C300: Chemical Bonds - Amira w/Ultra Primes

[ozmorphasis]

No one is suggesting every use of filters are wrong. We're just making a generalization that it's often overused as a result of a fad, just as many tools are, whether that be super shallow depth of field, slow motion, drones, time-lapse, sliders, RGB lighting, anamorphic, etc. It's a tool. Use it wisely when called for. Simple as that.

Not to overgeneralize, but I think one lens in particular has been a big motivator for young film makers: Sigma 18-35mm. When a lens comes along that is such a great performer, so fast, so inexpensive, and thus becomes the go to lens for a lot of people, but also leans in the clinical direction, everyone started asking how they could infuse more character into their image. The answer is to either get more lenses (often times very costly and time consuming), or throw a filter on that workhorse lens.

This is all very anecdotal. I have no real evidence that this was a prime mover. I can just say that the number of times I see someone post something they've shot, and in the description it says 18-35mm with BPM 1/8 or 1/4, well...it's pretty often.

 

[Luis Caffesse]

A reminder to keep things civil.
Thank you.

 

[puredrifting]

I'm not trying to make a general rule. I thought the opening shot looked nice and gritty and a lot of the shots of that guy with the intense eyes seemed fine with that level of contrast and no halation. But a lot of the druggy shots and the searching shots looked too clean to me. Specifically. In this video. Feel free to disagree, but that was my reaction

And the "kids these days" energy in this sentiment is hilarious. Just a few examples from things mentioned on this forum recently - queens gambit using black satin 1 on everything, the great using black frost and maybe another type, papert using glimmerglass and also mixing a softer zoom with sharper primes for two different looks in the same video, mitch gross mentioning unique vintage lens sets being rehoused in modern housings. I mean, come on people. this is not a new or crazy concept.

Not implying any of that, just what I like for my work. My judgement of other's work is irrelevant, they do what they do and it's up to every viewer to decide if it speaks to them or it's annoying and sucks. I heartily agree though with Eric and Run & Gun
that the trends quickly become annoying. Back in the old days before we had the plague and we went to NAB and CineGear, those venues were wholesale exposure to the most annoying trends, you could go from booth to booth and see THE SAME LAME looks
over and over again. And you can bet if you see it at these venues that there are thousands of shooters out there doing the exact same thing because they cannot innovate on their own, only imitate.

I guess what it comes down to is I don't care what you use if you use it with purpose and intent and it is either successful or a failure. But so many people in our business just endlessly follow visual trends that quickly become cliche and then they are grating visually.

 

[JPNola]

“ Professionals used to be embarassed by creating images that contained less than desirable analog artifacts but now they're "cool". ”

To the extent that was ever in fact the case, it was shattered with the cinematography of films such as Easy Rider. Clearly Kovacs sought to have artifacts and a gritty, imperfect look.

Artifacts are one of many tools. Particularly useful in setting a mood.

This reminds me of an older relative who was baffled as to why my sister spent a lot of money on home interior design that features furniture with a “distressed” look and aged brick floors. He asked, perplexed, “Why would she want crappy-looking??”

 

[ahalpert]

those venues were wholesale exposure to the most annoying trends, you could go from booth to booth and see THE SAME LAME looks
over and over again. And you can bet if you see it at these venues that there are thousands of shooters out there doing the exact same thing because they cannot innovate on their own, only imitate.

I guess what it comes down to is I don't care what you use if you use it with purpose and intent and it is either successful or a failure. But so many people in our business just endlessly follow visual trends that quickly become cliche and then they are grating visually.

Ugh. I know what you mean. There's been this obsession the last few years with old contax/yashica glass and all the sheeple are driving up the prices on ebay.

I'm honestly puzzled by the reactions to my comment. First of all because lens filters aren't a fad. They've always been around and have evolved in technology and usage. (Though I'm not sure anyone puts vaseline on their lenses anymore.) And second because all I was trying to say was that to ME some of the shots felt too clean, and that a filter was one thought I had. Or maybe using a different lens would have been better, or a smoke machine, or dinging the lens with off-axis light to create more veiling glare. Or maybe people disagree that it was too clean.

