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The Love Witch


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Also, since it turns out that getting black leader for A-B rolls has gotten very expensive (you basically have to make it, which means burning through some film stock)

 

It wouldn't have to be fresh stock tho. Even short ends would do surely?

Edited by Freya Black
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I'm shooting most of the movie on the slowest speed tungsten stock available, Kodak Vision-3 200T, rated at 100 ASA in order to get the printer lights up higher for more saturation and contrast. This means I need to get up to 100 foot-candles of key light just to achieve an f/2.8. For day interiors scenes on stage, that's a lot of light and a lot of heat.

 

We are using mostly Zeiss Super-Speeds and I'm averaging near an f/2.8 for everything inside. For a couple of interior locations where I have to balance to daylight and don't have enough light to use an 85 filter (and thus end up with an effective 64 ASA), I'm switching to Vision-3 250D rated at 125 ASA. With HMI lighting, I can get to an f/4 a little easier but it's easier to do this old school hard lighting style with the tungsten fresnels.

 

I'm finding that I need to use a direct 2K (Mole-Richardson stage Junior) at full flood about 15'-20' away or so to get an f/2.8 key, for closer work, a 1K or 650w Tweenie is bright enough, again, all direct.

 

 

I might have missed this, but was there any consideration of using carbon arcs for the daylight scenes?

I believe Mole Richardson keeps their 20A and 225A lamps available. The 225A Brute Arc, with 10,000fc available on flood at 10-feet; surely that's enough to light 100ASA at 2.8, no? And since 100 fc is the recommendation, you've got plenty to play with!

 

Of course being in California, I'm sure there's some regulation about how properly plumbed the chimney for the arc is and it would cost another electrician to operate... there are drawbacks.

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Are you certain that no manufacturer Is making or can make the graphite rods? Wasn't that long ago that Mole ran a training class on the arc lights. Several "carbon" companies I know of that serve the EDM industry will made a carbon brush, block or rod to your specs.

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With such a small crew, I think an arc with a dedicated electrician would have been difficult to manage though if I had a daylight location where I thought that classic arc sunlight effect through windows would have been useful, I might have tried it -- my gaffer Keith Morgan knows an electrician here in Los Angeles that collects arcs.

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Red already makes a monochrome version of the Epic with the MX sensor and I assume was is now available for the Weapon Dragon. Basically you remove the Bayer color filter array -- all sensors are fundamentally monochrome. ARRI also offers a version of the Alexa like this, as well as one that is infrared sensitive (i.e. also remove the IR filter as well as the Bayer filter...) These are all low-sales items.

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David, what in escence is the film? I'm guessing that you have a sense of this by now. Though the images posted are really interesting and express some craft, it would be nice to be able to better understand them, in context.

 

Without context, I don't get why the ugly/beautiful thing expressed in these images is tolerable. With context, it may become an exhalted thing.

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David, sorry, I don't mean to diminish what you are doing. There were two things....

- Some context or wholistic sense of what these images were a part of.

- The thought that an image could be ugly and beautiful at the same time.

 

If you genuinely don't get me with the second one, or dissagree with the way I express that, just forget about it, but the the first thing is usefull, yes?

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David, let's just set aside the defensive feeling you (Anna etc) might momentarily have, and look for the ineresting ideas that the moment may yield.

Consider the image you offered.

 

 

 

lovewitch4.jpg

 

Almost every element in this image expressesss a conflict between the attractive and the repulsive. Let's focus on the fool. By nature, by virtue of expectation, culture, he is a figure loaded with expectation and meaning. Distracting, amusing, provocative and potentially, knowing, or enlightened. The fool is always, potentially, a very disturbing figuire. My guess is that Anna knows that well. My guess is that you do too.

If it makes it easier, what does the fool character mean to you, right now, without reading, internet searching etc. In as few words as possible.

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It's a horror movie with at least some influences from British folk horror.

If you check the thread I asked about this a while back.

