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Recreating the late 1930's.


Oliver Chopping

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Hi all, 

I hope everyone is well in these bizarre Covid times.

Firstly, as this is my first post, I'd like to say a brief hello, as I am just a beginner It's great to be able to converse with such knowledgeable minds on these subjects. I am about to embark on my first feature film over here in France next year & I'd like some help & advice if at all possible. 

We are shooting a pre-war comedy, set mostly in France in 1939 (no it's not Allo Allo to my UK friends!) As the creator & director my aim is to replicate, as close as possible, that particular era of film (primarily in B&W) however there are sections of the film that are flashbacks in glorious technicolour (recreating an Erroll Flynn Robin Hood type film look) as our flick is about the movie business in the late thirties. 

Now, if I have the financial means to shoot color film in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio at 22 frames per second & then convert it to black & white (like my hero Guillaume Schiffman ) then deep joy! I probably would have to sell the house & a kidney but it will be worth it. 

If shooting on film is simply a non runner budget wise (& I'm desperate for that not to happen) can anyone assist in possible less costly alternatives that match the grain/lovely grey tones you get shooting with 500 ISO for example? Everything needs to look/sound as authentic as we can get it. The comedic dialogue is very modern day so the juxtaposition with photography of that period is what I'm after if that makes sense?

Please excuse my niaevity on the subject. Most of my life has been spent infront of the camera or on stage as a luvvy (yep, one of them) but the tights have been hung up & it's onwards with the proper/real work now!

Thanks in advance for anyone who can offer advice of any kind. 

Warm regards,

Oli 

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15 hours ago, Oliver Chopping said:

Everything needs to look/sound as authentic as we can get it.

Why then 22 frames per second? Films were shot at 24.

1:1.37(5) is not a final aspect ratio. The regular screen was and is 4 to 3 or 1:1.333. 1:1.375 is the AMPAS camera aperture (rounded).

500 ISO is also wrong, max. film sensitivy in 1939 was ASA 125 (Eastman Super-XX negative).

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6 hours ago, Simon Wyss said:

Why then 22 frames per second? Films were shot at 24.

1:1.37(5) is not a final aspect ratio. The regular screen was and is 4 to 3 or 1:1.333. 1:1.375 is the AMPAS camera aperture (rounded).

500 ISO is also wrong, max. film sensitivy in 1939 was ASA 125 (Eastman Super-XX negative).

Simon many thanks for your reply to my post. That's all incredibly useful information for me & yes you're absolutely right about the frame rate as was pointed out to me by David Mullen yesterday also.

I have forwarded this to my cinematographer here in France & once again I really appreciate your time & help.

Best,

Oliver 

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With modern grading tools you are mainly after the grain texture which fits the style perfectly with the gamma and contrast adjustments you are going to use. Ideally you would do some film tests and grade them to see how the texture behaves and what to do to alter it to suit your needs.

So shoot some film tests with your cinematographer to find the correct look you are after and then design a workflow how it can be done for the whole movie with the available budget. 

Don't forget that you can push and pull process all films to alter the texture if needed. And always shoot a one minute take of plain middle gray to get a clean grain plate which you can use to add real film texture over digital footage if needed.

You may for example shoot a grain plate of 5219 pushed two stops and then convert the plate to black and white and add it over the digital shots to get the desired texture to them. It may very well be that you may want a different texture than your planned shooting format will be and will need to make arrangements for this ( I for example like to underexpose the 16mm 7219 and push it a lot to emulate 8mm look but still be able to shoot with better and more stable camera)

If needed you could even get a self developed stills stock texture this way to the digital footage (for example the same texture which you would get if shooting Fomapan 400 stills stock with a 35mm Konvas)

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The grain is important but also the easiest thing to do, 90% of that 1939 b&w look comes from what’s in front of the camera, from lighting to production designing, staging, lens choice, composition... followed by editing style, music, sound. You have to put yourself in the mindset of a filmmaker back then, what their aesthetic values were, what their restrictions were. It helps to pick a few movies from the era to match to. And if you’re not going to do stage work nor process shots, which was common back then due to the difficulty of recording sound on location, you should find a movie made back then that had minimal stage work to model.

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One of the big problems with recreating a soundstage shoot of the period is getting authentic props, like the types of lights used. You’re basically art directing the movie and the movie within the movie.

No trailer yet but there are some stills out from “Mank” about the making of “Citizen Kane”, shot on a Red Monochrome camera.

https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/netflix-shares-first-look-at-david-finchers-mank-photos.html

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5 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

One of the big problems with recreating a soundstage shoot of the period is getting authentic props, like the types of lights used. You’re basically art directing the movie and the movie within the movie.

No trailer yet but there are some stills out from “Mank” about the making of “Citizen Kane”, shot on a Red Monochrome camera.

https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/netflix-shares-first-look-at-david-finchers-mank-photos.html

Thanks once again David, all incredibly useful help for me. I agree with you 100 % with regards to putting myself in that particular mindset of a filmmaker from that era & that is absolutely how I am approaching the project aesthetically. The two main movies I'm currently referencing are His Girl Friday & (albeit slightly earlier) Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. That's generally the kind of feel I am aiming to replicate somehow. We have many tests ahead of us, using older lenses to play with depth of field, lighting being incredibly important as I need to use the correct period lighting/ techniques as they will be used on screen in the movie within the movie. Testing the costumes with regards to how effective hard/soft colours work & everything has to function seamlessly! It should be easy right?!! My cinematographer has aged terribly already poor chap. 

Thanks for the link to Finchers "Mank" also I'm very much looking forward to seeing it & judging by a couple of the images I've selected below it looks fantastic. My old RADA colleague Tom Burke is playing Orson Welles by the way!