What I was thinking was some halation like here:


Or something like this:


I don't think Slovis even used diffusion filters. Probably just a characteristic of the lens and the strength of the light.

Re: Sigma - I agree that they're damned sharp. did posted this shot from the sigma 105 on the forum:



It has gorgeous OOF rendering IMO, like all the Sigma ART lenses. But it's very...sharp. Very even across the frame. IMO somewhat lacking in character and in interesting rendering. A still photographer can touch up images like that six ways from sunday and craft local texture selectively. But for film/video I feel like super sharp/even lenses pair well with in-camera tools and techniques that stress or muddy them.

more halation:

 

[puredrifting]

Ugh. I know what you mean. There's been this obsession the last few years with old contax/yashica glass and all the sheeple are driving up the prices on ebay.

I'm honestly puzzled by the reactions to my comment. First of all because lens filters aren't a fad. They've always been around and have evolved in technology and usage. (Though I'm not sure anyone puts vaseline on their lenses anymore.) And second because all I was trying to say was that to ME some of the shots felt too clean, and that a filter was one thought I had. Or maybe using a different lens would have been better, or a smoke machine, or dinging the lens with off-axis light to create more veiling glare. Or maybe people disagree that it was too clean.

I bought the CY Zeiss lenses 99% for their mechanical build and manual focus ability. All of the lenses I own are fly by wire still lenses and the CN E 18-80mm t/4.4, which I am not sure if the focus is FBW or mechanical linkage?
Because it has great AF, I suspect it is FBW but it's better feel/more connected than the still lenses. I've been missing shooting MF other than when I rent cine lenses so the CY Zeiss present a good value for an impeccably built
lens. Too bad I had to send two of the three I bought back to Japan for refunds because of non-apparent issues that Duclos discovered. I will eventually replace the two I sent back but I've been too busy with money making client work to
mess with the one CY Zeiss I still have left. So interestingly, I really didn't get into the CY Zeiss for the look, really at all. It's more about the mechanical construction, MF ability and build quality. To me the Leicas have a much more "vintage"
look than the Zeiss.

I'm not saying optical filters are a fad, I am saying the massive/systematic/default overuse of diffusion/halation filters annoys me. That's all.
I find the artifacts, particularly on the Black Pro Mist, particularly on the 1/4 strength and stronger to be horrific looking and thankfully
others since the 90s have stepped up with more subtle and tasteful diffusion that is definitely not as crappy looking. For someone like Eric,
who owns what are probably the subjectively best primes available for a wide variety of looks and work, to put a diffusion filter on the front
of those lenses, is a waste, to me, but of course, people do it all of the time.

As far as the thoughts about DPs wanting to protect their vision for the images they created, I completely understand, I've worked with a ton of top DPs, interviewed them, had casual conversation about exactly this,
making it so your vision cannot be tampered with much. Hell, that's why John Ford would shoot only one or two takes of everything and anything, not just because
he was an impatient, crotchety bastard, but because studio heads back in his era did the same thing, they wanted to take their "work made for hire" film that
they had contracted Ford to shoot and turn it into other, more commercially appealing product that was completely contrary to Ford's vision for the film.

But for me, I cannot speak to others, 95% of what I shoot IS for clients, often ad agencies, publicity departments, marketing departments, corporations and non-profits.
I don't care if they take my REC709, RAW or Log footage and affect it, about 75% of the time they don't have time or budget to mess with the look of the images and
often, if they do want a look, we team together, shoot tests and develop the look together. I can only think of one instance, a piece I shot for Sony TriStar for a particular
movie that was a big hit five years ago about a family. I went to Texas and shot two days of footage, recreations and interviews with the family and when I saw the
final product, the editor had gone way overboard with these terrible looking Magic Bullet film looks and weird lens flare transitions that made the piece look terrible.
it was annoying, but that's life and one piece out of decades shooting for the studios isn't a bad record.

