DAY BY DAY - 720p, P&S Teknik, Panavision Super Speed II

[Erik Olson]

The horror. Yeah, you're pushing the EZFX (assuming with Varizoom MC100) to the limit with the GII. We've rated ours, with minor modification, to 25lbs. at 10' forward (using 6' extension).

Perhaps you could [safely] fly the XL2 or Pana Lightweight - Gold / GII are really heavy. I'm sure Gold II was under consideration for budgetary reasons.

e

 

[SUPPATIME]

Nope... we used the EXFX jib with extension arm with only a Sachler head, and by hand. What a pain in the ass that was to get a fluid shot. We rigged up a pulley system that worked surprisingly well.

Anywho, here's stills from Day 4:

 

[SUPPATIME]

Here's a BTS of that set-up.

Any questions... just ask.

 

[SUPPATIME]

Here's a gratuitous shot of me... complete with cigarette burn-mark on face (drunk college girls = awesome).

Somewhere in there is an HVX-200...

 

[SUPPATIME]

Here's camera... Photobucket is being gay.

 

[Allen Achterberg]

You Have some very nice images there, I agree with most, they are definately Under Exposed. Night time cinematography does not mean under exposure is OK, we still need to see details. of course you know it's the amount of darkness, not under exposure. Just brighten it up a little, will look amazing. Your letter boxed stills appear funny to me, the seem Squeezed. They alos seem to be more than 2.40, closer to Ultra it seems.

none the less, great job!

 

[SUPPATIME]

My AC matted for 2.55, unfortunately. It's a little more epic than we were going for originally, but the director and I agree that it works the way it is.

Again, I question if your monitor is a CRT or LCD, and how it is calibrated.

Much like film, video cameras have a decent latitude. Film seems to be more friendly than video, but the HVX, despite foot candle loss through ground glass and other glass elements, seems to have a good 6 stops of latitude how I have it set.

I understand that some of my images are underexposed (mainly the night shoot / alley scene), but the director and I agreed that this is a very dark film to begin with, and we wanted to go for a more realistic looking night.

Our practicals , all candle and torch, emit no more than 25 foot candles; we compensated that through the PAR cans and 2K zips... but I still wanted the "moonlight" to be very dark. It is more realistic that way, and you see focus more on the contrast between what is illuminated (by candle) and what is not (moonlight and below exposure). It adds to the feel of the near-rape sequence.

I'm not saying you are wrong, by any means. The normal way of shooting at night is to get a near-normal exposure... at most 1 1/2 stops below the 18% that would be regarded as "0" for exposure. I'm just saying I'm taking a more realistic approach. I've tested this for a while and come up with okay results... and now that I have 36,000 watts of electricity to play with, I'm taking it as far as I can.

 

[Allen Achterberg]

Your footage should look acceptable on any monitor. Calibrated or not.

If you and the Director decided it should be that dark, then just know that it's not poorly judged exposure, it an educated deciscion. But from a Viewers standpoint, I think it's too dark. Not all of it, but some.

I own an HVX200/Redrock M2, I work with Nikon Lenses Some of which are as slow as 3.5, I understand very much how much of a pain in the a$$ it is to get light through the rig, So I don't mean to come off like I'm putting your images down, I'm not. They are in fact good images.

All the Best

 

[SUPPATIME]

For reference, the Director gave me a set of photographs to study to get a sense of what imagery he was looking for from this film. He wanted a sweeping cinema reality to be reminiscant of mideaval and rennesaiance paintings. A few of the images are these:

With those and others in mind, the look he was trying to achieve was that of a dark period in history... not just because of the lack of light through natural light, but also because of the climate of the region. In the 12th Century, there was a period of time where it rained for 5 years nearly non-stop throughout Europe, and the fertile regions of Northern Europe became marsh. Nearly 1/3 of Europe's population starved to death because this was a grain-producing region, and then the Black Plague killed off millions of already weakened people.

Jeremy (the Director) wanted to emulate this dark period, and I agreed that I could do it while still giving it a fairy tale feel... at least, so I'm trying.

