Jim Brennan
09-17-2005, 06:54 PM
When I made my very first attempt at filmmaking a couple of years ago, I shot a scene with two people sitting in front of a window. It looked (as you would imagine), horrible. I knew less than nothing and had only my trust zr-20 and no lights or external microphone. The movie was a disater, but it was an experiment, so I didn't feel too bad. I just wanted to see if I could get something from the page to my TV.
The script wasn't bad, so Igot some lights and a mic and reshot it, moving that scene to a different area so i didn't have to fight the daylight. I swore not to shoot in front of a window like that again. Lesson learned, right? Wrong.
A month ago I was shooting a 30 minute short. Overall I am very happy with the look of the shoot. There's lots of depth and richness in most of the scenes. But, there was this one scene we shot in a living room. When we got there, the couch was in front of the window, which would make sense if you lived there and put the TV on the opposite wall. Not, however, if you are filming an intense confrontation between a father and son. A scene that was shot right in front of that window. Why? Because it never occurred to anyone there, including the art director, the gaffer or myself, EVEN THOUGH I WAS WHINING ABOUT FIGHTING THE DAYLIGHT THE WHOLE TIME. Well, the footage isn't as good as it could have been, but it looks okay. Strike two. Lesson learned? Of course not.
Today I was shooting a commercial for a realtor friend in my house. We have high ceilings and a nice looking front room (mostly because we don't go in there much), so I thought it would be a good place to shoot. My partner thought that the couch would look good in front of the window. I agreed, but thought it would be a bad idea to fight the daylight (my common sense was struggling to be heard. I guess that's some progress). He wanted to try, so we did some tests earlier in the week. We had enough lights to compensate, and the composition looked good, so we shot it like that. Everything looked pretty good and we wrapped in about an hour and a half. Then I looked at my footage and looks horrible. It's flat (which is probably because I did my lighting tests with only the furniture and no people) and dark. I set the iris to compensate for the little bit of daylight and the rest of the image looks muddy. We all thought it looked great during the shoot, but we were wrong.
To be fair, the window has an awning, we hung some dark sheers, and there was no direct sunlight. But, I still should have known better. Did I mention that this was the same exact window I made the first mistake with?
So come on, make me feel better and tell me a story about how you were a little slow to learn something that should have been obvious. :beer:
The script wasn't bad, so Igot some lights and a mic and reshot it, moving that scene to a different area so i didn't have to fight the daylight. I swore not to shoot in front of a window like that again. Lesson learned, right? Wrong.
A month ago I was shooting a 30 minute short. Overall I am very happy with the look of the shoot. There's lots of depth and richness in most of the scenes. But, there was this one scene we shot in a living room. When we got there, the couch was in front of the window, which would make sense if you lived there and put the TV on the opposite wall. Not, however, if you are filming an intense confrontation between a father and son. A scene that was shot right in front of that window. Why? Because it never occurred to anyone there, including the art director, the gaffer or myself, EVEN THOUGH I WAS WHINING ABOUT FIGHTING THE DAYLIGHT THE WHOLE TIME. Well, the footage isn't as good as it could have been, but it looks okay. Strike two. Lesson learned? Of course not.
Today I was shooting a commercial for a realtor friend in my house. We have high ceilings and a nice looking front room (mostly because we don't go in there much), so I thought it would be a good place to shoot. My partner thought that the couch would look good in front of the window. I agreed, but thought it would be a bad idea to fight the daylight (my common sense was struggling to be heard. I guess that's some progress). He wanted to try, so we did some tests earlier in the week. We had enough lights to compensate, and the composition looked good, so we shot it like that. Everything looked pretty good and we wrapped in about an hour and a half. Then I looked at my footage and looks horrible. It's flat (which is probably because I did my lighting tests with only the furniture and no people) and dark. I set the iris to compensate for the little bit of daylight and the rest of the image looks muddy. We all thought it looked great during the shoot, but we were wrong.
To be fair, the window has an awning, we hung some dark sheers, and there was no direct sunlight. But, I still should have known better. Did I mention that this was the same exact window I made the first mistake with?
So come on, make me feel better and tell me a story about how you were a little slow to learn something that should have been obvious. :beer: