Cinematography laws by Macgregor

I agree with the clipped highlights and DOF rule most of all. Clipped highlights are nice if you are a pro who knows what you're doing, but most of the time when inexperienced DP's go for it, it looks like some scenes have a kind of milky filter over the lens or the highlights are all encompassing and blow out the whole shot. Not cool.

I've been noticing the DOF thing as well thanks to the adoption of VDSLR's. People need to just back away and give their shots some breathing room! The biggest flaw to all that blurriness is that lenses that are down in the f/1.2 - f/1.4 range aren't necessarily blurry at all, it's just that whoever is using the camera is just way too close and losing whatever DOF control they really have. I've used my Nikon 50mm 1.2 for wide shots, very sharp at f/1.2, but obviously softer than setting it at f/2.0 or higher, of course. Still, if I had been standing closer it would have been a very blurred close-up, not bad at all, but I wouldn't shoot my whole film like that and I don't know why anybody else would either.

Bravo Macgregor!
 
Jack_Felis said:
I agree with the clipped highlights and DOF rule most of all.
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Maybe there should be a revival of the Groupf/64 for modern digital video...

Ok, on an 8x10 camera one could get a way with f/64... most of my 4x5 work was around f/32 or so... as well as using swings and tilts to maximize 'apparent' sharpness over the entire image surface... but that's the idea...
 
Maybe not laws, but those are excellent guidelines.

But I also disagree about clipped highlights. There was an era in the mid-to-late 90s when Richardson and Kaminski made very good use of diffusion (classic soft and nets) mixed with blown out backlights (from HMIs and spotlight par64s). Richardson is still doing this, although much less than he used to (see the trailer for Shutter Island) and it looks great. Blown highlights can also serve a story purpose, as they do in Three Kings, although that movie isn't "beautiful" looking.
 
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Policar said:
Maybe not laws, but those are excellent guidelines.

But I also disagree about clipped highlights. There was an era in the mid-to-late 90s when Richardson and Kaminski made very good use of diffusion (classic soft and nets) mixed with blown out backlights (from HMIs and spotlight par64s). Richardson is still doing this, although much less than he used to (see the trailer for Shutter Island) and it looks great. Blown highlights can also serve a story purpose, as they do in Three Kings, although that movie isn't "beautiful" looking.
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I think it is the perceived 'sharpness' of digital clipping which is the culprit. Not necessarily the fact it's blown out.
 
That is true Ryan. As it was previously mentioned a thousand times on this forum: The pain may not emerge from the use of clipped highlights, but in the amount of info leading us to the fully blown area. Unless you are going for something jarring why make it a jarring transition to the clipped regions? the human eye doesn't have unlimited DR so clipped is "allowed".

I also agree with Policar in that these are not laws, but great guidelines. Art is much more elusive than that.

Then again it was artful of Macgregor to lay them out like this. He is after all a golden god in my eyes. ;)
 
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Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
I think it is the perceived 'sharpness' of digital clipping which is the culprit. Not necessarily the fact it's blown out.
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I'm mostly in agreement, but that's not what he wrote. (He wrote, "I've never seen anything good with overexposed highlights.") And JFK, Minority Report, Bringing out the Dead, etc. all exhibit large areas of completely blown highlights.

If you watch the trailer to Avatar it's interesting to note that in the few live action scenes with blown highlights there's moderately harsh digital clipping, but the knee has been brought down and the skin tones up and it looks much better than most digital video.
 
timbook2 said:
Bonus rule: Sound is usually the difference between good and bad movies.

I like that !
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Hell yeah. Should be rule #1. Don't cheap on sound!

I'm working on this microbudget feature and I'm cringing at the lack of sound gear. I have a feeling they will be ADR'ing 2/3's of the flim. <sigh>
But I guess you use what you have the budget for....

I would rather watch bad VHS like video with great sound than gorgeous picture and crap audio.
 
Denwa said:
I would rather watch bad VHS like video with great sound than gorgeous picture and crap audio.
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I doubt that, here is mission impossible 3 sound with minidv cam
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I AGREE


IMO sound must match picture quality
 
bwwd said:
I doubt that, here is mission impossible 3 sound with minidv cam
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I AGREE


IMO sound must match picture quality
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Ha ha...I'm sorry man....but that was awesome. Honestly...the sound made it look better (if you can make any sense out of that). The video or shots might have looked like...um....home movies....but the audio brought it up a notch....seriously. The lip syncing was on....they played it well. lol
 
"Or she dies..." ROFL!

Some of it could have been synced better but it goes to show what sound can do. Nice example. Thanks for sharing.

Audio and Visuals must match, yes. You can't get 100% with a nearly perfect half and crap on the other side.

Now why do so many people royally mess up the "easier" and more affordable half??? Beats the sh&# out of me.
 
bwwd said:
I doubt that, here is mission impossible 3 sound with minidv cam
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I AGREE


IMO sound must match picture quality
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Well obviously. (Unless the picture looks like garbage).

I'm just saying that viewers will forgive a lot picture wise, but dialog that sounds like it was recorded in your apartment's concrete stairway with a $2 key chain voice recorder .. will have them looking for a quick exit. Unfortunately I have seen way to many shorts, micro-budget features, etc. that sounded just like that. :)
 
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macgregor said:
I had some free time yesterday so i though it could be funny to summarize some mistakes people tend to do. This is a positive feedback. So we can all learn and do better. I myself have done some of this horrible things sometime.



