Manure

[David Mullen ASC]

I've started my new weekly blog about shooting "Manure" on the RED ONE over at Cinematography.Com. Here's a copy of the text:

I arrived back in town on Saturday from shooting “Jennifer’s Body” for nine weeks and began my five days of prep before I begin shooting “Manure” for the Polish Brothers next week.

This is a moderately small union shoot with a very ambitious multi-character script to be shot in only 25 days. And if that wasn’t hard enough, with dozens of scenes on the call sheet each day, all but a few shots will be shot on stages, including a lot of day “exterior” scenes. I’m dealing with a lot of sets to be lit with a minimal amount of lights and crew people to do it (but then, Clark Hunter, our production designer, is dealing with building a lot of sets in a minimal amount of space and turning them around day after day). This is in stark comparison to my last movie where I had more or less the correct size crew, equipment package, and schedule to pull it off. So I expect this shoot to be a tough one -- but creatively exciting.

Being a comedic tale about the struggles of old-time manure salesmen competing with new aggressive modern fertilizer salesmen, set in the early 1960’s, the Polish Brothers, in a twist on the all-grey color scheme of “Northfork”, have imagined this movie as being only in brown tones. And I mean literally, down to skies and plants and food, etc. being painted in shades of brown.

The movie will star Billy Bob Thornton as the lead manure salesman and Tea Leoni as the woman who inherits the ailing manure company from her father. Kyle MacLachlan will play the lead fertilizer salesman.

We are shooting at Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, just down the street from the stages where “Big Love” is beginning their third season of production, a job I turned down out of loyalty to the Polish Brothers.

The other twist is that the Polish Brothers have gotten independent financing for both this movie and a second one, to begin shooting only two weeks after this one wraps. That one is called “Stay Cool” and is a throwback to a 1980’s John Hughes comedy, about a high school reunion. To be shot mostly on location.

So I plan on being very tired for the next three months…

Having enjoyed shooting on the F900 for “Jackpot” back in 2000, the Polish Brothers felt that these two small indie features would be a good opportunity to shoot digitally again. They asked me for a rundown on current digital choices. I sort of narrowed the list down to what I’d like to try out these days, from the new Panasonic HPX3000, to the Sony F23, the Panavision Genesis, and the RED ONE. I listed the pros and cons of each. They decided to go with the RED ONE, based partly on the ability to buy the cameras outright for the production company they are forming with their investor/co-producer, an expense that doesn’t have to be part of the movie’s budget. I warned them that the workflow was a bit new and under development, and there were stories that they heard about various bugs that I couldn’t deny, but they were willing to take a risk with me. This is one of the advantages of working with the Polish Brothers, that they trust me and they are willing to take risks with me, technically and creatively. On other productions, I’d be more likely to push a tried-and-true method just in order to not be blamed if things went wrong. With them, I can propose shooting in anamorphic, doing a skip-bleach process, whatever seems right for the movie or interesting artistically, visually. And being an independent production, there’s no studio that has to sign-off on everything we do.

So the big downside to this is basically that I’ve only had a few hours with the RED ONE in prep to get to know it, on top of the general lack of prep I’ve had on this movie. Knowing that a lot of important decisions would have to be made in advance while I was shooting up in Vancouver, especially since we are buying a lot of the camera gear, I suggested that the production hire DP Jim Mathers (founder of the Digital Cinema Society) to prep the movie for me, and then serve as 2nd Unit DP once we start shooting. Jim has already shot two RED features and owns a RED camera. Jim, in turn, suggested hiring Conrad Hunziker as a B-camera operator – Conrad has experience with the RED and will help the rest of us get familiar with the camera.

We are renting the rest of the camera gear, including Zeiss Ultra Primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms, from The Camera House. Theo Pingarelli will be A-cam operator and Marcus Lopez will be A-cam 1st AC. We have a 2-camera RED package (with a back-up third body) but, due to budget, there won’t be a B-camera 2nd AC, just a Camera PA.

The tight budget has made a lot of things harder than they really should be, starting with lighting the sets. We have a huge day exterior set inside a soundstage, somewhat bigger than the backyard set in “Big Love”. As a form of comparison, that set on “Big Love” took three weeks of rigging to hang 150 spacelights, plus put up cyc lights, four Dinos, four 20K’s, four 9-lights, and a lot of sky pans. Well, everything I proposed to light this larger set was struck down as too expensive or too time-consuming, manpower-intensive to rig – like hanging 250 spacelights. It was frustrating because it wasn’t my decision to make the space so big, I just was trying to light it for a daytime look. My demands were all reasonable, just beyond the budget, which had seriously underestimated the amount of lighting that all these sets would need. For example, we have a second soundstage with another day exterior set that is half the size of the large one. We ended up lighting the main stage with about 20 Kino Blanket Lights, plus lighting balloons along the perimeter to light the cyc. Since the RED prefers daylight-balance over tungsten, I decided, since I was not using spacelights anyway, to use daylight Kino tubes and HMI balloons. For my hard sunlight effects, I have tungsten 12-lights (for a warm sun effect) and 18K HMI’s hung near the corners of the set and some more 18K’s in the middle of the long stretch of the stage. The stage doesn’t really have greenbeds, just a few catwalks and a lot of ceiling beams & rafters, so my lights are hanging a bit lower than I wanted, limited by the rafters, cutting into the cyc painting area, to the dismay of the production designer. The balloons also cut into the top of the cyc a little – but they were cheaper to get a deal on than hanging Lumapanels or more Kinos. But at least those would have been more flush to the ceiling.

Kino Blanket lights (minus the Lt. Grid Cloth and balloons around the perimeter):
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/kinoblanket.jpg

A test of the HMI balloon:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/balloonHMI.jpg


I am rating the RED ONE at 320 ASA. Even with Light Grid covering each individual Blanket Light, I am getting nearly an f/4 from all the Kinos above, which is great. I can switch them to low-output mode or switch off individual tubes when I want less from the overhead softlight.

We are shooting with Build 15 loaded in the cameras (Build 16 comes too late for this production but maybe the next one in July will use it). 4K RAW 2:1 mode, framed for cropping to 2.40 : 1. Since everything is painted in shades of brown, and all the clothing is also brown, I don’t have to do much in-camera or post manipulation to the colors to get this desaturated brown effect, it happens naturally (i.e. it already looks manipulated.) We are going for a softer look, so I will be using some diffusion. In this case, I am trying out the new Schneider Classic Blacks, a combination of Classic Softs and the #1/8 Black Frost. We may also do some digital diffusion in post. Right now, Plaster City in Hollywood is handling our dailies workflow.

We shot a RED test on the main stage this Thursday. Because we were still finalizing the equipment deals, I only had the big lights hung above to light the test, plus a few small lights on the floor that Jim Mathers loaned us. I tested both the warm strong backlit effect and just the soft Kino overheads alone for a cloudy-day look. The set is somewhat stylized, so I have some flexibility to stylize the lighting, which is necessary anyway since I have to be creative with less, essentially.

I took this Nikon still photo of Mark Polish in costume under just the overhead soft Kinos (this is not a RED frame):

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure3.jpg

This is with a little post softening using my crude Photoshop Elements skills; it’s somewhat indicative of the general look we’re going for. The set isn’t quite finished, it’s just a test:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure5.jpg

These stills are rather compressed for web publication, sorry.

We looked at the RED test footage over at PlasterCity, in 2K projection in a D.I. theater. It looked great, I thought, though the conversion to Rec 709 for viewing caused some red channel noise to appear in the shadows if you weren't careful while color-correcting. The dynamic range was nice; it handled some bright backlighting I was doing. Seems better in that regards than any HD camera I've used so far. The resolution was great, even with the Classic Black diffusion. We also looked at some 3K slow-motion footage that seemed to match the 4K stuff pretty well.

Obviously this is not going to be a normal-looking movie so don't expect it to show-off just how sharp or richly-colored a RED image can be... maybe on the next RED movie that follows this one, I don't have that look locked down yet, but it's a contemporary story in real locations.

[Brian Ferguson]

Very cool pre-production preview! The look is amazing - it sort of reminds me of Lemony Snikett's "Series of Unfortunate Events" look forward to seeing the product.

Brian Ferguson

[RFK]

Thanks for sharing David...

[Bruce Allen]

Looks awesome - have fun David! Thanks for the pics! Should make quite a painterly end product indeed...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Shawn Booth]

Thank you David for the behind-the-scenes pics and the post.

[Hans von Sonntag]

Looks like they need a lot of manure to get the desert green...

It's always inspiring to see how people st up their sets. Thanks a lot.

Hans

[Jason Ing]

Amazing you can DP a movie AND blog! Looking forward to reading more. Thanks David!

[Sanjin Jukic]

Thanks for sharing David.

Looks nice and pretty ol' Hollywood style.

Looking forward to read more about it...

[Nick Wolf]

How exciting! Looks spectacular & very well thought out, nice challenge to sink your teeth into...Bookmarked.


Break a leg!



DogDay

[Chris Gearhart]

I really appreciate your willingness not to hoard your expertise, David. This was a great read, and a cool shoot.

[Rudi Herbert]

David,

Can we hope, or politely ask for, that you post all of your subsequent entries to this thread as well, for those of us who are not subscribed or don't visit Cinematography.com? That would be most excellent!

[number6]

This-looks-like-FUN! Hope you will duplicate your blog here, or link to where it is posted.

edit: just realized i get the same feeling from this I felt when I watched Burt Lancaster and Kathryn Hepburn in Rainmaker.

[Steve Sherrick]

David,

This is great that you'll be doing this blog. I am curious to see your results, especially given the challenges that you outlined.

What is your video village setup? How will you be judging focus? I would imagine that you will use the EVF, with video village loading footage and double checking on high res monitors.

Can you go into a bit more detail about what you were seeing during the screening of test footage. Was the noise you were seeing very specific to REC709?

Thanks David, look forward to seeing the film!

[David Mullen ASC]

We bought two 24" JVC HD monitors for video village, so I'll be seeing focus better than the AC and operators... We'll have the EVF's, etc.

I had a very warm (full orange) and hot backlight on a scene with a bounce board to catch it and bounce it into the shadows, and I noticed a lot of chunky red noise in the darkest shadows on one angle. We color-corrected it out by pulling down the red saturation. It's a phenomenon I see a lot on the F900 when using the Rec 709 mode -- Rec 709 has a very boosted red chroma level, so often reds go unnaturally saturated and noisy, aggravated by HDCAM compression and color-subsampling. What I saw reminded me of that, so I'm assuming it's a problem with the Rec 709 display matrix more than what's in the RAW files, but it's something to watch out for when color-correcting, just in case is shows up on the film-out later. This is why it is critical to color-correct something meant for theatrical projection on a large screen, to catch noise problems that creep in from certain color-correction decisions, so at least you can change your mind or do something to fix noise problems.

I have yet to test the noise level of tungsten-lit scenes, which we have about 20% of in this movie. Jim Mathers, who has shot two RED features, feels it is not really a problem, the PlasterCity folks say there is some increased noise when shooting tungsten but it's not bad. I didn't get any blue filters so I may stick some 1/4 blue gel on lights when possible, but it won't always be possible.

[Steve Sherrick]

David, I highly recommend the TV Logic monitors. I just installed one and they are really good. You can get them precisely calibrated, and there is an ND glass filter that you can attach to the front which gets the blacks a little richer. If it's just pure resolution and focus issues you are looking at, then maybe it's not such an issue. I'm sure the JVCs are fine. Some folks in here have them and seem pretty satisfied.

I have noticed a similar thing in terms of the REC709. Thanks for going into more detail on that. I'm hoping to do a test next week with Tungsten and blue filters just to get some comparison.

Thanks again for keeping us posted about your experience with RED.

[Jon Schellenger]

Thank you David!!!

Please keep posting your experience as you use the RED. I am very curious to see what you are using on set and to see how you use the RED camera.

Again- Thank you!

[Craig Meadows]

This is a great thread, thank you for sharing David. Can't wait to hear more about your experience with RED and this film.

[Joel Kaye]

Here's to hoping you have a great RED experience! Thanks for the blog. Very educational as usual.

[Jason Ing]

A brave movie title considering what the critics can do with it if the movie doesn't review well. :)

[David Mullen ASC]

A brave movie title considering what the critics can do with it if the movie doesn't review well. :)

We're thinking of holding a crew contest to see who can predict the worst lines that the reviewers will use referencing the title and subject matter. I'm just surprised that Variety missed the boat when announcing that Billy Bob Thornton was doing our movie, it could have been headlined "THORNTON STEPS INTO MANURE" or something along those lines.

[Joel Kaye]

We're thinking of holding a crew contest to see who can predict the worst lines that the reviewers will use referencing the title and subject matter.

Endless.

but hopefully it'll be more like
"It's true, Billy Bob's sh!t doesn't stink!"

than
"Better put on your hipwaders before you go."

[Jason Ing]

lol. :)

[Tom Lowe]

Sounds like a great project. I laughed out loud just at the log line description in your post. :)

Are the Brothers talking about doing a lot of green screen for this feature, or maybe the next one?

[David Mullen ASC]

Sounds like a great project. I laughed out loud just at the log line description in your post. :)

Are the Brothers talking about doing a lot of green screen for this feature, or maybe the next one?

This one will have a fair amount of bluescreen, to build digitally what we can't afford to build on stage, to avoid too many real day exterior shots that we can't control and make look like the stage work. For example, we have a parade of cars driving into a giant manure factory, thru some huge gates (ala Xanadu in "Citizen Kane") that will involve bluescreen. Will probably be nailing a 30'x60' bluescreen, with 12'x20' bluescreens on the sides, to the exterior wall of our soundstage to get some cars driving towards the factory to be created later. We will also be faking a lot of car driving interior scenes on a bluescreen stage (the efx company wants us to shoot bluescreen instead of greenscreen for some reason.)

[justanaveragejoe]

That bastard BBT owes me beer.

Good luck with the shoot, and don't break too many legs. But if you do, I know several good lawyers.

Over and out.

[Paul Leeming]

....the efx company wants us to shoot bluescreen instead of greenscreen for some reason.
That's weird. Could you pursue them for a reason? From all accounts Red works best with greenscreen due to being a bayer sensor with twice the amount of green pixels to blue. Are they aware of this?

Cheers for the blog!

Paul

[Koa M. Stone]

Thanks for sharing David,

You'll find Conrad to be very helpful, he came out and helped me a few weeks ago on a feature I just wrapped last week. You won't need a DIT/tech if you have him there:). The test image looks gorgeous, looking forward to it!

Ryo

[Jens Jakob Thorsen]

Thanks for taking time out to share this....You keep on giving. A true sign of coolness. In my almost 20 years of doing this job I have met many generous colleagues, and I try to be one myself. After all thats how I got where I am, Through other peoples generousity and willingness to share. But no one as ever tried so hard and used so much time as you.
Its a true pleasure.
BTW did you consider a chocolate 1 filter? I shot a anamorphic Nescafé commercial on RED with that filter and a 1/4 BPM. Great dusty brown look.
I can provide R3D files if you wish to.
Best
Jens Jakob Thorsen D.F.F.
DP Denmark

[Daniel Reichenbach]

The picts look great and I love BBT, one of my favorite actors. Love this kind of stage work where you don't want to copy the reality, reminds me of Dustin Hoffman and Malcovich in The death of a salesman with DOP Ballhaus.

[M Most]

That's weird. Could you pursue them for a reason? From all accounts Red works best with greenscreen due to being a bayer sensor with twice the amount of green pixels to blue. Are they aware of this?


It's not just about resolution and matte extractions. It's about spill (especially with large screens), set design and wardrobe considerations, and other things. Many VFX supervisors - myself included - often prefer blue for these and other reasons.

[James Mathers]

Since I helped David prep this movie, and many of the VFX shots will fall into my purview as 2nd Unit DP, I’ll pipe in here. The VFX company did express their preference for Blue over Greenscreen; in fact, they specified Digital Blue over Chroma Blue. However, knowing that the lead actress, Tia Leoni is blonde, I was already pursuing this option, since it has been my experience that it is much easier to control contamination using Blue with blonde actors. I have always assumed that it is due to those two colors being further removed from each other on the color spectrum.

I would also like to add that, although I don’t usually shoot 2nd Unit, I am very much looking forward to it on this movie in order to have the chance to work with David. I have been highly impressed with his work, and as evidenced by his extensive writing here, he is very willing to share his knowledge.

Since I came up the ladder working as DP on small projects, rather than the Assistant/Operator route, I never had the chance to work with, or learn from other DPs. One of my missions on this project is to educate David and his crew who have not worked with the RED before, but I think I will also have the chance to learn quite a bit from the experience, and am very much looking forward to it.<p>

James Mathers
Cinematographer
Studio City, CA
Digital Cinema Society
RED Owner #30

[Steve Sherrick]

Jim,

This seems like a great paring and I think you will compliment each other well on this film.

I have found that no matter how much I learn, I still know so very little. That's why I enjoy these forums, and other resources as it fulfills my thirst for knowledge.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm very fortunate to have a DP of Jim's experience, knowledge, and talent working on a small project like this.

As for Chocolate filters, looking at the test of the basic set & costumes in normal lighting and filtration, like here:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure3.jpg

I think I can get away without Chocolate filters. However, I do plan on using them for any real exterior work, to help match better.

[Paul Leeming]

Thanks for the info on blue vs green screen. I guess as long as the bluescreen is lit sufficiently to lift out of the lower blue channel noise floor it shouldn't be a big problem.

Cheers!

Paul

[Babu Kantamneni]

David,
Check your PM,
Thx,
Babu

[M Most]

However, knowing that the lead actress, Tia Leoni is blonde, I was already pursuing this option, since it has been my experience that it is much easier to control contamination using Blue with blonde actors.

That's one of the "other things" I was referring to. I had the same issue when I started doing shots with Kristen Bell on "Veronica Mars." They had tried to do some car shots with green screen and had problems. I was sent down to try and make the situation better, and the first thing I did was replace the green screen with blue. The result was far better mattes and far fewer spill problems, particularly on day exteriors (they would often shoot the car shots outside the stage).

[Sidney L. Plaut]

Jens,

it was you who shot that Nescafe spot "shot on RED" that circulates around the forums? - the spot that goes backwards halfway through?

It looked fantastic!


P.S -- jeg ku godt have skrevet det på dansk, men det er nok lid uhøfligt...

[Chris Parker]

wicked shit david...

[Christoffer Glans]

The perspective feels a bit off with that lens... what are the final focal range going to be?

[David Mullen ASC]

We won't be able to shoot the movie with just one focal length, or in one direction. That shot was a 21mm on the Optimo zoom.

[Christoffer Glans]

But I assume you will shoot with normal to tele if that backdrop is used?

But at the same time I like the surreal feeling that image has :)

[paul engstrom]

Hi David,

strange and happy coincidence--I just watched Northfork last night. Weird seeing this post today! I really enjoyed the look for Northfork, I thought it worked really well with the story.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with 'Manure'. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.

p

[C.H.Haskell]

David, thanks for sharing and look forward to hearing about the rest of your shoot. Cheers.

[J.R. Hud]

Thank you David for being so giving with your experience and knowledge.

I worked 1st AD on my first RED project this past weekend and the footage from the shoot looks amazing. Good luck on your shoot, I'm sure it'll be awesome.

[David Mullen ASC]

Since Monday was a holiday, we just finished a four-day first week.

We basically have three soundstages at Melody Ranch to work with. Stage C is taken up with the big farm landscape set. Stage B is filled with structures, wall to wall, from houses to motels to diners, sort of bumping into each other. Stage A is empty for now and will end up as our bluescreen set for shooting driving interiors. We are alternating between stages C and B more or less to give the art department a little time to swap out or alter sets on the opposite stage. It’s a relatively small crew and equipment package to handle all of these sets and movements between stages.

Because the RED prefers daylight-balance, I’ve been lighting all the day scenes with HMI’s, daylight Kinos, a Xenon, plus some tungsten lamps for a warm late afternoon color. It’s a little unusual to be lighting a soundstage shoot this way and while on the one hand, using HMI’s has given me more stop than I’m used to for stage work, the soundman isn’t necessarily happy to have a stage full of singing and buzzing lampheads and ballasts… not to mention the fan on the 2K Xenon whenever I use that. Doesn’t help that most of the interior sets have only partial to no ceilings. And because the RED has a pretty decent color HD monitor image on set, I’m seeing all the subtle color variations between HMI heads and Kino tubes on these hot sets. When everything is painted in shades of tan and brown, you can see any green creep into a light.

Speaking of working stop, most of the time I’ve been around an f/4, which is nice. The sharpness of the HD output of the RED combined with 35mm depth of field means -- like with the Genesis and other 35mm-sensor cameras -- everyone on set gets to see every focus mistake, so it’s very frustrating for the focus puller. I can see the focus, even at an f/4, on a close-up drift through different eyelashes, so I can definitely see when it is even an inch off. Which is good and bad, good in the sense I can catch mistakes when shooting and not later in post. Bad in that it makes life hell for the AC while shooting close-ups. The operator isn’t much help in these circumstances because the image on the onboard monitors and isn’t big enough to see these problems, not like I can see on the 17” HD monitors I have back at video village.

The RED ONE has behaved pretty well so far, though not problem-free. We lost time on Day One dealing with the battery swapping and constant powering down. It seemed after lighting these big sets with the camera on, so I could see an image, and then doing a rehearsal, the camera battery would die or begin to fade on Take One, requiring a time-consuming battery swap and rebooting. Plus our occasional B-camera suffered a bug that never went away, a tendency to not record when you hit the record button, or even shut itself down when you hit the record button. We had to switch to our C-camera, which seems to work fine, just as the A-camera does, and send the B-camera back for servicing. By Day Two, we seemed to have the timing of the battery swapping much better timed, and I rarely even noticed when they had to switch RED drives on the cameras after they shot thirty minutes or so of footage. But I can’t wait for our hot-swappable 2-battery rig that we purchased to show up. The camera really should have some sort of internal power that allowed you to swap batteries without powering down, not when it takes 90 seconds to reboot plus then rejam the slates.

Seeing an HD image on set is wonderful for me. And judging from how I’m lighting and exposing, the dynamic range is pretty decent actually, better than the F900 but not as good as film. But how it burns out is much more graceful and less artifacty than most HD cameras look when something clips. The live 720P debayered image does have some noise and pattern problems that’s not in the recordings. And looking at the RAW files, which have a somewhat flat and murky look before color-correction, the impression I get is that the camera really isn’t faster than 320 ASA; in other words, the sensor seems to like more exposure as long as you don’t go nuts with the clipping at the other end. It’s a little like film in that respect; giving the recording more shadow information helps lift low-end detail out of that murky noisy bottom. So I go back & forth everyday in regards to exposure. I use my light meter for a base reading and then adjust the f-stop based on the highlights, but I keep questioning whether to go up or down a little to either protect highlights or pull up the shadow detail above the noise floor. The AC’s are getting used to me changing my mind on the final f-stop by one-third of a stop all the time.

