C-Log Frame Grabs from C300 Feature

cowpunk52

cowpunk52

Veteran
I'm just about to wrap shooting a feature film with the C300. Here are a few (compressed) c-log frame grabs straight out of camera from the production: http://imgur.com/a/RHbyf

DressingRoom_CLog.jpg

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Thanks guys - we just wrapped last night! This was actually fairly difficult shoot with a blistering schedule, but I'm proud of what we accomplished. We had 14 shooting days to shoot a 91 page script. And it's a dance movie! I had a few days where I shot more than fifty setups in a single day, topping out with one day reaching 71 camera setups (and we only had one camera). Three days we shot more than 11 pages. It was truly a test of how nimble the C300 can be, and I feel we really pushed the camera to it's edge.

As for lighting, we wanted the film to have a very "not lit" feel to it (minus the dance sequences on stage, of course). To get this, I mostly used the biggest, broadest sources I could create from our 3-ton package, and accented with a lot of negative fill. With the C300's sensitivity, I never really had to make a decision between light source area or punch and I almost always opted for the largest source possible at the expense overall scene luminosity. The other key for me was making sure my exposure was dead-on and never blowing out any part of the frame. Doing this was the most difficult with day interior scenes with windows in frame or light sources in frame.

The dressing room grab above is a particularly good example of a deceptively simple set-up that I had to do. All of those vanity bulbs are 40W soft white sources and there were about fifty of them in that tiny dressing room. I wanted the scene to look like it was entirely lit by those lamps without actually overexposing any of them in frame. A few scissor clips, two 4-bank kinos, and two 1K open face Arri's later and the scene was ready to go.
 
Wow! Looking really good! Poster work for the c300!

Seriously though that's a lot of setups and some fast shooting for a one camera movie! I hope the actors were well prepped or those days were probably hitting the 20 hour mark!
 
it looks good but it does seem underexposed sometimes... like the Exterior shot and dressing room. Was that done so u can bring it back in post
 
jambredz said:
it looks good but it does seem underexposed sometimes... like the Exterior shot and dressing room. Was that done so u can bring it back in post
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Yes - exposing log is a bit different from exposing for a rec709 gamma. Alister Chapman wrote a very good and concise explanation of the differences on another forum, and I'll quote him here:

"When shooting log you have to consider that in order to record the increases dynamic range, each stop of exposure is allocated a very similar amount of data. But as each extra stop is a doubling of brightness range there is in effect more and more image compression occurring as the image brightness increases. For maximum grade ability, you don't want all your picture information up in the highlights. So generally with a log curve you will underexpose slightly compared to a standard gamma. The norm is to use a mid grey card and expose it so that it is at 38% and reflected white should be somewhere around 70%. Reflected white at 70% then allows headroom for direct light sources like the sky or reflections off shiny surfaces."
 
Matthew Bennett said:
Wow! Looking really good! Poster work for the c300!

Seriously though that's a lot of setups and some fast shooting for a one camera movie! I hope the actors were well prepped or those days were probably hitting the 20 hour mark!
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Thanks, Matthew! Yeah, preparation was the name of the game on this shoot, for both actors and crew. Thankfully, we had a great group of people working on the project, and only two days went to the 14 hour mark. All the others were 12 hour days save our last one, which was 10.
 
have you tried to grade it? - I just did a short test yesterday - and found it very hard to make the c-log footage look good - compared to the rec709 footage.
I used fcp7 3-way cc and added contrast and saturation. but it still looked - boring. skintones are especially difficult and the background remained darkish ...
the dynamic rage of c-log is great but apart from that I am not sure if I will shoot c-log all the time ...
But maybe you can give me a hint how to grade it properly?
 
Brian, Stuff looks really incredible. I'm directing a feature in 2 weeks, shooting single cam with the C300. In your opinion would you prefer using the c-log or TruLog you created. Quick background on the flick. Haunted house movie 90% Interior of the house. Exteriors will be small snowy town in Colorado. Any advice much appreciated.
 
starcentral said:
Brian I know this is old post, but any footage of this available online anywhere?

Looks great man.
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Thanks! I'm still waiting on a trailer to be cut. I know they're getting pretty darn close to a lock picture. We wound up doing a series of insert shots and pick-ups over the course of 3 or 4 months after principle as notes would come in about the edit. I'll find out when the trailer might be done and update you guys. That being said, there are some clips from this project on my reel on my website or vimeo page. Actually, watch it through my vimeo page because I've lazy and haven't renewed my pro or plus account or whatever I had, so that's the only way to see it in HD.
 
ATrain said:
Brian, Stuff looks really incredible. I'm directing a feature in 2 weeks, shooting single cam with the C300. In your opinion would you prefer using the c-log or TruLog you created. Quick background on the flick. Haunted house movie 90% Interior of the house. Exteriors will be small snowy town in Colorado. Any advice much appreciated.
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I would shoot TruLog over Cinema, especially for a horror flick. I find that the color science of the Cinema preset really lends itself nicely to comedy, but TruLog has a more dramatic feel to it. That being said, Art Adams' Alexa-simulating CP looks very intriguing as well, and I would encourage you to have a test with that, too, and see what you think.
 
Correct, those grabs are not graded. With Canon Log, it's not so much that the whole picture darkens as middle grey gets pushed down from 50 IRE to 32-38 IRE (depending on where you put it).
 
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