 

[SUPPATIME]

I've tweaked my monitor to a more generic setting at the moment... I can see that it presses the blacks even more than mine was set. I have a couple segments I'm going to bring up the mid-tones in, but in general, we're satisfied with the images thus far.

The only thing I would have liked more light in is the mastershot of the village market.

I threw every light I had over that 1 acre piece of land, and it still came out underexposed on a T1.4 14mm Super Speed. Everything else was done with a purpose... to force your eyes to travel to exactly where the director and I agreed the audience should look.

 

[Allen Achterberg]

Yeah, definately Tough doing big Night time wide shots like that. Dispite the darkness, that scene looks very nice. When I have a big Wide Shot like that, I shoot naked with a 1/4 PM to match the softness of rephotographing an image projected on a groundglass. Easier to light, takes less time, and when you move in closer it's easier to light.

All the Best,

 

[SUPPATIME]

Oooh!

I used 1/2 Pro Mist over all of the night exteriors!

Okay, I'll stop being giddy now.

One thing I did TOTALLY forget to mention... these grabs are not at the optimal light for a given shot... I just picked things where I liked the actor's faces and the exact framing.

All of my tungsten sources were on flicker-generators and varried between -4 and +1 stops from where I exposed. They all had either 1/2 CTO or 184 Cosmo gel on them... that might add to why the key lighting for the principal actors looks so dark...

 

[SUPPATIME]

Wow, today was hell.

We got to set at 5AM and decided to move the generator and grip truck because of a move in location. I didn't want my 5 lighting guys running another 500 feet of cable, so we did that. We started lighting a little before 6AM and didn't finish until 9AM or so. We were faking the latter part of the "magic hour" on an enclosed set. I decided to try something new and something I hadn't tested thouroughly, and it ended up being a disaster.

The Director and I went to JoAnn Fabric a few weeks ago, testing out various fabrics over lights to get desired effects. We found a shiny purple/green fabric that worked beautifuly as an uneven light cast by the twilight before the sun is completely gone from a day. What I didn't test was how to provide optimal fill light in a room where such a key light existed.

After tweaking and re-tweaking, I REALLY didn't have enough light for the bakery interior, and what I did have looked so purple and red that it didn't work at all. We got off a master shot at 11AM and the first of a series of coverage by 12PM before I went completely silent.

I found out the hard way that I was allergic to hay. I'm from a rural area in Pennsylvania, and have never had a problem with it before today, when we laid it down for a greenscreen flooring (the background only was to be keyed) in an enclosed area. I couldn't breathe or see for a while... it was really bad.

The AD decided to break for lunch which I promptly skipped.

I completely re-lit the scene and by the time everyone came back from lunch, we started all over again.

All in all, we got the coverage we needed (which was the least impressive of all the days thus far), but I was quite let down by the whole experience.

FYI, never use Minus Green gel on any Tungsten fill lamp.

This is the look (though still too dark) after the re-light:

Lastly, we shot a quick exterior dolly of the bakery. I was so fortunate that it was a perfectly overcast day in Orlando today. We threw an ND3 and a Sepia 1 filter over the Panavision 14mm.

More tomorrow...

 

[khmuse]

So glad to see the BTS photos, too bad you didn't have them from so of the earlier setups.

I think you have done an excellent job at turning your directors vision and inspiration into reality. To many seem to be afraid of underexposing a scene feeling that they have somehow wasted the dynamic range of their acquisition system. I find your choices completely rational given the tone that was set by director.

The funny thing is that the camera is considerably less expensive than any of the camera supports that you are using. Seems like an interesting distribution of resources.

Keep em coming. Very interesting.

 

[khmuse]

I forgot to add one other observation. I absolutely love the fact that you are achieving your "look" in camera. The use of filtration, creative lighting and wonderful production design, bravo! This is how I always try to do it if at all possible, I am not a fan of shooting flat and fixing it in post.

A big congratulations on doing it right.