When shooting film, one aspect I have noticed is that it seems to constantly have buried areas of information in color and exposure that you can dig up or pull down when fiddling with the image in post. With digital, you see what you recorded when looking at the converted RAW files or a Log image, and there’s nothing there hidden, you see what you’ll have to work with in post. So on the one hand, you have greater control with digital images all through shooting and then in post, but on the other hand, you don’t have the same flexibility to work around mistakes as you do with film. Films constantly saves your butt, digital requires that you get things right more or less. But digital also allows this to happen because of how you can look at images on the set. However, when you are rushed, film does tend to give you the comfort factor of knowing that there’s stuff on the negative that can be played around with in post if you accidentally misexposed. This is mostly due to the greater dynamic range of film combined with a lack of data compression; as digital cameras get better in this regards, the more and more shooting digitally will be similar to shooting on film.

But I digress…

Day One was spent on Stage C shooting a montage of “Rose Manure” salesmen visiting different farms, and in one scene, discovering the invasion of the evil “Milagro Fertilizer” salesman. Many scenes were backlit with the tungsten 12-lights I had hung at the top of the backing, for a late afternoon look. The soft overhead fill came from the daylight Kino blanket lights. Sometimes the actors were deeper in the stage than the 12-lights could really reach, so I used a 5K Molebeam projector to backlight them and let the 12-lights backlight the ground beyond them. But since the sets actually touch the cyc painting, the transition from ground to sky always went a little dark, partially because I discovered that the more I burned out the sky backing, almost to the clip point, the more realistic the effect was, as if the sky were the brightest thing on stage (otherwise, the sky is painted in almost the same shade of brown as the sky.) So I ended up using HMI’s from off camera to try and punch up the sky. And by gelling the HMI’s, I could give the sky a warm bias if I wanted. Those HMI’s were flagged off of the bottom of the cyc, and I tried to rake the edges of the landscape with small PAR’s, but it was hard to not hit the cyc at the same time. I did the invasion scene without backlights for more of an overcast day look.

Day Two and Three was spent on Stage B shooting a montage of the Rose Manure salesmen now trying their hand at selling other products in suburbia. Then at the end of Day Three, we moved back to Stage C to shoot a small scene in a farmhouse kitchen set.

Day Four was on Stage C shooting a long sequence around one farmhouse, in front and then inside the house. I decided it might be interesting to play the sequence as starting in late afternoon and ending right after sunset when the characters re-emerge from the farmhouse. So the sky backing started out being lit with half-orange color and then full-orange for the sunset, plus I backlit the first part but went with only a soft glow from the sky on the ground for the last part, plus played the foreground darker against the sky by the end.

We’re using Zeiss Ultra Primes plus a few Optimo zooms on rare occasion (I’m not much of a fan of zooms.) Everything is composed for cropping the 2:1 4K image to 2.39. The final look will be quite diffused, though I’m using fairly light diffusion filters on the camera and planning on augmenting the effect in post. The wide shots are softened with only a Smoque #1. Then the medium wides are softened with a Classic Black #1/8, and the closer shots with a Classic Black #1/4, the most common filter we are using. For our leading actress, I’m sometimes using the Classic Black #1/2 to glamorize her a little more. I really like the look of the Classic Black filters, which is a #1/8 Black Frost mixed with whatever degree of Classic Soft you want. We’re using some smoke on our interior scenes. I want the overall effect to have something of a storybook quality, a warm fable of Americana.

[David Mullen ASC]

(cont.)

The RED footage is being backed up to RAID’s in the production office and then backed up again at the post house (PlasterCity Digital), I believe to RAID’s and an LTO tape. So far, no problems, the footage seems to be traveling down the pipeline fine.

I’ve discovered that a RAW shooting and workflow process is different than both film and videotape. I guess that should be obvious, but it does have some advantages and disadvantages, just as film does and videotape does. Full daily 4K rendering just isn’t possible with large amounts of footage when shooting a feature, so we’re seeing the images at different levels of resolution and different qualities of debayering. On set, we see a temporary 720P image; editorial will get ProRes HD images. We’re also trying to get some DVD dailies made but the quality so far hasn’t been impressive, partly because you get used to looking at HD quality on the set. My main concern always is if I’m exposing properly and whether I should be altering my contrast ratios at all because I try to push myself to be more bold and striking with contrast when possible – the safe thing would be to just use a lot of soft light all the time.

Here are some Nikon snapshots I took, softened in Photoshop using a Gaussian Blur overlay.

The first shows the warm backlit field look:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure27.jpg

This is the field lit for a hazy overcast look:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure28.jpg

This is an interior scene where Mark Polish pretends to be a priest selling bibles to suburban housewives (the shaft of light is from a 2K Xenon):
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure29.jpg

This is the farmhouse kitchen interior scene:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure30.jpg

[David Mullen ASC]

(cont.)

Here is a wide shot of the farmhouse lit for late afternoon:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure31.jpg

This is another scene with Billy Bob Thornton trying to sell vacuum cleaners to housewives (the shafts of light are from two HMI Source-4's -- the joke is that he dumps manure on her carpet to demo the vacuum cleaner so I wanted the floor to glow with whiteness):
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure32.jpg

Here is a shot of the soundstage, showing the lights being used. Some of the Kino blanket lights overhead are turned off to kill the worst offending reflections in the car windshield, a major problem:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure set1.jpg

[Jason Francois]

Thanks for all the information and updates David.

Your artistry is truly inspirational, to-say-the-least.

[Tom Lowe]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure31.jpg


Ha, I love it.

This may be a stupid question, but why are you shooting on batteries rather than AC?

[Steve Sherrick]

Ha, I love it.

This may be a stupid question, but why are you shooting on batteries rather than AC?

I was wondering that myself. Seems like in a controlled environment it wouldn't be too much of an issue, unless the camera could not be tethered for a particular shot.

[mycyberlooks]

Love the set,, Thanks for sharing.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, I'm not sure AC power would be as convenient for the cameras -- yesterday there was a brown-out in Los Angeles that caused some of our stage lights to go out (we're not using generators).

Here are some RED frames, reduced & compressed for the web unfortunately, with some corrections I did quickly with my crude Photoshop skills:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure33.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure34.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure35.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure37.jpg

The Photoshop diffusing in my snapshots is just a simple way of showing the final look -- as you can see in these real frames, the filtering is pretty subtle. The wide shot of the kitchen just has a #1/8 Classic Black (plus smoke in the air) and the wide shot of the field has a #1 Smoque (similar to a #1/8 Double Fog, let's say) -- I'm leaving the option open for more softening in post.

[Francis Kenny]

Hi David. Your work is absolutely stunning! What a joy it is to see these images and know that the person behind them is a great human being. Kudos. Keep these paintings coming our way. As far as the photoshop work? It looks like you are using a glamour glow. You may as well build an action for it if you are going to continue that look. It will save you time. I also liked what James had to say about using the digital blue against the blonde hair. Always learning. F

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is another RED frame and a quick Photoshop correction I did (again, rather compressed unfortunately for web forums):

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure39.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure38.jpg

Story-wise, what's happening here in this scene is that a manure salesman (Ed Helms) dressed as a woman selling cosmetics, does a mediocre make-up demo for a woman and then holds the mirror in front of his face, revealing her face. I like the weird composition it creates...

[Derth Adams]

I saw one of your production's signs on Placerita Canyon Road today (on my way to Sable Ranch).

I bet there were a lot of passing drivers scratching their heads about the sign with "MANURE" in big letters and an arrow!

[Mark Pedersen]

Great posts David! And nice work:)
Keep it coming.

M

[Conrad Hunziker]

I was wondering that myself. Seems like in a controlled environment it wouldn't be too much of an issue, unless the camera could not be tethered for a particular shot.

Any professional set is hardly a controlled environment!

A perfect example of this is when the B camera was sent over to the C stage while A camera was working on the B stage (I know, the letters are confusing). Since we were just shooting plates of the painted clouds for later CGI work, we were given one electric and one grip - both of whom were not completely familiar with the stage. During the setup the electric tripped the wrong breaker, causing not only all of our lights on the stage to go out, but all the emergency stage lights as well. If it were not for the main stage door being open, we would be in complete darkness.

Now if the camera was on AC power, it would have been dead along with the lights. This may have caused file corruption on the fat32 filesystem of the Red Drives we are using, potentially causing lost shots or hours of hard drive scanning, trying to find all the zeros and ones of R3D files. In addition, Im not exactly sure how the power went down and how it came back up, but the potential for surges on the line during a situation like this is greater than normal, and not a risk for one of the few Red cameras currently released to the world.

Beyond all of that, David likes to work very fast, and his crew is extremely competent and on the ball. So placing the cameras and working with exact frames is a must for the camera department to help ensure that the set flows well. If we have to constantly wait to plug into AC, move AC cables, or wait for power to be run to us, that slows the entire production down. It truly is not like David keeps the camera on one part of the set - but the whole stage is open for David to place a camera at any time. So waiting for AC to get there would be a major detriment to time and on-set workflow.

[Adam Levins]

It will be great to see what RED can do in a controlled lighting environment.

Thanks for all the updates David.

[Christoffer Glans]

Are these shots actual shots from the camera? What I mean is if the majority of the shots in each scene plays out in these total shot framings?
Because I really love these wide total shots!

[Terry Delahunt]

Story-wise, what's happening here in this scene is that a manure salesman (Ed Helms) dressed as a woman selling cosmetics, does a mediocre make-up demo for a woman and then holds the mirror in front of his face, revealing her face. I like the weird composition it creates...

Great shot... interesting composition......it had me confused for a while.

[David Mullen ASC]

Are these shots actual shots from the camera? What I mean is if the majority of the shots in each scene plays out in these total shot framings?
Because I really love these wide total shots!

Most of the ones posted were shot with my Nikon 40X on set, the few RED frames are labeled as such. These are the wide masters; we shot some tighter coverage as well.

[Joel Kaye]

, does a mediocre make-up demo for a woman and then holds the mirror in front of his face, revealing her face. I like the weird composition it creates...

Awesome shot. Great looking stuff David. I'm very much looking forward to seeing this one when it comes out.

[Tom Lowe]

David, if you get the time, could you explain exactly what is being done with the footage after it's shot - in terms of backing up, processing dailies, color correcting, archiving, etc. And what type of flimout are you guys planning?

[Graeme Nattress]

Those shots looks fantastic David! Can't wait to see more.

Graeme

[David Mullen ASC]

According to PlasterCity, this is our workflow for now:

1. R3D 4K source files are downloaded from RedDrives (and CF Cards) on set and double-backed up to two Raid5 FireWire 800 drives

2. R3D drives are sent nightly to PlasterCITY where they are backed up again to LTO3 and chased with an LTO logging data-base

3. The Rec709 2048x1024 color meta-data imbedded in the QT camera-generated clips is loaded into Final Cut Pro at 1920x1080sF

4. Audio is automatically synched up to dailies so all dailies have synch sound

5. 2:40 matting is applied to the clips and windowburns with source name and timecode are supered for 4K DI matchback

6. ProRes 1080sF media is processed out overnight and saved to the the source media drive for delivery to editorial (processing time is 5:1)

7. DVDs are downconverted from the ProRes 1080sF media and sent to set

[Craig Meadows]

Just a few questions. How are the RED drives holding up? If using the RED EVF what are your comments on it's use? And just out of curiosity what is your sound set up? Thanks again for sharing, love hearing about this real world production experience.

[David Mullen ASC]

We're recording sound separately plus going into the camera, using a smart slate to show the timecode from the sound recorder (don't know if it is DAT or hard drive sound recording.)

I'm not operating on this one, but when I do look at the viewfinder... well, I'm not all that impressed with the RED EVF, but then, I haven't used a color viewfinder in any HD cameras that I have ever liked, I almost prefer the older, sharper b&w CRT ones. So it's not necessarily a knock against the RED version of a EVF. But in general, I prefer the RED LCD over the EVF image.

