practicals how common for whole film

[lambert]

With girlfriend experience being talked about (TV) as of late, how common is it becoming to skip standard setups for natural. Also what are you leaving behind grip and lighting wise or do you still bring everything just in case.

 

[emretufekci]

I would think in most cases its a matter of budget to light the way you would like vs. less is more. However I have been watching The Knick and see that steven soderbergh who directs and DP the shows uses absolutely minimum lighting in most scenes.Except for a few large set pieces most lighting is minimum, camera work is handheld and framing and blocking seem to be spur of the moment. I enjoy the series but have a hard time getting past the harsh visuals.

I am sure we can find a lot of examples where very talented cinematographers have created fantastic visuals with the absolute minimum and also serve the story the best possible way. (For example look at the behind the scenes for The Prisoners)

I personally choose to have more available to me and light with my sources vs. available light, with enough experience and knowledge maybe one day I can grow up to be Roger Deakins.

 

[lambert]

Thanks Emre the behind the scenes of Prisoners was great to see how little lighting was used.

 

[emretufekci]

I should also stress that aside from the expertise of Deakins they are shooting on an Alexa and have high end grading sessions to aid their vision. Also check out Sicario, there is a great article on AC on it.

Additionally I very much enjoyed the Key and Peele thread for the same reason of Charles being able to reproduce very high end looks from different genres of film with a fraction of their budget.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Soderbergh is a bit uninspiring as DP - he knows what "works" and then stages the scenes using available light for what works - a very different experience when you have a director staging things the way he ants and then the DP has to augment the lighting to make it work.

In essence you predict the scene and then replace the existing lights with the ones you have more control over (or cause less issues with flicker or color spikes).

 

[lambert]

Thanks Patryk, I always enjoy your posts especially when they lean closer to the artists view versus the journeyman/craftsman which seems so prevalent on forums. Do you believe this style when executed by a dp/director is much faster / cheaper than traditional methods?

 

[Bruce Watson]

With girlfriend experience being talked about (TV) as of late, how common is it becoming to skip standard setups for natural. Also what are you leaving behind grip and lighting wise or do you still bring everything just in case.

Using ambient natural light can work. Shooting with just practicals can work. In 1975 Kubrick shot Barry Lyndon night scenes with just candles. Oh, and a box of custom f/0.7 lenses that Carl Zeiss had custom made for NASA's Apollo program. IIRC Kubrick had to modify the lenses and the cameras both so that he could use them for filming Barry Lyndon.

As sensors improve, they tend to become more sensitive and produce less noise. Yet, they still produce noise and they still need light. Worse, the damn things aren't human eyes, and they don't have the human brain behind them to perform real-time color balance depending on what part of the image you are looking at, nor a real-time aperture that can open up when you look in the shadow areas of the image.

So you should be realistic. If you shoot with 2700K tungsten A19 bulbs, you should be willing to live with a picture that's significantly starved of blue light. That is, increased blue channel noise especially in the shadows, loss of blue channel saturation, etc.. And if you starve the rest of the sensor of light, expect noise and color issues.

The alternative to this "avoid color grading and capture the image in camera exactly like you want the final print" noisy and desaturated look, is the "light properly, expose properly, and color grade for artistic effect" good color fidelity and smooth noiseless shadows look.

You can make either one work. Depends on what you value, and what you'll do to achieve it.

Me? I still bring the entire light and grip kit, because for me sensors still aren't good enough to see in the dark, and lighting so the audience can see what you want them to see still makes sense.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Thanks Patryk, I always enjoy your posts especially when they lean closer to the artists view versus the journeyman/craftsman which seems so prevalent on forums. Do you believe this style when executed by a dp/director is much faster / cheaper than traditional methods?

I direct/DP a lot lately and it's THOUGH. On one hand it's easy because you know exactly what will work (thus will be cheaper/faster) on the other hand you know that most creativity comes from two opposing forces fighting each other. The director stages the scene and DP suggest "simpler" solution, then director decides if indeed the simple solution is acceptable at the same time noticing something that he might have not noticed before - thus growing the original idea. This is powerful stuff as from two creative minds stronger works come out. When the "two creative minds" are stuck in one head you will ALWAYS go after simpler and more obvious solutions. I can't tell you how many times my wife (who sometimes co-directs and produces my work) would lean and whisper in me ear: "your shot ends up looking too pretty" (meaning devoid of ideas beyond eye candy) - this always is a great wake up call, you start telling yourself: "work harder, try to push your comfort zone".

 

[Jorn van Oostende]

Using practicals doesn't always mean cheaper or faster. I've been on jobs where it took days to change them all in the desired color temp.

 

[CharlesPapert]

Really good notes there Patryk. I have been "guilty" of doing what you described when I direct--it can be hard to let go of the visual when it may be preferable to do so. Good observation about Soderbergh's method.

I am reminded of a 48 hour film I did back when those were in their infancy, so we were shooting on DV. I asked the DP for a wide shot of a living room with an African-American actor crossing to look out of a window at night. He spent a fair amount of time lighting the room but it was pretty murky, especially when the actor was by the curtain. I asked him to add something to pick out the actor better. He started ordering a light that would have landed right in the shot, so I pointed that out to him right away. He looked at me blankly and ordered another light that would have done the same thing. As much as I wanted to quell my DP brain, I also had a lot of work left that day and he had chewed much of it up with his "leisurely" lighting already. After I pointed out that this second light would also be in the shot, he threw up his hands and said "where do you want me to put the light?" I took a deep breath and asked, can you think of any other way to get some light on this guy's face? He said, nope, you tell me how to do it. I then asked the actor to take two steps upstage, and suddenly the floor lamp that had been behind him was now playing light onto his face in just the right way and of course it looked perfectly natural.

There were a number of lessons in that story but for now let's just say that it helps to keep your eyes open and take advantage of practicals whenever they can help you, even if it is to hide things (the other week I stuck a little chunk of Literibbon on the back of a lampshade and it looked great).