SeeingEyeBlog

Yesterday Was a Lie is featured on Apple’s trailer site! That means it has potentially had more views today than all the views it has had since it was released.

I’m glad black & white cinematography is becoming more and more accepted. It should be available to filmmakers at every budget level as a creative choice, just as it has been in the past. In fact, the only other piece I’ve had featured on Apple was also B&W. I could go my whole career shooting black and white exclusively. Directors/producers, contact me if you have an upcoming black & white project!

I updated my Cinematography Reel page with an embedded playlist. Now, instead of linking to different pages for each reel, I have a single page where all my reels reside. Plus, they are now truly streaming rather than pseudo-streaming.

I’m using Flash Media Server and Flowplayer for the embedded flash player. Just watch out if you click the flowplayer logo if you are in full screen mode. I’m using an inline frame, and it will load Flowplayer’s website inside that iframe. Oh well. Soon I’ll upgrade to the non-free version that has no logo.

The next step will be to change the grey playlist buttons to something more fitting for my site. Maybe white on black.

Tonight I went to a presentation for the new Vision3 250D 5207 film stock, at Kodak’s Hollywood headquarters. My favorite part was the fact that the grain structure is much smaller than in previous film stocks. I think they said there was a 20% reduction, maybe more. Basically in non-technical terms, one of the things this means is that you can enlarge the film much more before you notice any grain. This is good news for 16mm productions, where the grain is already magnified more than on 35mm, on the same screen size.

But I was more impressed with the knowledge that I can now push-process the film much more, basically enlarging the grain itself before noticing any difference in the signal-to-noise in the shadows. This is true for theatrical-bound pictures, but is even more helpful for an HD finish, where the maximum likely screen size is smaller than a theatrical release (and therefore less magnification). Another reason to shoot on film, especially if you don’t have the time to light the crap out of it. One cameraman (didn’t catch his name) mentioned he had shot a couple rolls of the new stock, pushed it 2 stops, and it still held up without any noticeable grain. I think he was looking at his dailies on HD.

I love low light situations so much that I am building an on-set oil lamp to use as a key light (don’t tell the fire marshall). Maybe a few iPhones thru some thick paper as fill. See my posts on my recent feature Broken Windows for details on my low-light fetish. I’m just so excited, because Broken Windows was 16mm Vision2 7218, processed normal, and it looked great (telecine to D5). A little soft focus-wise, but the lighting was just where I wanted it to be. Vision3 has even smaller grain size, so the same shot captured on 35mm 5219 in anamorphic would give me tons of room to push. In fact, it seems to me that it totally remove the stigma that anamorphic lenses are too slow to be shot under low lighting conditions. If you’re not afraid of pushing 2 stops, a 2.8 becomes what was once 1.4. Plus, most Hawk anamorphics open to a T2.2 (Sorry Panavision, I love you more). For the right project, it would be a perfect combination.

The 250D will let me push into the evening, after magic hour and well into blue dusk hour. Now I just need a set of Arri Master Primes with my name on them. T1.3 is your friend.

Check out this music video that was created out of the documentary footage I shot for the upcoming Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 Blu-Ray/DVD. I followed composer Bear McCreary and his team while they recorded the music for the finale. Enjoy.

Among the other new developments in my life and work is the trend towards color timing. I got into color work a few years ago, through watching a colleague and friend on his own color timing jobs. I realized that with an all-digital workflow (particularly with the RED), there is temptation at every step–zoom & reframe a shot here, use the wrong codec there–to either disenfranchise the cinematographer at best, or cause irreversable image degradation at worst. It was clear to me that I needed to be my own colorist. I would have no one to blame but myself, and it would assure me of committing to projects on which I actually want to spend the extra effort. Luckily I was ahead of the curve and had a couple years of practice long before Apple acquired Silicon Color and democratized everything. But Apple’s acquisition happened at the perfect time–just as two features I had shot were going into online/color. We got a great deal at a post house whose FCP/Color room was well below the radar compared to their normal da Vinci suite. There, I color timed Yesterday Was a Lie (F900) and Broken Windows (S16). Currently, I have an upcoming feature which will follow a similar DI process to Laser Pacific’s inDI, with little old me at the helm.

An oldschool colorist may not agree that the software solutions are worth their salt. But I don’t care much, and here’s why. A discerning eye can tell the difference between a print finished photochemically versus one put through the digital intermediate process, and most discerning eyes will usually agree that the photochemical finish looks sharper with better detail, yet the DI gives you far more control (which, psychologically, can make up for sloppiness on set and cause a false dilation of the good/fast/cheap triangle). So my point is, we’re clearly taking a step backwards, but technology is catching up fast, bringing with it many steps forward. This step backwards is the time we as cinematographers need to change the game. There is so much control available to us in the color suite, we need to master it all. It’ll enable us to truly preserve those beautiful houses of cards we so delicately assemble on set. Learn to color time your own work, and join the movement to make “DP/Colorist” a commonplace term among producers, directors and post supervisors. That way, when a DI looks as good as photochemical finishing, we will retain our mantle of image quality shepherd. Maybe some of us can even pioneer this at the union bargaining tables next time. I would love to get a clause in my contract for my color timing efforts.