I would be concerned about shooting large portions of a RED movie on the road with only the EVF image to evaluate anything. I'd probably try and use an onboard Panasonic HD monitor instead or have a portable HD monitor to look at now & then. But the RED LCD image is pretty good, the only thing I don't like about it is the limited angle of view, which can be annoying when operating when you can't keep your head at the same viewing angle during a camera move.

[Nick Gardner]

well, I'm not all that impressed with the RED EVF

I have only seen two EVFs, but the first one I looked through, I thought, "really? everybody thinks this is the most amazing thing they have ever seen?". The second one I saw I was blown away, looked 300% better. I don't know if it's the set up, adjsutments or what, but the two were night and day different.

Go figure......

Nick

[Mike Prevette]

David this looks like it's going to be a masterpiece. Thank you so much for all your time and effort posting this stuff.

One quick thing regarding on set shore power. Since the Red's AC power transformer is so large, I just take it one step further and tie it to a Battery backup/powerfilter (ups) designed for computers. It's about the size of a normal dolly block and allows me to use AC with the bonus of keeping the camera live during a kickout or having to move locations.

I've even been using it on some location shoots and just leave it strapped to my cart, so that I never have to power down the camera. It's has actually worked very well and gives me a little more security when I know the blocking is going to take a while. Plus it also filters the power going to the transformer for extra protection.

[Mitch Gross]

One quick thing regarding on set shore power. Since the Red's AC power transformer is so large, I just take it one step further and tie it to a Battery backup/powerfilter (ups) designed for computers. It's about the size of a normal dolly block and allows me to use AC with the bonus of keeping the camera live during a kickout or having to move locations.

I've even been using it on some location shoots and just leave it strapped to my cart, so that I never have to power down the camera. It's has actually worked very well and gives me a little more security when I know the blocking is going to take a while. Plus it also filters the power going to the transformer for extra protection.

Even though we can supply large block batteries for them, this is the same configuration a lot of Phantom Techs like to use for those cameras. On the Phantom if you're not using a CineMag flash memory pack the shot is just in RAM until it is downloaded so a kickout is a real danger, as in the shot is lost. Not as much an issue anymore with the Mags and a 30 second reboot, but old habits die hard and this is a viable way of working.

[Joel Kaye]

The second one I saw I was blown away, looked 300% better. I don't know if it's the set up, adjsutments or what, but the two were night and day different.


Weird. I've always thought mine was amazing but I have a had a time or two when it went a little wacky and I got a bunch of saturated noise. That turned it into a fairly ugly viewing experience.

Also, the EVF can be put into the focus assist mode which is essentially monochrome.

For me, there's no doubt that I have a much easier time of viewing the EVF than the LCD. I usually tell people who are looking at the LCD to peak into the viewfinder and they are much more impressed by that image. I guess everyone's mileage will vary.

[Tom Lowe]

David, would it be possible for PlasterCity to send you guys Bluray 1080p dailies rather than downconverting to DVD? Seems like such a waste to downconvert to DVD.

[Ayz Waraich]

God those backdrops are gorgeous.

[David Mullen ASC]

David, would it be possible for PlasterCity to send you guys Bluray 1080p dailies rather than downconverting to DVD? Seems like such a waste to downconvert to DVD.

I've heard that authoring Blu-Ray is not so easy; besides, no one I know on this production has a Blu-Ray player... I asked on my last show, which did HDCAM-SR transfers from 35mm, about Blu-Ray dailies and what I heard was that post houses are only now figuring out how to deliver them. Part of the problem is that few productions want HD-quality dailies floating around without copy protection.

[laguun]

I've heard that authoring Blu-Ray is not so easy; besides, no one I know on this production has a Blu-Ray player... I asked on my last show, which did HDCAM-SR transfers from 35mm, about Blu-Ray dailies and what I heard was that post houses are only now figuring out how to deliver them.

We are offering blu-ray dailies since early 2007. They do cost slightly more than DVD-dailies, but are much less expensive than HDCAM dailies. Our customers like them quite a bit, as one can judge focus much better better on blu-ray.

As player we rent out sony PS3 (i think 4€ / day).



Part of the problem is that few productions want HD-quality dailies floating around without copy protection.
Yeah, we recomend customers to have their blu-ray dailies always time-code burned in and copy protected.

Back to manure - that set looks beautiful. The styling blends nicely IMHO. Isnt it amusing that, after all these debates on the internet regarding the resolutions of reds 4K cmos, your first production on red is a stylized one and has a slight blur in its look?

[Jason Ing]

Love, love, love that mirror shot. Whose idea was that, David?

Also, if you happen to have a shot with the filter and one without, it would be interesting to see a comparison.

This is my second favorite thread. The first being the ask David Mullen thread.

Thanks for sharing David.

[Simon Dean]

I'm lost for words on;
the quality of your work
your willingness to share

Thank you David!

[M Most]

We are offering blu-ray dailies since early 2007. They do cost slightly more than DVD-dailies, but are much less expensive than HDCAM dailies. Our customers like them quite a bit, as one can judge focus much better better on blu-ray.

Could I ask what you're using to do that and turn it around in a reasonable amount of time (i.e., for a morning delivery)?

[David Mullen ASC]

Week Two

As usual, we hopped back and forth between Stages B and C all week, to give some time for the art department to strike and create sets on the opposite stage. This would be a good time to mention Clark Hunter, our genius production designer, who has taken on this monumental task of building dozens of sets, sometimes turning a farm set into a different set during our lunch break… or within a half-hour --which is nuts (he might have a more choice word for that). It’s been sort of breakneck work and the quality of it has been amazing, so he deserves a lot of credit for what we’ve been able to create visually. Our wardrobe designer, Bic Owen, is also doing some great work on a small budget. Those late 1950’s, early 60’s designs look great on our actors.

Monday started out on a “potato farm” on Stage C (the main stage), where Rosemary (Tea Leoni) pulls up in a car when she sees Fitzpatrick (Billy Bob Thornton) in a field doing a sales pitch to a farmer. We had a similar scene later on Wednesday when Rosemary and Fitzpatrick pull up in their car and see a bean farm and a distant farmer on a tractor. The problem is that both scenes call for more distance than we can achieve with a car on the stage, since the outer six feet of the landscape set is a sloped wooden platform/ramp that cannot take the weight of a car. So in order to increase the distance, both from the background and the travel of the car, we had to shoot the background behind the foreground car or car window with the camera near the top of the ramp, which means we’ll have to shoot the foreground car against a bluescreen later. On Wednesday we went further and shot from a higher angle on top of the ramp as if the car were on a hill looking down into the farm, with the idea to extend the background in post beyond the patch of farming with more crops, etc.

I lit the potato farm with half-orange 18K’s for a warm hard sunlight look, softened with frames of diffusion for closer shots. I have some ability to keep the look backlit, so the question always becomes whether I want to have reverse angles front-lit if the opposite direction was backlit, and whether leave the front light hard, or soften it, as I might do outside. So this scene is an example where in the wide shot, the scene is hard lit from the side, but high, so if two people are facing each other in profile in the wide shot, one would be backlit in their close-up and the other person front-lit. In this case I decided to soften the hard light in the medium shots so that they would be softened in the close-ups, but leave the wide shots hard lit – as if I were on location flying large frames of diffusion when I moved in tighter.

Please excuse my crude Photoshop color-correction skills...

Here is a Nikon snapshot of the wide shot:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure67.jpg

Here is a closer two-shot where I softened the light:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure68.jpg

Then we turned half of the farm into a carrot farm and looked the other direction in the afternoon, to shoot a scene where Fitzpatrick and Rosemary, hiding behind a crate of fertilizer, see “Jimmy” (Kyle MacLachlan) selling the new “Milagro” mixture to a farmer:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure69.jpg

This was the last scene of a sequence before a night hotel scene, so I lit it with tungsten (essentially full-orange on the RED set to 5600K) from the 12-lights above the cyc, for a late afternoon look. Because the look of the movie is somewhat desaturated, I’ve had to increase the saturation of the warm backlights, etc. to keep the effect visible, so half-orange looks more like quarter orange, full-orange looks more like half, etc.

Some scenes have some light haze added, mixed with the unavoidable clouds of dust that the farm sets seem to send upwards all day long while shooting.

[David Mullen ASC]

(cont.)
On Tuesday we were in Stage B shooting two motel scenes, one night and the other day, two different motels build next to each other in an “L” formation, making it hard to frame one without seeing the other, due to space limitations on the sets. We did a high-angle shot of the night motel set (in this Nikon snapshot, you can see some missing rooftop in the top left corner which we hid in the RED shot with some black tape on the mattebox of the camera.) I set the camera to daylight balance and used a tungsten backlight for a warm streetlamp look. In the background, you can barely make-out the other motel set running at a right angle:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure70.jpg

We shot an interior scene in the motel room, the first tungsten-balanced scene of the movie, but I didn’t really see much increase in noise on the monitors from the 3200K setting.

After that, we shot the other motel set, removing the last room of the previous motel structure to create some separation between the two sets, but even then, this set actually ends only one-foot from the backing, which was a problem for a day scene. I had to hide a Kinoflo behind the wall to get rid of the shadow of the building on the backing. I used the overhead Lumapanels, three in a row, each through a 12’x20’ frame of quarter grid cloth, for an overcast look. Generally I haven’t been able to do a hard sunlight effect on Stage B’s sets because I can’t back away enough for a single 18K HMI to light the length of the sets evenly, so it has been safer and faster to go with the overcast look, almost a dusk feeling in this case. Here is the other motel set (you can see the overhead Lumapanels reflected in the car.)
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure71.jpg

We went back to Stage C on Wednesday for a bean farm set, consisting of six-foot high poles of beans in rows. I lit it for late afternoon with the tungsten 12-lights. As I said, we put the camera on the top of the ramp to suggest a small hill from which the main characters look down across the farm. I snapped this shot of Tea Leoni turning to camera (the shot in the movie is wider, of the two backs of the leads looking out at the farm):
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure72.jpg

Tea is a wonderful person to work with, by the way. Very down to earth, funny.

The reverse angle was shot in three-quarter frontlight, partly because I thought it looked good to see the characters staring into the setting sun, but also because we were too close to the backing to get a good backlight effect (it would have been too close and too toppy from the top of the set wall.) While I normally would have softened the light, I thought here that the actors looked good in the hard light:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure73.jpg

The back end of the car is only about eight feet from where the ground meets the sky backing...

[David Mullen ASC]

(cont.)
Art department then plowed the entire set over to create prairie where some Milagro agents are kidnapped by Rose’s manure salesmen dressed as Indians. I went for an overcast look in that case.

Thursday was spent on Stage B shooting a small scene in a hospital hallway, lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures plus a shaft of light at the end of the hallway from a 2K Xenon combined with an HMI Source-4:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure74.jpg

Then there was an interrogation scene, again lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures and a backlight through the window from the HMI Source-4 (which I used when possible instead of the Xenon because of the fan noise of the Xenon.)

We went outside near sunset to shoot a scene against a 60’ bluescreen stretched across the wall of the building, in the shadow side, in natural skylight. We had to add two 20’x20’ and one 12’x20’ bluescreen on the sides of the 60’x60’frame to contain all the action. In post, we are creating a huge factory building in the background.

Friday began on Stage C shooting a mobile home parked in a field. Since there was a tree on this set, I decided to try out an idea, which was to mount a 2K light to the top of the tree as if it were the sun peeking out from behind:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure75.jpg

We also shot some incredibly cramped scenes inside the trailer. We ended the day shooting a fight scene in a brussel sprout farm (created quickly on the same spot once the trailer was removed) where the Milagro men show up in vegetable masks to beat up our main characters.

And we did that bluescreen scene that I already mentioned.

I have so many photos but decided to cut them down a bit in this post.