Then again, the check cleared ;-)

If I shot art pieces, music videos or features, I'm sure I would feel differently and might lean more toward some of the attitudes discussed here. But I don't. If I shoot my own
projects, arty stuff, it's all good because I can shoot RAW and do whatever I want to in post. Personally, I think post diffusion and glow can look fine, if a piece needs it. I prefer
hazers to lens diffusion, especially like in the Blade Runner cap above.

 

[ahalpert]

I bought the CY Zeiss lenses 99% for their mechanical build and manual focus ability. All of the lenses I own are fly by wire still lenses and the CN E 18-80mm t/4.4, which I am not sure if the focus is FBW or mechanical linkage?
Because it has great AF, I suspect it is FBW but it's better feel/more connected than the still lenses. I've been missing shooting MF other than when I rent cine lenses so the CY Zeiss present a good value for an impeccably built
lens. Too bad I had to send two of the three I bought back to Japan for refunds because of non-apparent issues that Duclos discovered. I will eventually replace the two I sent back but I've been too busy with money making client work to
mess with the one CY Zeiss I still have left. So interestingly, I really didn't get into the CY Zeiss for the look, really at all. It's more about the mechanical construction, MF ability and build quality. To me the Leicas have a much more "vintage"
look than the Zeiss.

I like CY, I was just giving you a hard time.

I'm not saying optical filters are a fad, I am saying the massive/systematic/default overuse of diffusion/halation filters annoys me. That's all.
I find the artifacts, particularly on the Black Pro Mist, particularly on the 1/4 strength and stronger to be horrific looking and thankfully
others since the 90s have stepped up with more subtle and tasteful diffusion that is definitely not as crappy looking. For someone like Eric,
who owns what are probably the subjectively best primes available for a wide variety of looks and work, to put a diffusion filter on the front
of those lenses, is a waste, to me, but of course, people do it all of the time.

I think it's telling that Canon came out with the Sumire primes and Sigma came out with the Classic primes after hearing from cinematographers that their state-of-the-art lenses that they had gone to such lengths to correct all aberrations and control flare, etc, were too boring.

But for me, I cannot speak to others, 95% of what I shoot IS for clients, often ad agencies, publicity departments, marketing departments, corporations and non-profits.

Yeah, but the piece I made the comment about is a short film that clearly has a lot of expressionist magic going on. I wouldn't have said that if it were a corporate or maybe even a music video.

Personally, I think post diffusion and glow can look fine, if a piece needs it. I prefer
hazers to lens diffusion, especially like in the Blade Runner cap above.

Sure, but definitely in the context of making a 48-hour film, it wouldn't hurt to go the less time-consuming route.

And it's not like the two are mutually exclusive. On Queen's Gambit, they use tons of smoke and they also use Black Satin 1 on every shot.

But then you have people saying smoke is a horribly overused cliche. Brawley said they intentionally eschewed it on the Great because they felt like it was a typical thing to do. But they used Black Frost and possibly another filter I can't remember.

So, in a way, these choices are influenced by the fashions of the day. Something new comes out or a new technique is pioneered and then everyone's using it and then people get bored of it and stop using it. But like with so many aspects of film production, I think we all make decisions on a case-by-case basis when evaluating the situation, which is what I did looking at Eric's film, not coming into it with a preconceived notion about if it should use filtration. But by the same token, I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with me.

Brawley said his current show (set in modern times) asked him not to use a filter because they poo poo so much with the image in post, including special beauty retouching on the female leads. Which sounds more like the approach of photographers.

