BTS shoot: HD Un-Retouched Contest


Kahleem Poole

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Kodak is near its death and someone needs to blame someone. The main culprit: digital imaging. Even more so, digital cinema of today. This being images taken from the Alexa, Red, Sony cameras, DSLRs, the list goes on. The further the advancement of these cameras that push to exceed film, the worse off it gets for film stock lovers.

 

Cinematography and photography doesn’t have everything to do with whether film is alive or dead as a medium. It can be achieved just as skillfully, artistically and thoughtfully through a digital sensor as it can through 500T stock. The idea of “…do it in post…” is an ideal from today’s quick fix type of thinking I would have to guess. Not necessarily the result of film going bye-bye. It’s the same with music, movies, games, everything today. But, that’s for another story.

 

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Visually, my main influences for this docu film were from David Fincher and Jeff Cronenweth ASC’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and "The Social Network". Apparently I’ve been attracted to Fincher’s films for quite awhile now and didn’t even realize it was greatly due to the image work.

 

I have more on this story here for those interested :)

http://kahlworks.wordpress.com/blog/photoshoot-bts-un-graded-un-cced/

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Kodak is near its death and someone needs to blame someone. The main culprit: digital imaging. Even more so, digital cinema of today. This being images taken from the Alexa, Red, Sony cameras, DSLRs, the list goes on. The further the advancement of these cameras that push to exceed film, the worse off it gets for film stock lovers.

 

It's a popular meme for sure, but actually the motion picture side of Kodak is the bit that's still profitable. Kodaks big problem has been the demise of mass market consumable still film. Hence the desperation to get into another consumables business like ink jet printer paper. Well to be exact Kodaks big problem is that it is just really badly run. It's not like there hasn't been any warning of the situation! They are making the wrong decisions tho.

 

 

Cinematography and photography doesn’t have everything to do with whether film is alive or dead as a medium. It can be achieved just as skillfully, artistically and thoughtfully through a digital sensor as it can through 500T stock. The idea of “…do it in post…” is an ideal from today’s quick fix type of thinking I would have to guess. Not necessarily the result of film going bye-bye. It’s the same with music, movies, games, everything today. But, that’s for another story.

 

I think your posting is strange because this isn't exactly massive news. You can use cinematography techniques on a mini-dv camera or an iphone or an Alexa or whatever. You will note this is a cinematography board and there are loads of sections devoted to digital cameras. Maybe cinema as we know it is dead and we are seeing something new coming to take it's place but the techniques and craft of cinematography will remain at least in certain parts of the moving image sector.

 

As to your video, I've not had the chance to watch it as I have restricted broadband access during the day, however I would love to know your thinking behind shooting it on the RED MX. Surely the whole point of the Red series of cameras is that they give you a lot of power to grade the image in post, the image that comes out of the camera by default is very nasty but that isn't the point of the camera. I'm wondering tho, why you would chose such a camera for a competition where you cannot grade or colour correct the image in any way? Wouldn't you have just been better using an eos or something? Was it just what you had to hand? It seems like it would be the camera worst suited to the job? Maybe I have misunderstood something in your description.

 

Anyway there it is! :)

 

love

 

Freya

Edited by Freya Black
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Oh man, I think I gave an odd impression here.

So the first issue that helped inspire this piece wasn't in debating on Kodak's death. It's just a part of the larger picture. The issue that helped inspire this was in a debate that someone brought up claiming that cinematography was "dead" or "dying" due to Kodak's/film's impeding doom.

 

The second issue that caused the inspiration was from the "do it in post" attitude, and it allegedly being directly connected to digital photography every time. Which isn't necessarily the case in my experience since I know plenty of people shooting film who boast the exact same attitude.

 

So that brings on this film, which just so happened to coincide with the photoshoot's theme: creating unedited images.

The side of my argument at the time was that cinematography isn't limited to what medium you shoot on, but in your creative vision and skill behind it.

 

The rest is history :)

 

Hope that cleared things up a bit.

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Yes that is partially true, but you want to do the story or subject justice in picking a format that not only suits what you're saying, but technically holds up enough to just subconsciously work for the bigger picture. If it's a budget matter, then that's an entirely different limitation, you just have to work with what you can get. But I certainly don't think film is dead just yet, it is still an incredible format and the fix it in post has very little to do with digital. They've been shooting film for perhaps 10 years and heavily fixing everything in post, to the extent on big pictures where so much of the photographic work is done in plates and second unit which in my opinion can be quite unfulfilling. It's the whole shoot now, decide later thing.

 

I watched that clip and I didn't really get it, not sure how this competition expects to judge makeup over images that can never be exactly true to the eye. Cinestyle certainly doesn't look like reality either. I think they should keep the makeup judging to in person if they want it untouched.

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Yes that is partially true, but you want to do the story or subject justice in picking a format that not only suits what you're saying, but technically holds up enough to just subconsciously work for the bigger picture. If it's a budget matter, then that's an entirely different limitation, you just have to work with what you can get. But I certainly don't think film is dead just yet, it is still an incredible format and the fix it in post has very little to do with digital. They've been shooting film for perhaps 10 years and heavily fixing everything in post, to the extent on big pictures where so much of the photographic work is done in plates and second unit which in my opinion can be quite unfulfilling. It's the whole shoot now, decide later thing.

 

I watched that clip and I didn't really get it, not sure how this competition expects to judge makeup over images that can never be exactly true to the eye. Cinestyle certainly doesn't look like reality either. I think they should keep the makeup judging to in person if they want it untouched.

 

I agree with you completely that the story and vision beforehand should judge the filming medium. 100%. It just seems difficult for people to understand the difference between photography being what it is regardless of the changing times. I've heard a lot of horror stories of entire photography businesses dying off due to things going digital. It always made me wonder, were they really based around the artform itself, or just the tech behind it all? I would think that had it been the former, adaptation would've come along and the businesses may have thrived instead of fallen by the wayside. But, what do I know :-/

 

As far as the Cinestyle, I stuck to that keep all of the detail in check, which I feel I was successful in [mostly]. I exposed everything according to the room and light's actual color (I think I rarely stopped down beyond f/2.8 and remained at 640iso all the way through), keeping the white balanced matched to the room's own temperature with practicals and setup lighting. So from what we have, it was indeed close to the reality of those moments.

 

And, I agree with the makeup notion as well. But, they're the judges, so I'm hoping they have better judgment in that area than I normally would.

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cinestyle looks terrible untouched, its designed to be used for a post workflow. i wouldnt have used that knowing i wasnt doing post. digital is not film, if you want the most control of digital images you shoot raw and do post, using anything else is just letting the camera decide the post-processing itself imo. every digital image goes through a post-process wether you do it or not.

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