I’m pretty beat-up myself, after some long, hard days this week. We’re basically trying to do a seven-week movie in five-weeks, on scenes that require huge amounts of lighting and grip work to pull off, not to mention all the art department chores to get the sets ready multiple times per day. And despite all the discussions on how we will shoot some of these scenes, some aspects cannot be worked out in advance until we see the final set and start to stage scenes on it. This creates some tension as one shot becomes three shots or the camera ends up looking somewhere we said we weren’t going to look, etc.

For the most part, the RED cameras have been fine to work with. Everyone loves the image on set, and that’s just 720P. The boot-up times are still annoying but the camera crew have gotten a lot better about timing the battery swaps and digital mag swaps during moments of downtime. We did have a couple of problems. On Friday, the EVF kept acting up and while trying to get the camera to send a picture to it by re-entering the commands, the camera somehow managed to reset itself to Build 14 instead of Build 15. We shot four set-ups that way, on Build 14, until the script supervisor noticed that the clip numbering system had changed. We had no time to reshoot the scene so we’ll have to deal with some minor image differences in post later, plus warn the post house about the different file labeling or whatever (I’m not sure of all the differences.) So in the meanwhile, we switched from that camera (A-camera) to B-camera, which finally arrived after we sent it back on Week One for repairs.

Then I noticed again something I noticed the day before, that by the end of the day, it seems that the image on C-camera (our main “B” camera for the shoot since Day One) is slightly yellower than A or now-returned B camera. We thought it was just a monitor/output/cabling issue but at the end of Friday, Conrad looked at the RAW files and we saw that the yellowish difference is in the original recordings. It’s a simple color-correction fix but the question is what is causing it. We’ve been doing a black shading every morning but we may try doing it twice a day to see if that helps. It’s like the old days when you used a lens that was warmer than another lens, annoying in color-correction later when you’ve got a lot of intercuts in a scene, but workable. Maybe there are slight differences between digital cameras of the same model that only become visible when doing RAW recording where you don’t have a lot of electronic adjustments happening to the recording to match signals between multiple cameras.

Another minor problem is just data management related. We make two back-ups in the office on RAID-5 drives, and send a shuttle drive to editorial (which just started) to copy and create the master recordings which will be use in post, along with whatever back-ups the post house makes. But I guess they are still trying to smooth out the workflow in editorial room because they have not copied over all the files before erasing the shuttle drive and sending it back to set, so then they called the camera department asking them to resend select files from our back-up RAID’s. There was some talk of having the camera department make four back-up copies instead of just two and keeping them in the camera room. We’re just trying to get the point across to the production office and editorial that once all the footage gets copied and sent to the post house and the editorial room, the primary archiving of the data stops being the burden of the camera department – we just keep a back-up, as does editorial and the post house. Otherwise it’s like asking the camera assistants to vault the negative on the camera truck…

I’m glad I’m able to experiment with a new camera technology on this movie because the Polish Brothers are brave enough to try new things out, just as they have been willing to take a risk on bleach-bypass, or more risky, negative flashing, not to mention difficult formats like anamorphic. On most other movies, I’m less likely to propose anything riskier or more complicated because I don’t know the people I’m working for well enough to take risks, so there is a tendency to take the easy and tried-and-true path (usually Super-35 these days). I did one of the first 24P F900 movies thanks to the Polish Brothers and now I’m doing my first RED movie with them, giving me a chance to learn new things that I can apply in the future. Plus what I love about working for them is that they are visual filmmakers, and they love classic wide shots, unlike the close-up obsessed directors of today.

[Mark L. Pederson]

I see a hell of lot of Red footage. Every single day.

This looks just wonderful. I love it!

Bravo!!

[C.H.Haskell]

Yes, this is just incredible, thanks again for sharing.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thanks for sharing all this, David!

"Manure" looks F-ing great.

[David Mullen ASC]

How does one put thumbnails for photos in a post? I tried posting some 2K frames but there were displayed too large so I removed the post.

[Poi Boy]

Beautiful work David ! can't wait to see it.
Aloha
-A

[Daniel Browning]

How does one put thumbnails for photos in a post? I tried posting some 2K frames but there were displayed too large so I removed the post.

I use the tag for the thumbnail and wrap it with the [url] tag for the larger image, like this thumb of my daughter:

[IMG]http://thebrownings.name/photo/isabella-2006/2006-11-03_1654.CR2.thumb.jpg (http://thebrownings.name/photo/isabella-2006/2006-11-03_1654.CR2.jpg)

[kmikami]

How does one put thumbnails for photos in a post? I tried posting some 2K frames but there were displayed too large so I removed the post.

I think if you attach the files to your post rather than hosting them on your own site, they show up as clickable thumbnails.

Beautiful work! Is it strange to work within a very constrained color palette like this? I guess it forces you to really see the contrast of the composition as though you're working in black and white, which is always a good thing anyway.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm trying to attach some thumbnails of larger 2K frames. One is the original RED frame reduced to 2K, another is an attempt by me to correct it to normal, the other is one that has been diffused and slightly desaturated.

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

I have some questions David; once production wraps and the editorial begins, unless it is on the way already but either way, is your job fully over?

I would imagine you would want to still keep an eye on your images as they travel through the edit. Would you return and sit with the colorist and watch the grading of the picture or would you only come to approve the final grades?

How much would you want to print out to 35mm and view on the big screen, or is it enough for you to just view it on an HD screen and trust what you see?

These are general questions based on using any camera film or digital.

Thanks.

[Daniel Reichenbach]

This picts are so unbelievably beautifull and show, what most talented people can pull out from RED. This is painting with light...

[David Mullen ASC]

In theory, the digital projection in a decent D.I. theater should be indicative of the look of the projected 2383 Kodak print, so your color-correction decisions there should carry over to how it looks in the answer print.

In practice, there are some differences so it's a good idea to create a sample clip reel, maybe five minutes of shots, do a grade, and film it out just to get a sense of how the final film image is looking before you make decisions on things like sharpening or digital diffusion, color saturation, etc. I find that all digital projectors exaggerate warm tones (reds in particular) and greens more than it looks on a film print, so you have to keep that in mind.

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

Do you supervise that process at all?

[David Mullen ASC]

If I'm available (not working on another movie) then I will be there for all of the color-correction and film-out work. If not, I will at least find a way of checking the work before it goes to film, and then check the film print.

Most D.I.'s take about two weeks of color-correction work (10 days), just as most home video color-correction sessions take about half that (5 days).

The problem for DP's has been to get paid for the time spent, which can be considerable. Traditionally we have volunteered that time, but that's when it involved watching an answer print a few times. Then it became another week of home video color-correcting. Now one can end up spending nearly a month on the total work, and at least two weeks of 8-hour days supervising the color-correction of the D.I., so it's a major commitment of time. And when you sit in the color-correction suite and see that everyone else in the room is being paid for their time in post except for the DP, it doesn't seem right. So eventually I think the unions will have to step in and figure out a way for DP's to be on payroll for part or all of their time spent in post.

But obviously it will be very important for me to supervise the color-correction, particularly on a movie with a unique look and digital diffusion being added, etc. This movie isn't your typical realistic-looking talking head indie movie set in someone's apartment...

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

The screenshots look amazing, very stylized. You must be happy so far?

Seems odd that a DOP would not be paid at that stage of production...Sure the colorist has his own work to do but he is building on top of what you created in-camera and one would want some form of middle ground.

10 days for this feature or in general? Can't imagine Lord of the Rings took 10 day of color-correction. :nerd:

[Zk2007]

Great stuff David. I love the earth tones sepia look. Is it all art and costume department or also lens filters and color correction?




Then there was an interrogation scene, again lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures and a backlight through the window from the HMI Source-4 (which I used when possible instead of the Xenon because of the fan noise of the Xenon.)

Would you have a picture of that? Thanks.

[Simon Dean]

I noticed that on occasion you turn off lights to avoid bad reflections, but what do you do if the reflections are unavoidable?

[Tom Lowe]

This movie is going to rule. The look is awesome, the whole idea is hilarious. Any chance you will get some extra tickets for the LA premiere? :)

I imagine the Polish Bros are hoping to premiere this at a major festival?

[Kenn Christenson]

I keep looking for Dorothy and Toto.:wink:

Beautiful looking shots!

[Jason Ing]

I'm trying to attach some thumbnails of larger 2K frames. One is the original RED frame reduced to 2K, another is an attempt by me to correct it to normal, the other is one that has been diffused and slightly desaturated.

What did you do to diffuse the shot? In photoshop?

[Mark Phelan]

David,

Thank you so much for your generosity. This inside look is so very helpful, interesting and just plain fun to read. What fun you must have on set!

Best,
Mark

[David Mullen ASC]

Some unavoidable but distracting reflections in car windshields may have to be softened or reduced in post, budget permitting for that sort of touch-up work.


What did you do to diffuse the shot? In photoshop?

I just did a simple Gaussian blur overlay.

The original RED shots have some mild camera diffusion though, Schneider Classic Black filters.

[David Mullen ASC]

Great stuff David. I love the earth tones sepia look. Is it all art and costume department or also lens filters and color correction?


The sepia look is mostly just art direction and costume, though warm lighting + desaturation = brown

[Kenn Christenson]

David, are you still preferring the LCD over the EVF?

[David Mullen ASC]

The A-cam operator prefers the EVF mainly because the LCD image is so affected by the viewing angle.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Man David, even though I have a busy day today, you've kept me up until now reading and drooling over your frames while I should be asleep!

Great work man, you're truly an artist.

[Ash Bolland]

Thanks for sharing David! - All of us at Umeric stopped work 2 study your frames - looking forward to the next post..


-
Ash

[gbalaji]

The sepia look is mostly just art direction and costume, though warm lighting + desaturation = brown

David,

Thanks for your wonderful job for managing this forum and for "Manure" picture courtesy. I would like to know, Whats you monitoring solution on set.

Is LCD displays reliable?

I recently supervised 2 commercials with RED and the cinematagrapher preferred good monitoring solutions and I asked to use the same film shoot rule for RED. Would we have in near future WYSIWYG with RED and a good monitoring solution.

Your thoughts and suggestions?

[David Mullen ASC]

The only problem with the JVC monitors we are using is that if you don't sit directly in front of the screen, the image gets a stop brighter. So almost anyone watching from the wings sees a brighter washed-out image.

---

I’m so tired I can barely type these days… We did a string of 14-hour days capped by a 16 ½ hour day on Friday, wrapping at 3:30 AM.

Monday and Tuesday were spent on Stage B, where Clark Hunter had to squeeze a five-room motel set on the small stage with a parking lot in it, and I had to light it… The long parking lot area required six Lumapanels through six 12’x20’ Light Grid Cloth frames overhead for the base soft skylight effect, plus four HMI Goyas to light the length of the backing. That’s just for starters.

Anyway, we started with some small hotel interior scenes. Most of these take place in early morning before the salesmen hit the road, so I lit some of them with a hot streak of orange light (a tungsten 5K Molebeam with the camera set to 5600K) cutting into the bottom of the window frames, lighting up the sheers and adding a warm glow to the rooms. I also had some softened light coming through the window (an 18K HMI through two layers of diffusion). Fill or key lighting for areas where the window light didn’t reach was often handled with some small Kinos or by bouncing an HMI Source-4 off of something.

A lot of these scenes involved all six principals (the five manure salesmen plus Rosemary, played by Tea Leoni) group around a small table in a small hotel room, most of which was taken up by the beds. For one night scene, I lit the group with a large Chinese Lantern hanging overhead, and turned on some practical lamps in the background. For scenes where the room lights were off at night, I used a 5K tungsten gelled half-orange for a streetlamp effect coming through the windows. All of the night work was done with the cameras set to 3800K for a warmer look than a 3200K setting would create, and I used tungsten lamps for those scenes.