 

[Fahnon]

Interesting discussion! From my perspective, it takes a bit to understand a tool and overusing it is part of learning how to use it subtly and discreetly. I’ve noticed this with any art form I’ve learned about; you figure out something or maybe learn someone you think is great uses this technique, so you adopt it and probably way overuse it because you kind of have to in order to fully learn how to use it well. I’ve definitely overused slomo and shallow dof early on until I learned better, partially because those tools were generally not available to me on cameras I could afford when I started. The 5d2 days were the first time I could even try those techniques out on my own camera.

And then there’s the matter of taste. Personally, super clean and “perfect” images can certainly be impressive, but never actually move me. Probably because it always strikes me as presentational and not soulful. I loved seeing Deakins work on the last Blade Runner (he may be my favorite cinematographer), and it was a highlight and a masterclass in cinematography, but the look of the original is what I’d personally try to reference in my own work (minus the noir hard light). If you’re someone like Eric who prefers a noiseless clean look in his own work, I can see how diffusion and dirtying up a frame could be seen as something you shouldn’t do unless there’s a specific reason, because it looks different from their ideal than a cleaner image.

For me, I do find myself using older lenses (cy in fact), diffusion and softening/dirtying up mostly all narrative images I’ve shot on a very hi-res and clean cameras, because my ideal uses “flaws” artistically.


So I think the overuse of the things being mentioned in this thread are simply a combination of a lot of filmmakers figuring out how to use tools tastefully, and having taste more like mine where clean images aren’t the goal.


(I owned a CP.2 lens and sold it for a beautiful and flawed Schneider Xenon because while the Zeiss was perfect for corporate work and a clean starting point, it didn’t work for me for narrative. It was perfect and a little boring.)

 

[Eric Coughlin]

We did use a fog machine for a good amount of the film. I need to buy a better one as it's a $20 Party City one I've had on hand since a movie I did awhile ago and now that cheap little guy has gotten quite a bit of use on narrative films, while I could certainly afford a better one but often end up using the cheap one spur of the moment and haven't taken the time to research good models. Any recommendations on a good one to get?

I think there were some takes we didn't fog as much as we wanted, like either the fog machine wasn't ready to send out another spurt or the person doing that got distracted, was doing something else, etc.

I feel like someone once wanted me to use a filter to simulate fog/haze, and to me those two seem completely different. I haven't used a haze filter personally, but there's no way a filter can replicate the look of moving fog. Static fog, maybe, but even that I would imagine the looks would be very different. I vaguely recall the conversation being like, "We can use fog machines indoors but we don't have a big enough fog machine for outdoors so we can just use a filter," and then me thinking, "I don't think that will look like fog."

Reminds me of this one time eight years ago when it was foggy outside and I was like, "Dad, I want to go film you in this cool fog." So I grabbed my Canon 60D, Canon 35L, and Glidecam, and made this masterpiece.

 

[CharlesPapert]

Mostly, I can only marvel at what 48 hour filmmaking has evolved into - this film is several light years ahead in terms of production value than the best of what we were doing in the early days of the concept. To be fair we were shooting on XL1's and the like but it all just seems so much scrappier, even the ones we thought looked good at the time. Ah well. Great job Eric.

I really wish Youtube allowed one to update the files themselves, these prehistoric Youtube uploads are not helped by the tragic amount of compression. Worth checking out "Girl's Guide to Summer" for a now-familiar face (what you can see of her through the macroblocking).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6769FF9B6BC0CCF1

 

[ahalpert]

Here's some nice halation in the show I'm watching (DS9):





It's not about simulating smoke/atmosphere. It just contributes to the texture/gloss of the image. It's not obvious in the reverse shot that they're using a filter:



I don't know what filter they're using, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was BPM.

And just in general in the show, I wouldn't have known they were using a filter if it weren't for the occasional halation or the fact they use too strong of a filter on the CUs of female leads. And this was shot in 1997 by a 50-year old ASC member with a Panavision camera. It's not like kids today are the only people shooting with lens filters. They just make poor use of them. Sorry to derail your thread, but this anti-filtration talk is nonsense.