'Breathing Wild' S16mm Short Stills

Grug

Grug

Veteran
Hey fellas,

We just locked picture on a short I shot in December called 'Breathing Wild'. We shot the whole thing on Vision 3 7207, 250D stock. I'm pretty delighted with the results. It's beautiful stock, and I have to say, the simplicity of shooting film again was an a real pleasure.

It was my first time shooting film in eight years, but since my workflow hasn't really changed (I still light with my meter) there was surprisingly little difference to my usual digital shoots. What I found particularly interesting, was how much easier shooting film was (compared to digital) primarily thanks to Vision 3 having such incredible latitude in the highlights.

Here are a few grabs:

ba3KvF9.jpg


qUooSRs.jpg


N40AZdX.jpg


fGWMi7g.jpg


HZYzS5f.jpg


jcw1Vom.jpg


q3ZdKlK.jpg


Y7wz62f.jpg


UV2yXBB.jpg
 
Very pretty - but also very grainy. I wonder if you re-rated your digital to allow that much shadow noise you would find your digital also has amazing highlight retention?
 
combatentropy said:
Looks superb. I appreciate your nice, dark lighting, especially in the bar. Did you use a fog machine?
Click to expand...

Thank you :) yep, had a haze machine running pretty extensively in the background of the pub. It was a large space to fill.

niki said:
love the look...super 16mm is beautiful..just bought 10 rolls for show
Click to expand...

Nice, are you using a mix of stocks? Or just the one like us?

morgan_moore said:
Very pretty - but also very grainy. I wonder if you re-rated your digital to allow that much shadow noise you would find your digital also has amazing highlight retention?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, digital noise still plays a lot less pleasantly than film grain. And I was right at D-Max on some of the details out the windows (and that's on Vision3 which hold up to about 9 stops over middle grey). So even if I'd used my Alexa, I'd have had to rate it at 3200 ISO to hold those highlights the same way, and the sensor starts to break down a little at that point.

Possibly I could have rated it at 1600 ISO, and then underexposed a stop and pulled up the shadows - but my actors would then have been at 3 stops under, and might have been getting a bit mushy.

I only had an M18 1800w HMI, a 1200w HMI and a pair of Area48s to light the scene, and it was a BIG space, so I really was riding the limits of what the stock and my lighting package could deliver. If we'd had more power, and some bigger fixtures, it could have been done a little more conservatively.

But that's were the film stock made it easy I think. By giving us the latitude to get away with such an extreme contrast ratio.
 
Nice. I see this film magic, but often get my lowly FS7 into post and think.. 'yep loads of lat there' so wonder what an alexa could do if 'under exposed'. I dont really buy the 'this many stops from middle grey' business. I just trade highlight retention with shadow noise on a shot by shot or scene by project by project basis - a studio clean project would be differnt from indy grit.

I really should try things like a car INT and just expose for the ext and see what can be pulled up.


Are the EXTs lit, midday or magic hour?
 
Knowing the latitude of your sensor or stock is really important I think - because it's the only way to know just how far over or under you can push things before they break down too much.

Splitting exposure is an ooooold trick that I hadn't used in years, but it's actually (and not surprisingly, when you think about it) perfect for dealing with things like car interiors, or backlit exteriors. Plonking your exposure dead in the middle between your subject and your background is going to save as much of both things as is possible.

The EXTs were a mix of all three (lit, midday or magic hour). We used time of day scheduling to get the wide establishing shots when the sun was lower and still had some direction to it. Then came in with fabrics for the closer stuff to help hide the fact the sun was creeping it's way along the sky the whole day.

Because we were shooting in the middle of the Aussie summer, the sun was HIGH and strong. So it would have been pretty impossible to mask its movements otherwise.

LOi6h7l.jpg


GOGuN9U.jpg
 
we bought all 7203 stock from kodak / it's the most beautiful image I have ever seen
 
These look great Mark! Which camera did you use?

I know this has been discussed before many times but can you comment on whether shooting film set a precedent for talent knowing that they had (I assume) limited takes? Did the director approach it differently e.g. rehearsals were taken more seriously then for the real thing there were less takes? Anything else?

Thanks, looking forward to seeing more developments.
 
Thanks Rob,

We shot on an Aaton XTR, with Zeiss S16mm Superspeeds and an 11-110mm zoom. No diffusion in front of or behind the lens.

Technically, I'd say it was a huge challenge for both the actors and our director as we only had a 4:1 ratio to get it all in the can. This meant we couldn't waste a single foot of film, and had to literally shoot the edit shot-for-shot.

This is really hard obviously because the actors never get to fully run the scene in front of camera, so right off the bat, thorough rehearsals are absolutely paramount. That and rigorous slating technique.

The director also needs to know their edit shot-for-shot in advance, which is a lot of pressure.
 
Thanks for all of the info. Great tip on splitting exposure, I'm going to try that as soon as I can.

So the take away is, shoot film... if you have enough of it, and even if you don't.
 
Well this is nice. I was up at 4am on Saturday for a long drive to set, and woke to up to a text that we'd won the best cinematography award at the Sydney Indie Film Festival.

XmJZrH4.jpg
 
Wow, nice work! And congrats on the award! Well deserved.

So cool that you got a chance to shoot on film! I'm dying for the opportunity to do so. 4:1 ratio is indeed pretty tight. How many pages per day were you doing on average?

Also, were you pulling your own focus?

Lastly, if you don't mind me asking, what was your budget for camera, lenses and film?

Again, great work!
 
abreu-canedo said:
Wow, nice work! And congrats on the award! Well deserved.

So cool that you got a chance to shoot on film! I'm dying for the opportunity to do so. 4:1 ratio is indeed pretty tight. How many pages per day were you doing on average?

Also, were you pulling your own focus?

Lastly, if you don't mind me asking, what was your budget for camera, lenses and film?

Again, great work!
Click to expand...

Thanks Raf,

We had five days of shooting for a 28 page script, so we'd have been averaging 5-6 pages a day. A pretty intense schedule, especially when you don't have enough stock to run conventional coverage, and have to just shoot the edit precisely.

I certainly wasn't pulling my own focus (and never really do). I had a first and second AC in my camera team, and a Gaffer and best boy in lighting.

I don't know what the budget for stock, processing and scanning was. Our camera package (Aaton XTR, Zeiss Superspeeds and Zoom), was about $2k for the week from memory (and thanks to mate's rates on the rental from a friend).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top