We ended the night with a bedroom scene where the camera was mounted on a jib arm looking directly down on the bed, followed by a night exterior scene in the parking lot, which I lit with some strong orange backlights as if coming from the hotel behind the actors. Both scenes were “one-er’s” more or less, a 2-shot that contained all the dialogue.

As soon as we finish with a RED drive (we only record maybe 15 to 20 minutes per drive, though they hold more) we send it to our data wrangler Eric, who downloads and backs up the data. So it wasn’t until I got home on Monday night that I heard that the second to last mag for the evening, which Eric had started downloading right around wrap time, failed during the download, causing the table of contents for the files to disappear, making the two scenes unplayable or uncovertable. The camera recorded the scenes fine (otherwise we would have gotten a recording error message probably) but somehow the problem in the RED drive developed afterward. Conrad Hunziker spent part of the next day rendering all the footage to see what was salvageable, which was only about 20 seconds of the ends of the 60-second segments that takes are stored as. PlasterCity couldn’t recover all the data either, so the mag was sent to RED to see what they could do. Meanwhile we scheduled a reshoot of those two scenes for Thursday night, which I wasn’t looking forward to because of our excessively long days already. Luckily on Thursday afternoon, we got the word from Deanan at RED that they managed to recover all of the footage, allowing us to cancel the reshoot (the day ran 14 hours long anyway, so I can’t imagine adding another hour or so just for reshooting…) So I am very grateful to RED for working so hard to solve the problem for us.

This brings up the big issue on everyone’s mind these days regarding the RED ONE, which is reliability. No system is ever perfect and you lose footage when shooting on film now and then (and in this case, no footage was lost, just to be clear). All cameras and accessories fail in some manner now and then too. So when I get asked everyday what I think about the RED ONE in this regards, part of me just wants to say “wait until these two movies are done shooting and I go through post and THEN ask me what I think…” But I have to say that 95% of the time, it’s like any other shoot – I don’t really have to think about the cameras, they just shoot and shoot all day long. Just now and then there is some quirkiness or bugginess with the RED cameras that makes me feel like the kinks are still being ironed out. After the incident with the RED drive, I am starting to form the opinion that once the RED RAM is developed, or whatever solid-state flash memory unit RED creates, I don’t see much reason to use hard drives on cameras on movie sets, which are physically abusive places for computer equipment. Even when you are careful about it, let’s face it, these cameras are slapped on and off of tripod heads all day long, bounced around on dollies being moved across rough ground, etc. There is dust and heat (or cold) to deal with, humidity, etc. So while the RED drives seems to work just fine most of the time, they make me nervous.

My main annoyance with the cameras is quite minor, the time it takes to boot. We are doing elaborate scenes and at the last minute I might come up with a B-camera angle, so we suddenly grab the camera off of the cart just before the actors come on set or just before we roll and set it up… and then wait for 90 seconds before I can even see a picture. I feel momentarily blind. That’s the longest 90 seconds of my life, as the AD is yelling if I’m ready or not, when I can’t even see a picture to know what needs to be adjusted.

There also continues to be some minor color mismatches between the cameras, which I seem to notice more in the afternoon than I do in the mornings. We had one 5600K scene where the B camera image was a little warmer looking, but when we switched to a tungsten-lit scene and I set the cameras to 3800K for a warm look under 3200K lighting, well, the same B camera now had a slightly cooler image than A camera. Beats me what is going on.

On the plus side, the form factor is smaller than most 35mm movie cameras so, for example, cramming the camera into the back seat of a car or into a closet isn’t so difficult. There is less weight to deal with for the camera assistants, though most (out of pride) won’t admit to having any problems dealing with 35mm cameras and 1000’ mags all day long.

An even bigger plus, perhaps one of the best features about the RED, is the fact that you can see a larger “safe” area than what gets recorded, compared to most digital cameras.

And I like the picture it creates, which is the most important thing ultimately.

I like the fact that it creates a sharp, detailed image that doesn’t have that electronic edginess of HD cameras, even ones where the Detail is supposedly turned off. Actresses don’t look like they’ve aged a decade, like many HD cameras make them look. And despite all the talk about the dynamic range of the RED camera, I find it pretty decent in that regards, not as good as film but better than an F900. When I look at the RAW files, I’m impressed with how much overexposure information is actually there compared to the monitor output. So I know that if I like the lighting on the Rec 709 monitor image, I’ll have more room to work with later when going back to the RAW files in the final color-correction.

[David Mullen ASC]

Anyway, on Tuesday we had director Gary Marshall on set doing a cameo as a doctor in one scene – I worked one day with him several years ago on a Super-16 movie where he did a cameo. Nice guy. We did some night scenes in the motel, again tungsten-lit with a combination of practicals and soft light from a 2K through 129 diffusion (my favorite new diffusion gel, a heavy frost closer to Full Grid Cloth in density.) Then we moved to Stage C where we somehow managed to barely fit a car and a dump truck on a small road set. In the scene, the dump truck buries a car that rolls up behind it by dumping an entire load of manure onto the car. But we found that even when the dump truck was filled, the entire contents only buried the nose of the car, so we had to do multiple takes where we kept dumping more and more soil (peat moss I think) over the car until it was finally buried.

Wednesday was spent (mostly) on another stage, Stage A, where we had something like a 20’x40’ bluescreen set-up, lit with daylight Kinos. We did a bunch of car interior scenes, too many perhaps because I didn’t have time to get all the bad reflections out of the car windows in a few key shots – the windows are a constant nightmare for me. When they rolled the car into the stage, the first thing I noticed was that, despite being painted black, you could see the stage rafters all over the windshield, so the grips had to put a 20’x20’ black over the car and then black out the stands as well. And even that wasn’t enough to always hide the lighting on the car being reflected. A nightmare, as I said. We moved to Stage C at the end of the day to do two more road scenes, including some plate shots for the bluescreen stuff we had just shot. Again, ending the day with an elaborate stunt scene that takes hours to set-up and shoot. The B-camera team went up into the catwalks to see if they could get a straight-down angle on the road set for a stunt, but the rafters, which are a few feet lower than the catwalk, are spaced together so much that they had to use a combination of a hi-hat screwed into the catwalk, then a camera offset, and then an underslung head, to get the lens below the rafters. And once they set all of that up, screwed-in, supported, safety-cabled, etc. -- I was told that the head now stuck out so far down from the catwalk that there was no way of now putting the camera onto the head without driving in a 60’ condor and doing it from below. The AD said something like “are you shitting me?” when I told him that we’d need to drive the condor onto the set, but then my Key Grip Brad Heiner (dealing with some other big rig at the time) ran upstairs and managed to find a way to get the camera onto the extended head from above – I just hope no one risked their lives doing it, because it’s a big drop.

Thursday we were back in the motel set doing some early morning scenes in the parking lot. I decided to expand upon the trick I used last week and put a 5K tungsten fresnel in the far background, in camera, pointed into the lens to look like the early morning sun. I had to also light the backing behind the 5K quite hot. So a “simple” morning establishing shot took: 6 5600K lumapanels through 6 12’x20’ light grid frames overhead, four HMI Goyas from above gelled with ½ CTO for the backing, the 5K tungsten fresnel for the sun effect, a 12-light tungsten on a scissor lift behind the hotel for an overall warm backlight, an 18K HMI gelled half-orange hitting the backing, plus another 4K HMI and a 1200w HMI, both also gelled half-orange, to fill in the dark spots on the backing. And there were a few other lamps here and there, plus the hotel’s practicals and neon signs. Plus another 4K HMI bounced into a 12’x12’ UltraBounce in the foreground for fill. That’s just for the first shot.

As I said, we got word by the afternoon that RED had recovered all of our data from the two scenes shot on Monday, so we breathed a sigh of relief and cancelled the reshoot for those scenes on the motel set, which was going to be gone by Monday.

To give you an idea of how ambitious this little film is, with the crazy schedule we have, on Friday we jumped back and forth between two soundstages. We started on Stage C, which had been split up into two different farms, a corn field and a sunflower field. I had to switch the lighting between an overcast look we had established for some story days and a later afternoon sunny look… but the scenes could not be bundled together in terms of time of day / weather lighting, so we had to constantly gel and ungel our lights for the two looks. Three looks actually because the only night exterior scene for the farm landscape sets was slipped into the middle of all of this.

We spent hours dealing with stunt men parachuting into the cornfield, to the point where we broke an hour late for lunch. Then we had to move to Stage B and shoot part of a dialogue scene in a motel room, then move back to Stage C to give the effects people time to rig the room for a small explosion that demolishes a whole wall of the motel. On Stage C we set up for a stunt drive where a car crashes into the cornfield. As I was lining up the shot on the cornfield, suddenly I saw three men levitate to the ceiling in the far background and I realized they were already practicing the stunts for parachuting into the sunflower field behind the cornfield. So we then shot the car crashing through some corn, and then moved to the sunflower area to set-up for parachuting, switching again from late afternoon sun to an overcast look. While I was setting up those shots, a forklift was driving in behind me to put a now flipped-over car into the cornfield set. So after we shot more parachuting men in the sunflower field, we turned around and shot the second half of the car crash scene in the cornfield (again all of this required switching the soundstage lighting from an overcast look to a sunny look and back again and back again, etc.) Then when we finished the cornfield, we had to move again back to Stage B now that the room was rigged for the explosion and shoot the second half of the scene we shot right after lunch.

So moving from Stage C to B to C to B, lighting for overcast to sunny to night to overcast to sunny to night… hence why we finished after 16 ½ hours. It’s insane.

[Chris Nuzzaco]

Wow! How long was each day typically?

I've done some crazy long days, and honestly, after a certain point, you start to vow to never do it again... but sometimes thats wishful thinking given how some producers think film sets should be run...

[David Mullen ASC]

Some still images, the first three are RED frames (reduced, compressed, softened, etc.) the others are Nikon snapshots.

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure1.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure2.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure3.jpg

[David Mullen ASC]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure88.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure92.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure93.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure113.jpg

[wedowee]

My brain cannot wrap around the idea of the Polish Brothers allowing so much story information to be shared, nor the idea of you taking time after 16-hour days to give us all of this technical information, on top of candid commentary on your experiences with the Red. I'm blown away by all of this sharing, and can speak on behalf of most reading this that it is extremely appreciated.

[Jason Ing]

Way to go Deanan. Care to share how you saved the data?

David, all I can say is wow... great review, images, and behind the scenes look.

And to think I was considering lighting my feature with 2 kino 4 banks, 4 dedo 150s, a par and a handful of china balls. haha.

[Júlio Taubkin]

My brain cannot wrap around the idea of the Polish Brothers allowing so much story information to be shared, nor the idea of you taking time after 16-hour days to give us all of this technical information, on top of candid commentary on your experiences with the Red. I'm blown away by all of this sharing, and can speak on behalf of most reading this that it is extremely appreciated.

And on top of that, look at the insanely beautiful images!

How he gets to do all this and still shoot a film that looks so good, is completely beyond me too!

Thanks David!

[Michael Hastings]

David: thanks for sharing, you are an incredible (but very credible) resource for all of us.

Maybe you covered this before but just wondering, if you are only using drives for 20 minutes or so of footage, why you don't just use CF cards - I know it is even shorter but they seem to be pretty bulletproof.

[Matt Garrett]

That’s the longest 90 seconds of my life, as the AD is yelling if I’m ready or not, when I can’t even see a picture to know what needs to be adjusted.

Monitors hooked up with the hdsdi out will give an image while the camera is booting.
probably won't help you much, but it's worth knowing.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, I see the HDSDI image first as the camera is booting.

The advantage of the drives is that we have enough recording time to decide the optimal moment to change drives during a down time. Sometimes the actors will do a number of takes in a row without cutting the camera.