This may explain the horror influences. I don't get quite what you mean by ugly though.

Ugly can be one of those weird value judgement type things.

I often find myself thinking that the latest digitally shot thing that people are excited about and oohing and ahing over looks like complete sh**.

It's really an issue for me as it makes me realise that my own tastes seem to be wildly different to that of a lot of cinematographers.

Some of that might be down to my not really every having access to blu-ray and other high def technologies where perhaps this stuf makes more sense.

 

However the shots here are some of the most amazing and beautiful cinematography I have seen in a long time.

There are a few things i might have done differently but really not much.

If you don't like the way the images look as opposed to what is depicted in them then I am a bit lost as to where you are coming from!

 

Freya

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I'm actually curious where you are coming from Greg as like I say, I have the same issue in a different context and find it interesting if you really don't like the images as for me it is some of the best stuff I have seen in a very long time and my only concern is about the amount of pain some of the people involved have gone through in order to pull this off.

I find it fascinating that someone else might not like it!

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It's a horror movie with at least some influences from British folk horror.....

However the shots here are some of the most amazing and beautiful cinematography I have seen in a long time.....

If you don't like the way the images look as opposed to what is depicted in them then I am a bit lost as to where you are coming from!

 

I had looked through before for some sense of what the film was about. I noticed that they looked at some horror films as research for the photography, but I didn't get that it was a horror film.

 

Anyway, if it is a horror film, or exploiting that genre to create something more interesting, that's maybe explanation enough for me.

 

I think like/dislike is being a bit too simple. My response was conflicted. When I say (#88) that the very things that disturbed me, may with context become an exhalted thing, it's a very high complement.

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You could call this a feminist horror film I guess, though in some ways, many horror films have feministic themes in them, often the best have female heroines and have elements going back before the Grimm Brothers. Though the horror element is not a major element of this narrative, it comes and goes. The movie is also an exploration of male-female models, courtship rituals, and expectations and how that can lead to, let's say, psychosis in the main character. Witchcraft plays an important element; one of the films we watched was "Season of the Witch" (1973) by George A. Romero, which on the surface seems like a horror-thriller but is mostly a suburban psychological drama. In some ways, the "old fashioned" style allows the film to explore more traditional male-female role conflicts more directly in the same way that "Mad Men", let's say, explored them, but in this case with a degree of ironic detachment due to the stylized nature of the acting, production, etc.

 

It's a little like doing a MGM-style musical, which is often a non-realistic way of telling a love story.

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I just yesterday saw this on your credits on IMDb and
really wondered how come David hasn't posted anything about it yet.
Usually you always write something about every project you are on.

 

Then i looked it up via the search.


I am amazed at the old-schoolness of it. Great looking. :)

Now by re-watching the trailer on YT, i feel the cheesiness of it all.
I mean that in the most positive way.

Tarantino should hire you and you do some new Grindhouse or
other wicked movie reflecting that hard lit era. :)

 

Best

 

Igor

Edited by Igor Trajkovski
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You could call this a feminist horror film I guess,....

Witchcraft plays an important element....

...ironic detachment due to the stylized nature

 

 

Just before you sent this I looked at the trailer. Irony, or, say, signs flipped to their opposite value. Yes, the detachment. The moving pictures do seem quite denatured compared to the extracted stills. Nothing to do with the reduced contrast. I'm thinking of their experiential impact.

 

In comparison, the stills really have some heft. This one image alone, the tableaux with the fool in the forground...a lifetime of creative possibilities infered in the one frame. So, I wondered, when that frame of film froze in the gate for a fraction of a second, and your eye was jamed on the viewfinder, what were you actually thinking about.....

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  • 3 weeks later...

All I can say is that I tried very hard to not apply modern aesthetic sensibilities and to put myself back in the mindset of someone making a movie in the 1960's.

You clearly succeeded. Seeing your stills and the trailer have made me smile every time. it's perfect

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