 

[SUPPATIME]

The funny thing is that the camera is considerably less expensive than any of the camera supports that you are using. Seems like an interesting distribution of resources.

Honestly, everything is rental to begin with, but I agree.

The Mark I gear head is valued around $4,500. The P&S Teknik is around $7,000. The Chapman/Leonard Super PeeWee II is around $200,000.

Regardless, the medium chosen was HD on P2 card. I figured, with the resources the production team had, why not get all of these add-ons and make the best of what the HVX-200 has to offer?

 

[LighthouseMedia]

I absolutely LOVE the look your pulling off here and while I agree that you have to be a lot tighter with the lighting ratios on video I feel like most of these shots are near perfect exposure for emulating film. Sure they are a touch dark but personally I'm loving it. You have to post some footage when you get something cut together. I'd love to see it.

 

[Erik Olson]

Keep it coming and let me know if you need that remote head for your shots without the adapter. I'm sure the house you're using already has one, but don't let $ get in the way of the shots you need from the jib. I won't.

I'm digging the lighting. Night shots = dark with areas of practicals-driven highlights. Medieval time period begets lower values at night and definitely on your interiors, regardless of time of day. If there's a justification for huge drop-off between subject and background (e.g., handheld lantern, not other on-set practical sources) then let it be.

Great work, thanks for writing this up.

e

 

[SUPPATIME]

I feel like most of these shots are near perfect exposure for emulating film.

That was one of three of my goals as DP and operator. The other two were getting realistic looking lighting setups while retaining a fantasy feel and getting a strong series of shots so that the Director will have an easy time being able to choose clips to cut into the finished film.

The Director has asked me not to post any of the actual clips until he has something edited and we can begin discussing color correction and audio mixdown. I will continue posting frame grabs in full frame DV format until the production wraps.

When he has something edited, I'll compress it and upload for you to see.

On that note... I'm running OSX on a 1.4GHz G4 PowerMac... what would be the best codec to upload the cropped HD 720P footage?

 

[SUPPATIME]

Keep it coming and let me know if you need that remote head for your shots without the adapter.

Thanks a lot! We've officially wrapped the jib already, though. We only have two days left on the shoot at this point, and these are the dialogue-heavy night interiors. I'm rather concerned with how I am going to light a wine cellar and have it look convincingly like night without any practicals (i.e. candles). With the exception of a barely-highlighted rim light or two, this location is completely fill light.

I'm digging the lighting. Night shots = dark with areas of practicals-driven highlights. Medieval time period begets lower values at night and definitely on your interiors, regardless of time of day. If there's a justification for huge drop-off between subject and background (e.g., handheld lantern, not other on-set practical sources) then let it be.

We're going to bring up the mid-tones about a stop in some of the wider shots where the amount of glass in front of the CCDs became an issue, but thanks for the compliment... it means a lot.

Honestly, despite being exhausted from no more than 4 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 nights, downloading footage from P2 to my hard drive, choosing stills, cropping and matting them to 720x480 has actually made me more excited about this project. With each day that passes, I review that day's footage, study it, do a cross-comparison between what I've shot and paintings and other art from the period, and decide what I can realistically do the next day with what is already on the 3-Ton grip truck.

That being said... check back late Saturday night... we're shooting what I believe is the most cinematically beautiful shot in the entire film. Abigail (the girl you've seen in most of the shots) is walking home to her father's bakery just after sunrise and walks down a street lined with roses and children at play.

Coinciding with the current themes, we're going with a subtle nod to "Ring around the Rosie", which was tune written during the times of the Black Plague and are nothing more than references to it ("Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posie, ashes, ashes, we all fall down"... kind of morbid for kids to be singing and having a good time to, but hey...). We've got children playing in the street and we're lining both sides with what the Art Director and I agreed upon: yellow, red, pink and white roses with pedals blowing in the wind and down the street. I'm using very pastel colors for this shot and will try to replicate something of a Monet painting but with slightly higher contrast.

Should be interesting.

Give me a second and I'll post some more BTS stuff from yesterday.