[J.R. Hud]

Awesome frame David

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure92.jpg

[Paris Remillard]

I love the light in the shot as the rising/setting sun effect. Simple and brilliant.

[David Mullen ASC]

Another thing I want to do is get the rental house to make a proper groundglass for 2.40 for my lens finder for the RED at 4096, which is not as wide as Super-35.

I keep lining up shots with the lens finder and having to remember (or forgetting) that the RED 4096 pixel image is slightly cropped from that because it is 22mm wide, not 24mm wide. Took me most of the first week to figure out why all the shots were tighter than I lined-up with using the lens finder. I thought the dolly grip was laying the marks down wrong.

[Anders Holck]

Or better yet, make RED utilize those 424 spare pixels in 2.40:1....

[David Mullen ASC]

Or better yet, make RED utilize those 424 spare pixels in 2.40:1....

Then I lose the nice feature of seeing an oversized area around the framelines on the monitors, at least side to side...

[Frank Weeks]

Beautiful images Dave. Now I know what you were talking about when you said (in your ask Dave thread) that you had a film coming up that required a warm look. You have managed to get a great look with what appears to be mainly 5600K lighting. Great work.

[Daniel García]

Did the reason for the data loss become clear? Did the drive get bumped on its way to the downloading station, or was it a software issue? Any new insight into do's and don'ts so that doesnt happen again?

Deanan, care to share something else about the incident? That was scary.

David I'm incredibly thankful for this invaluable thread. And the shots are beautiful. Thank you.

/OT:

Or better yet, make RED utilize those 424 spare pixels in 2.40:1....
When you say RED do you mean the camera o the company? In other words, is that possible now or just a feature in your wishlist? Sorry for the OT.

[Conrad Hunziker]

Did the reason for the data loss become clear? Did the drive get bumped on its way to the downloading station, or was it a software issue? Any new insight into do's and don'ts so that doesnt happen again?

During our initial conversation about the issue the people at red thought that it might have been a case where the drive was pulled from the camera without being properly dismounted. However, when I was in the IT room monday night, I clearly heard clacking from the drive, meaning that the drive heads were not in sync with the spindle. To anyone thats heard this noise before, its indicative of a hard drive failure, and time to get the data off fast. Unfortunately, it wasnt fast enough.

I was able to get the last 30 or so seconds of each clip, but not the start.

Being that there are 18 hard drives on set (9 red raids), there is a pretty good statistical chance of a hard drive failure within 10,000 hours. We just didnt think it would happen within the first 100.



When you say RED do you mean the camera o the company? In other words, is that possible now or just a feature in your wishlist? Sorry for the OT.

Its currently not possible to record those extra 424 pixels to the sides of the image. They are displayed to the operator, but not recorded in any of the 4k formats that red currently records. This helps to see things as the approach the frame before they become a problem. I honestly hope it doesnt become a standard in the red. Its what helps the red to stand out. I know it hurts for Red (the company) to pay for pixels they are never using, but it helps tremendously. Sony and panasonic wont do it. Im glad to see that red does. It helps to set them off from the electronic crowd.

[James Mathers]

Did the reason for the data loss become clear?

I can't say since I wasn't there at the time, (off in the California desert doing a fun commercial on RED with Meerkats), and we will never know for sure; but I can tell you that all the symtoms of the data loss problems as described to me by David and his crew are identical to what happened to me once before when there was a power loss before the mag could be dismounted.

The other incident happened when we were using non-RED batteries, (before we knew any better), which do not communicate their status to the camera and easily allow you to run out of power without warning. This time, I think it's possible, especially with everyone on the crew working long hours with little rest, that someone could have inadvertently pulled the power before dismounting the media...Just my guess. It's really pretty easy to do, and I wish there were some safety mechanism to make it more difficult.

As the person who assembled the camera package while doing the prep for Manure, I knew the boot-up time would be an issue, and tried to purchase Hot-Swap battery adapters, which have been on backorder, but should finally arrive early this week. It will be interesting to see; but I think this will greatly improve the situation which has frustrated David, since we simply will not have to be rebooting so often to change batteries or save power. I'm sure David will let everyone know how it works out.

I'm back on Manure starting tomorrow to shoot some Second Unit, and am very proud to be associated with the picture and working with David; as you can all see, he is an Awesome talent!

James Mathers
Cinematographer, Studio City, CA
Digital Cinema Society
President and Co-founder

[James Mathers]

Conrad Hunziker wrote:
I clearly heard clacking from the drive, meaning that the drive heads were not in sync with the spindle.

While I was writing my last post, Conrad also replied with an update. Since he was there, and really knows his stuff, I will have to stand corrected; perhaps it was drive failure, rather than human error.

James Mathers
Cinematographer
Studio City, CA

[Draccan]

Awesome frame David

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure92.jpg

I totally second that!

I really respect your work David and I must say Northfork is a great film!

It is very generous and graceful of you to share your knowledge on these boards!

One question: Don't you get problems with the very static sky? I am thinking mainly since there are so many clouds? How do you handle this? By moving the camera a lot?

[chuck colburn]

And most important of all is, why don't cars have wind wings anymore?

[Charles Angus]

Poor design, that's why.

c.

[Peter McCully]

David, I hope that American Cinematographer covers your shoot. It will make for an interesting article, a well deserved plug for you and for Red.

[Ken Hendricks]

David, I'm loving reading all the details about this film straight from the cinematographer himself. This is priceless! I am truly looking forward to seeing "Manure". Will it be presented in full "Smell-o-round"®? :biggrin:

[Tom Lowe]

David, I hope that American Cinematographer covers your shoot. It will make for an interesting article, a well deserved plug for you and for Red.

I'm pretty sure AC will cover this. :)

[KETCH ROSSi]

Totally love the look David, even so I dislike back drops of any kind, especially in Still Photography, but the results here are great, and this is just with the limited viewing if the small jpg's.


Ciao

[Jarred Land]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure92.jpg


Breathtaking....

[zak forrest]

David, I hope that American Cinematographer covers your shoot. It will make for an interesting article, a well deserved plug for you and for Red.

This thread is already way better than an American Cinematographer article.

[Charles Angus]

True. I always look through them, but they seem to gloss over more than they explain.

Thanks, David, for such detailed and useful technical information.

c.

[number6]

Thanks, David, for such detailed and useful technical information.

c.

And thanks to the Polish Bros. for allowing David to do so. They're like... open source!

[David Mullen ASC]

Week Four

We’ve been hopping around more and more, getting pieces of different scenes on different sets, including a lot of bluescreen work to deal with story locations that are too large and expensive to build.

Monday and Tuesday involved bring live cattle on the landscape set on Stage C. We had a grassy plain on Monday which infortunately, though the grass was spray-painted brown, seemed to drive most of the cows nuts, running around the perimeter (which is a plywood ramp leading up to the backing, not designed for the weight of multiple cows, though it held up) and eating the brown grass and brown leaves on the set. We ended up taking most of the cattle off of the set and just using a very calm milk cow in two scenes.

We then ran outside to our big 30’x60’ bluescreen, which is tied to a soundstage wall. We use it for any large shots of action against locations that will have to be created in post. In this case, the scenes took place at the big gates leading to the Roses Manure factory. We try to shoot these outdoor bluescreen scenes in late afternoon when the side of the building and the ground in front are shadowed by the soundstage. I often have to add additional 20’x20’ and 12’x20’ bluescreens on the sides to cover all the action. Usually we just use available skylight.

We ended the day with a funeral scene back on the prairie set on Stage C, lit for late afternoon, followed by a gravestone scene that takes place months later. I tried to make it a sunrise scene by laying a 10K on the ground at the top of the ramp, pointed into the lens. I was a bit rushed, being the end of a 14-hour day, so I didn’t quite get the balance right to make it more realistic, but it looked interesting at least.

The prairie set was turned into a cow pasture on Tueday, with a dirt floor covered with bits of straw and surrounded by fencing. This was a lot better for the cattle we brought in, compared to the open prairie space. The set was full of cattle, which was interesting to say the least. Later we shot a scene in an empty pasture where a farmer stops our main characters, crawling on the ground, from stealing his cow pies, firing a shotgun in their direction. I lit the two manure salesmen in frontal hard light so I could have the farmer throw a shadow over them. Their POV of the farmer was therefore a low-angle with the sky and sun behind the farmer. To get the shot, I put a 12’x12’ painting of the sky above the farmer’s head, tilted down, and cut a hole in it so I could stick a 1K Parcan through it for the effect of the sun hitting the lens.

The day ended after 11.5 hours because all the power went out in all the stages. We thought was a brown-out maybe at the city substation, but later I found out it was due to an air conditioning unit on Stage C shooting out a six foot flame and tripping all the breakers. Either way, an act of God sent us home early for once.

On Wednesday we shot on a cabbage farm set as Mark Polish attempts to sell to a farmer. Then we attempted to shoot some more scenes where stunt men parachute into a field, but the parachutes tended to catch on the corners of the Kino blanket lights, so it took a number of takes to get it right. We ran outside at sunset to shoot against the shaded bluescreen stage wall, for a scene in a train yard – the set consisted of a sliding traincar door and a platform. Then we did a scene where our main characters work inside the Roses Manure factory (to be created in post), filling up bags of manure. It was night by then, so I brought out one of our portable HMI balloons to light to scene from overhead, as if the factory had a soft overhead source.

[David Mullen ASC]

(cont.)

We finished the week on Thursday because we have to switch from a Sunday to Thursday schedule, though I don’t recall the reason. Stage C was now filled partially with a pumpkin farm where a fight scene takes place. Mike Most came out to set to visit me on this day. In the middle of the day we went into Stage A, which is really the mill for the art department, but one half was cleared for a small bluescreen stage where we set up some factory machine at work. At the end of the day, we returned to this stage to shoot a scene that takes place in Heaven, which was tough to figure out how to do. We first thought about using our brown cyc paintings for the background, but they were too small, but the efx man Steve was concerned that he couldn’t pipe in enough low-laying smoke to cover a larger area. So we decided to use the bluescreen as a background with clouds of smoke for the floor. The scene begins with three men rising up through the groundcover of clouds, as if on an elevator, and stepping onto the clouds. Since the clouds had to reach the knees of the actors, I figured that I’d have to lift them somehow onto a platform that was six feet tall so they could appear as if coming through a floor. After considering a scissor lift or forklift to raise the actors, I decided to use a crane platform in a teeter-totter rig to lift them smoothly to the platform. So Brad, our key grip, got a Nike crane with a standing platform, with just enough anchored chain to keep the platform from popping even higher once the weight of the men moved off of the platform when they stepped off. The trick was to somehow hold three feet of clouds of smoke to the top of the 6’ tall deck that they rise up and step off onto, rather than fill the whole stage with 9’ tall clouds. We put some wooden side panels on the deck to hold in the smoke. We then broomed the whole rig to do a wider shot of the men now walking through Heaven, which involved adding clouds to the whole stage floor. These two shots took a lot of time to set up because we had to keep making adjustments between the takes to get all the elements to work. Another 14-hr. day...

The photos I'm posting this week are all from the RED camera, but reduced to 700 pixels across, sharpened, diffused, compressed heavily for the web, color & contrast played around with, etc. Any clipping you see is due to me cranking up the contrast to get the sky to burn out a little, there is little clipping in the original files (other than when I deliberately point lights into the lens...)

There are two bluescreen shots, one of cars driving through the gate, the second of men filling bags -- I took out the bluescreen color of that second one and turned it into a sepia tone for this post, but the final effect would have a factory interior as a background.