Warm regards,

Oli

images (1).jpeg

Screen-Shot-2020-06-12-at-11.29.45-AM.png

Edited by Oliver Chopping
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11 hours ago, aapo lettinen said:

With modern grading tools you are mainly after the grain texture which fits the style perfectly with the gamma and contrast adjustments you are going to use. Ideally you would do some film tests and grade them to see how the texture behaves and what to do to alter it to suit your needs.

So shoot some film tests with your cinematographer to find the correct look you are after and then design a workflow how it can be done for the whole movie with the available budget. 

Don't forget that you can push and pull process all films to alter the texture if needed. And always shoot a one minute take of plain middle gray to get a clean grain plate which you can use to add real film texture over digital footage if needed.

You may for example shoot a grain plate of 5219 pushed two stops and then convert the plate to black and white and add it over the digital shots to get the desired texture to them. It may very well be that you may want a different texture than your planned shooting format will be and will need to make arrangements for this ( I for example like to underexpose the 16mm 7219 and push it a lot to emulate 8mm look but still be able to shoot with better and more stable camera)

If needed you could even get a self developed stills stock texture this way to the digital footage (for example the same texture which you would get if shooting Fomapan 400 stills stock with a 35mm Konvas)

Hi Aapo,

Thank-you for your incredibly helpful input earlier. All of this has just been sent to my cinematographer here on France & he'll go over it all shortly. I've always been a fan of the look of Fomapan 400, that's worth looking into & experimenting with.

We will be presently starting on our test footage so every bit of help & knowledge such as you have provided is invaluable thank-you.

Best,

Oli 

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The film language from that period is much slower and less gimmicky, no off-balance compositions or placing the camera behind foreground objects for no particular reason. I may be stating the obvious but avoid any modern camera grips, stabilizing, steadicam or drone moves. 

Edited by Uli Meyer
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Not sure about the lack of foreground elements -- Hitchcock's movies of the 1930s sometimes did that. And Eisenstein... By 1939, moviemaking was becoming more like the 1940's style for obvious reasons. But I agree that once deeper-focus photography took off in the 1940's, framing in depth also became more popular as well.

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29 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Not sure about the lack of foreground elements -- Hitchcock's movies of the 1930s sometimes did that. And Eisenstein... By 1939, moviemaking was becoming more like the 1940's style for obvious reasons. But I agree that once deeper-focus photography took off in the 1940's, framing in depth also became more popular as well.

True, Hitchcock did that but always for a reason. I was more referring to camera positions where it feels like a third unseen person is observing the scene even though there isn't one in the story and the scene doesn't call for it. While today this might look stylish, in those days I feel the framing language was more straight forward and less ambiguous.

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The key about 1930s cinema was the incredible talent that existed, to recreate that era successfully you need to fill the frame with such talent... maybe if you have the budget to clone them or reverse aging effects, I think Olivia de Havilland is still alive, but as someone who avidly watched TCM for ten years, it was the great actors that brought amazing stories to life with their acting that made all the difference, it was truly movie magic. I would recommend the Blonde Venus by Josef von Sternberg, I’ve never seen anyone light a scene the way he was able to and Marlene Dietrich was also an expert in lighting, in fact Leni Riefenstahl learned a lot from von Sternberg.

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52 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Von Sternberg’s “Scarlet Empress” (1934) is the opposite of straightforward filmmaking! ?

27255C32-8A44-46F1-A5D2-EF82CE784FB7.jpeg

The German expressionist production design may not be that appropriate for a French comedy ?

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Oliver, let me mention one thing about the 1930s aesthetics and production design which is often overlooked/ignored by directors: the period makeup! Modern makeup is more beautiful, but can ruin the illusion, at least for fans of classic films. Actresses would wear  Cupid's bow lips and pencil-thin eyebrows (the detail where even "Mank" - which looks mind-blowing - fails and "Chinatown" shines), though by the time of "His Girl Friday" (1940) the look became less extreme ?

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On 10/11/2020 at 10:02 PM, Alissa Alexina said:

Oliver, let me mention one thing about the 1930s aesthetics and production design which is often overlooked/ignored by directors: the period makeup! Modern makeup is more beautiful, but can ruin the illusion, at least for fans of classic films. Actresses would wear  Cupid's bow lips and pencil-thin eyebrows (the detail where even "Mank" - which looks mind-blowing - fails and "Chinatown" shines), though by the time of "His Girl Friday" (1940) the look became less extreme ?

Hi Alissa,

Thanks for replying to my post & yes you're so right about the importance of period make-up, funnily enough we have been working with our hair/make-up team for the last two or three days on this & the attention to detail cannot be underestimated especially so when you are shooting in B&W. It's painstaking work on these tests but it's got to be right! ?

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On 10/11/2020 at 8:41 PM, David Mullen ASC said:

Von Sternberg’s “Scarlet Empress” (1934) is the opposite of straightforward filmmaking! ?

27255C32-8A44-46F1-A5D2-EF82CE784FB7.jpeg

Very true! I also feel like the chap in the background at the moment. Each arrow represents a new & expensive problem to solve! ?

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On 10/11/2020 at 6:32 PM, Uli Meyer said:

The film language from that period is much slower and less gimmicky, no off-balance compositions or placing the camera behind foreground objects for no particular reason. I may be stating the obvious but avoid any modern camera grips, stabilizing, steadicam or drone moves. 

Hi Uli,

Thanks for all your great advice & input with regards to our project. You're absolutely right about avoiding all modern shooting techniques & we are well & truly going back to basics here which personally I love. 

Oli

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