City of God´s DP interesting technique

gumonstro

gumonstro

Well-known member
Take a look at what Fernando Meirelles, the director, says about Cesar Charlone, his DP:

As with City of God, Charlone designed his lighting to benefit from a great deal of manipulation during the DI phase. “He creates flat light on location to put just enough contrast in the negative to be able to work with it in post,” he says. “Most of the time his lighting is just changing bulbs. He'll use Kino Flos or even HMIs if he has to put light through a window, but he's very unobtrusive. Then, he'll spend a month in a DI suite really creating the look of the film scene by scene. His work is done in post more than on set.

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_fade_black_41/index.html

1- Do you guys have any experience with this kind of interior lighting, just changing the bulbs?

2- If so, what are the recommended bulbs?

3- Is there any article about this lighting technique?

4- What do you guys think about the 'don´t worry, do it in post' technique with video´s poor latitude?
 
gumonstro said:
Take a look at what Fernando Meirelles, the director, says about Cesar Charlone, his DP:

As with City of God, Charlone designed his lighting to benefit from a great deal of manipulation during the DI phase. “He creates flat light on location to put just enough contrast in the negative to be able to work with it in post,” he says. “Most of the time his lighting is just changing bulbs. He'll use Kino Flos or even HMIs if he has to put light through a window, but he's very unobtrusive. Then, he'll spend a month in a DI suite really creating the look of the film scene by scene. His work is done in post more than on set.

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_fade_black_41/index.html

1- Do you guys have any experience with this kind of interior lighting, just changing the bulbs?

2- If so, what are the recommended bulbs?

3- Is there any article about this lighting technique?

4- What do you guys think about the 'don´t worry, do it in post' technique with video´s poor latitude?
Click to expand...


Change your bulbs to 3200k if your shooting tungsten stock or 5600k when shooting daylight, so when the film records it it will record white light because you want to manipulate your colors in post and film and video both record white best, where if you look at the characteristics curves in some films you will see that some films record XXX color poorly, meaning whatever color that doesn't record well you will get noise or grain in it.

You make your image fairly flat so you can record all the information you can. You don't really need to do that on 35mm because you can pull detail out of a image, but its better to do if flat if you know what your doing. Say you have a shadow that is pure black with no detail but black in it... well on 35mm you can manipulated the film and pull the detail back out, or an explosion that blows out when recorded, on 35mm you can bring the detail back out from the flame. On digital you cant do this because it clips the recorded signal at white and black to make it legal to broadcast over TV.

I think it is a great way to shoot it if you know what your doing. Its probably the best way if you are really going to take your time in CC. City of God is a great example.
 
Yes, Picasso learned to paint naturalistically before he moved on to his own unique style. This guy clearly knows his stuff, but is modifying his technique to create a new visual style. It's a cool idea: light for the edit.

That said, lighting entirely with practicals sounds light a nightmare. At least you don't have to worry about unmotivated light sources. (That was a joke...sort of.)
 
The technique is a simple enough one, and does produce results.....but.

As it's done with the intention to rework in post, it's quite impracticle to try to imitate, esp. with no background in lighting to understand how, what or why.

gumonstro, learn the basics first, but play with the idea, you probably won't get it, but you will learn along the way.
 
i wonder how bad the dailies looked... anyone seen the outtakes of amelie (non-graded)? super nasty! it doesn't matter, of course, if you come out with a piece of work that is of quality, i am sure da Vinci would use better brushes if he had access to them...
 
With a compressed format like DV, you're leaving a lot of your image at your location. So it's not really practical to pretend you're capturing everything and you'll "light" in post. With a lack of data to work with and without Power Windows or an equivalent in your grading system--you can only crudely approximate that kind of technique. I agree, light it correctly when you shoot.
 
Good point Barry. I also think that getting photography done in camera always look better when we are working in DV, but that asks for a really nice test! I had an idea...
 
Thank you guys for sharing your experiences. Though I agree with you, when I asked about this different lighting technique, I was talking more about achieving a 'natural' look than anything else. I´m talking about films like "Eternal Sunshine...", "The Edukators" (Varicam), "9 Songs" (which was shot with a DVX100), that have this 'natural' look. There´s also a short here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=24233&highlight=george+clooney

The guy used only light coming from the windows. Yet, the images are beatiful.
 
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