1.- Never shoot with a shutter speed of 1/24, 1/25, or any combination of fps/360º shutter angle. You deserve to die in a fire for using 360º. Michael Mann deserves death (unless someone can proof he went blind in 2001).

2.- Magic Bullet Looks has some good and very interesting filters. But that probably is not going to turn your miniDV footage look Hollywood film. I´ve never seen any feature films that resemble the Magic bullet mojo. Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, Star Wars, Batman begins or Fight Club don´t look like any magic bullet preset.
Also, heavy color correction is going to ruin your film even more in 99% of cases. Stay natural. Natural is timeless.

3.- Highlights. Blown out highlights don't look like film. In fact, they don't look good at all. It's the number one difference between amateurs and pros. I've never seen anything good with overexposed highlights. If you think clipped shirts look ok to you, just keep walking to the end of the corridor, where it says Room101.

4.- Crushed blacks. This is the opposite. For the last 2-3 years, people tend to crush the shadows. So much that everything looks digital (in the cheap way). I've even seen some music videos shot on film that look like video because they crushed the blacks too much. Dark doesn't mean crushing your blacks. It's usually a wrong choice in gamma + a colorist has Parkinson's, bad taste, or a combination of both.

5.- Wrong gamma. Yep, most modern HDV cameras and HDslrs have default gammas that boost midtones as well as low highlights. This produces clean faces and bright images. Film doesn't look like this. In fact, reality doesn't look like this neither. Almost always, the number one reason why your footage looks like plastic or digital is because you need to lower your highlights with a curve (easy to do in Canon HDslrs).

6.- Cleanliness. Digital is too clean. Film is "dirty". Even the cleanest film scanned at 2K/HD resolution looks really bad. Grain everywhere. The truth is that we like this. If the image is too clean, it looks stationary and artificial. Add a bit of grain to your footage for a more natural and pleasant viewer experience (MB is good for this). BTW, noise is not grain.

7.- DOF. In the beginning, God created 1/3" chips. Everything was sharp. Everything was in focus. Close ups were boring because the background was too distracting. Today, it´s the opposite. With 35mm adapters, RED1 and HDdslrs everyone shoots wide open. Take it easy, blurriness hides your movie. I sometimes like to see sharp edges and a frame in focus. Keep in mind that most Hollywood movies are shot between T4 and T5.6 in normal light conditions. That is a good compromise between separating the elements of the scene and keeping an interesting composition. A close up of a girl with her nose out of focus because you are shooting with a 100mm at T1.3 is not pretty. Remember the rule: It might look sharp in your 3" screen. Believe me, it´ll be out of focus in the theater.




Bonus rule: Sound is usually the difference between good and bad movies.
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Macgregor, awesome and fun post.

I see that you love cinema as a whole and dedicate to it, that's why your films are awesome.

I also like the attention you give to sound... Sound design really makes great images pop and they stop being beautiful images and start being a cinematic experience we are all accostumed.

How's your K-10 (is it the name?) project going? Keep it up man.

I appreciate all your work.
 
Ian-T said:
Ha ha...I'm sorry man....but that was awesome. Honestly...the sound made it look better (if you can make any sense out of that). The video or shots might have looked like...um....home movies....but the audio brought it up a notch....seriously. The lip syncing was on....they played it well. lol
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I agree. The good audio made me actually care about what was going on. I was drawn in by the audio.
 
I cannot over emphasize how important sound is to a film. For my first film project involved a chase scene for a cine class. I had a dynamite sound track that I spent quite a bit of time on, cut to it and added efx, etc. (Back in the ‘60’s). After a round of applause during a class screening the instructor said, “Now let’s see it without sound”. He then proceeded to tear it apart for continuity, jump cuts, etc.
That left an indelible mark….. A good track can cover a multitude of sins.
 
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actors... hmm,johnny deep and christian bale didnt helped and public enemies doesnt look like film,looks like "making of" or behind the scenes.
Basically every behind the scene footage should look like motion picture when theres known actor visible ?Do behind the scenes look like actual films when you see the same scenes and famous actors ? It doesnt.
You dont need actors and acting,you can even make mtion picture without showing actors faces.
Most important is how your footage looks like.Then how it sounds like.
You can find plenty of good loking movies with bad acting but bad actors dont make the movie like minidv cam or something.Greatest actor in front of minidv cam wont help much if DP will fail.
I think that DP's are most underrated people in the history of film making.
You can show to people some takes from motion pictures without any actors on screen and they know that its motion picture not video camera.,they know that without seeing any acting.
 
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bwwd said:
actors... hmm,johnny deep and christian bale didnt helped and public enemies doesnt look like film,looks like "making of" or behind the scenes.
Basically every behind the scene footage should look like motion picture when theres known actor visible ?Do behind the scenes look like actual films when you see the same scenes and famous actors ? It doesnt.
You dont need actors and acting,you can even make mtion picture without showing actors faces.
Most important is how your footage looks like.Then how it sounds like.
You can find plenty of good loking movies with bad acting but bad actors dont make the movie like minidv cam or something.Greatest actor in front of minidv cam wont help much if DP will fail.
I think that DP's are most underrated people in the history of film making.
You can show to people some takes from motion pictures without any actors on screen and they know that its motion picture not video camera.,they know that without seeing any acting.
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Public enemies is so ridiculed for its cinematography, I just may think it will end up being one of those ahead of it's time films and people in the future will think it's brilliant. Haha, I mean it's happened before.

Ps dp's are extremely underated, but we are not the most. The writers take that award.
 
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