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure148.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure149.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure150.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure151.jpg

[David Mullen ASC]

This is the shot I mentioned with the 12'x12' painting of sky behind the actor's head with a hole cut into it so I could stick a 1K Parcan through, pointing at the lens:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure152.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure153.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure154.jpg

This is the bluescreen shot where I temporarily got rid of the blue:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure155.jpg

[David Mullen ASC]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure156.jpg

This is the sunrise shot I was talking about, lit fairly fast by putting a 10K on the ground near the top of the ramp that meets the backing curtain, then by gelling the light on the cyc orange:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/700manure157.jpg

[Tom Lowe]

Sounds like those were not SAG cows...

These shots are reminding me of Northfork in many ways. They are also getting me excited about seeing the finished product.

David, I think I asked you before, but do you know yet if you guys are going to do a 2K filmout or 4K filmout? Or maybe 3K?

[Drew Mylrea]

BOMB Awesome.

[David Mullen ASC]

David, I think I asked you before, but do you know yet if you guys are going to do a 2K filmout or 4K filmout? Or maybe 3K?

Don't know. Most likely scenario is 4K-to-2K rather than all-4K... but we'll see.

[Daniel Reichenbach]

Oh, David, this is pure art.

[David Mullen ASC]

This Nikon snapshot is just proof we put cattle in the set:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/1Kmanure130.jpg

[Tonaci Tran]

Amazing work David.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Almost like an American Surrealist, even Hyperrealist or Photorealist style paintings (here means digital filming(s)).

[laguun]

David,

i am curious, why do you use blue- instead of greenscreen? For CMOS as well as YUV-based cameras we would usually use green to get more resolution for the keys. Is something in the image green?

[Tim Lüdin]

Wow, this stuff is great.
Nice framing and grading.
I'm realy looking forward to the movie.
ASC for ever baby.:wink:

Tim

[Tom Lowe]

Don't know. Most likely scenario is 4K-to-2K rather than all-4K... but we'll see.

Is a 3K filmout even possible, or is that just too unusual of a resolution?

Maybe you could do a very short 3K vs 2K filmout test, to see if the resolution gain is worthwhile?

[Noah Kadner]

Is a 3K filmout even possible, or is that just too unusual of a resolution?

Maybe you could do a very short 3K vs 2K filmout test, to see if the resolution gain is worthwhile?

I've never heard of a 3K workflow. Nearly all films are finished at 2K with a very very few at 4K. The bandwidth and infrastructure to work uncompressed 4K are just not quite there for most post-houses and 3K is not enough of a leap over 2K to justify. Also the extra processing required for visual effects at 4K is going to require more upgrades at effects houses. That said, I'd be surprised if 4K were not the post norm in a few more years.

-Noah

[Tom Lowe]

Yeah, 3K is an odd number. Like you said, the VFX guys would probably be scratching their heads if you said, "Hey we are finishing at 3K guys..."

[KETCH ROSSi]

David, this gets more and more impressive, but I guess when dealing with some one of your stature, it is to be expected!

ciao

[Mark L. Pederson]

This is cinematic art. I just love it these images.

I just added "working with David Mullen" to my list of constantly updating career goals.

[David Mullen ASC]

Bluescreen was recommended over greenscreen by the post house, plus we have a blond actress wearing cream-colored outfits, which are close to being yellowish, so blue is a stronger difference in color than green.

Normally I would use greenscreen for digital cameras though, yes, because it's a less-noisy channel.

The efx work will probably be 2K, so the question is whether that stuff will be uprezzed to 4K or the non-efx footage will be downrezzed to 2K for intercutting.

[Tom Lowe]

You should really go with the lowest common denominator and just keep the whole thing 2K.

Once Epic comes out, it will make more sense to finish at 4K.

[Stephen Williams]

You should really go with the lowest common denominator and just keep the whole thing 2K.

Once Epic comes out, it will make more sense to finish at 4K.

Hi Tom,

Have you done any tests that confirm your advice?

Stephen

[Tom Lowe]

Hi Tom,

Have you done any tests that confirm your advice?

Stephen

Just going off what Graeme and others have said. If RED is actually a 3K camera or 3.2K camera, then it makes sense mathematically that Epic will roughly be a 4K camera. Or close enough to a make a 4K finish almost mandatory for a filmout on a major feature.

It is also possible that Red One's sensor upgrade in 2009 will up the resolution to 5K.

[Chris Bell]

David,

Have you run into the "black sun" issue when shooting directly into lighting fixtures?

I had a problem with a reflection off of stainless steel. The highlight when purple, then black in the center.

Chris Bell

PS: This has been a fun read. Great images!

[David Mullen ASC]

Now & then, if I point the camera into something really bright, I get a faint purple dot.

[Jason Ramsey]

This thread is amazing.

Thank you.

later,
Jason

[Mark L. Pederson]

but I can tell you that all the symtoms of the data loss problems as described to me by David and his crew are identical to what happened to me once before when there was a power loss before the mag could be dismounted.

The other incident happened when we were using non-RED batteries, (before we knew any better), which do not communicate their status to the camera and easily allow you to run out of power without warning. This time, I think it's possible, especially with everyone on the crew working long hours with little rest, that someone could have inadvertently pulled the power before dismounting the media...Just my guess.

James Mathers
Cinematographer, Studio City, CA
Digital Cinema Society
President and Co-founder

One thing people need to understand is that when you press the record button to stop shooting - the camera take a second or two to write the QT reference files ("POST" is displayed in the LCD/EVF for a moment) -

When you press the "exit/undo" buttons to EJECT - the camera writes a .LOG file to the drive and this takes a few seconds before you see "same to remove" on the LCD/EVF and "no digimag" on the back of the camera.

While the camera is writing those file, it is obviously updating the FAT32 directory.

If you pull the drive (or loose power) while the directory is updating you are in a world of hurt.

Now, I know Stuart will not be happy that I am asking for this - but after this happened to me once - I sure would love the option to "un-check" (disengage) LOG FILE - just like I can "un-check" writing the QT files.

You can batch create QT files after the drive is removed very easily.

You should always emphasize to everyone on the camera crew - not to pull the drive until you see "safe to remove" or "no digimag". People get used to "calculating the delay" in their head and then yanking the drive - they need to have a visual confirmation that the drive has been unmounted.

[Tico Llaurador]

Perhaps make it blink the control panel REC indicator light in orange as it's processing the "unmount" command (like when it's booting) and then have it go back to a steady green on the OK indicator light when it's done writing to the mag and it's safe to extract it.

[SF Geek]

Hey David, does Brad drive his Knight Rider Kit car to set?

Thanks for this thread, it's very informative on many levels.

[Marc Berger]

David, thank you for sharing this views on your wonderful work!
Marc

[Deanan]

You should always emphasize to everyone on the camera crew - not to pull the drive until you see "safe to remove" or "no digimag". People get used to "calculating the delay" in their head and then yanking the drive - they need to have a visual confirmation that the drive has been unmounted.

Mark is 200% correct. Always eject the drives/cards properly and you'll reduce the risk tremendously. It's the same on the PC/MAC side too.

[Roberto B]

Hi Tom,

Have you done any tests that confirm your advice?

Stephenehehehehe.. out of the chair stephen.. out of the chair..

[Davide B.]

I just wanted to say that these screen grabs look amazing so far.

davide

[Alexander Nikishin]

Man o man David, that's just jaw droppingly beautiful.

[Tony Lorentzen]

Seems like it would have been a good idea to put some sort of status indicator (LED) on the drive.

Constant RED - do not remove
Blinking RED - recording
Orange - preparing to eject
Green - safe to eject

[Draccan]

Seems like it would have been a good idea to put some sort of status indicator (LED) on the drive.

Constant RED - do not remove
Blinking RED - recording
Orange - preparing to eject
Green - safe to eject

How about a 2-4 second delay before the disc is ejected?

[Jonathan Payne]

Hi David, I've left you a PM.

[Matt Uhry]

Hi David,

I just found this thread. I'm awed by what you've been able to accomplish so far on this film and by your generous sharing of information.

THANKS!

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

[Brian Ferguson]

Mark is 200% correct. Always eject the drives/cards properly and you'll reduce the risk tremendously. It's the same on the PC/MAC side too.

Also be careful not to leave a CF card in while mounting a drive or you will get really confused.

[David Mullen ASC]

Week Five

Now we are on a Sunday thru Thursday schedule. Next week we only have three days left, plus any pick-up work to do later (I may be shooting some farm landscapes & car drive-bys for efx work later.)

Sunday and Monday were our last days shooting at Melody Ranch in Newhall. Clark Hunter, our production designer, built this great diner on Stage B, including a parking lot in front. My biggest problem was, when shooting scenes inside the diner, getting the background to look bright enough, since the diner is lined with windows. The diner was a lot easier to shoot for the night scenes, since it was well-dressed with hanging practical fixtures, augmented with a muslin ceiling that was lit from above with coop lights, adding a nice soft base light to everything.

Last week, Clark and I were discussing how much we have learned about faking daytime landscapes inside a soundstage over the past five weeks. We decided to ask if we could reshoot the first scene of the movie, shot on Day One, of Billy Bob Thornton selling to a pumpkin farmer. It was part of a montage scene of different manure salesmen working different farms, but this was the longest scene and the first one, showing off the brown painted landscapes of the movie. Even though the last day at the Ranch was quite huge, we managed to add the reshoot of the scene; Clark improved upon his false perspective tricks, and I did a better job of creating the late afternoon look. The plants ended only about 20 feet beyond where the actors stood, and then the six foot wooden ramp leading to the backdrop began – Clark sprinkled peat moss from a bucket into tiny rows to create the illusion of distant crops. I added a light haze of smoke, something I didn’t do on Day One, plus I lit the sky backdrop brighter than before, though it took three 18K’s pointed into the brown sky backing to get it to overexpose.

As a frame of reference, here is the Nikon snapshot I made on the test day a few days before Day One, when I only had part of my lighting package:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/manure3.jpg

Here is the RED frame of the master shot of the scene from Day One’s shoot:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900manure1.jpg

Here is the RED frame of the reshot master on Day Twenty:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900manure2.jpg

Just keep in mind that I diffused these shots in Photoshop, and they are reduced, compressed, etc. Now the look of the movie is meant to be stylized and painterly, but it's nice to get handle on learning how to fake natural lighting effects on a stage.

On Tuesday we hit the road, shooting at the old Art Deco-style Bullocks Wilshire building (now a private law school) to play as an urban department store. The large interior was lit mainly with a single HMI lighting balloon. We then went down the block, past the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel (where I shot part of “D.E.B.S” a few years ago) to a small wooden bar to shoot a few scenes.

On Wednesday, we arrived at DC Stages in Downtown to shoot in some modified pre-existing sets (courtrooms, large hallways, offices, etc.) Since I used mostly HMI lighting at Melody Ranch, I decided to pre-rig these stages with my tungsten lights, discovering by now that the noise problem of shooting in 3200K balance on the RED was not as bad as some people have made it out to be. Plus I had too many sets that needed downward-pointing spots on architectural elements, and there really is no good HMI solution to that.

Thursday was my birthday and there was a nice big cake for me (and the crew) at lunchtime, which was nice. I also ran into the producers and advance prep people for HBO’s “Big Love”, now shooting their third season, a job offer I had to decline because of my commitment to the two Polish Brothers movies. They were at DC Stages scouting locations for an upcoming episode. I chatted briefly with Alan Caso, ASC, who is now shooting the series.

We shot some 16mm film footage for an educational film series, part of which plays on a wall in a later scene, plus is scattered throughout the movie. The plan is to rephotograph the image off of a screen, though we have the option of scanning the footage to digital as well. It was interesting to shoot film again, to look through an optical viewfinder to frame up a scene without having to turn on the camera. However, after the first scene was shot, the on-off trigger on the Arri-SR2 broke and we couldn’t turn on the camera. So much for the superior reliability of film equipment compared to the RED’s…

Turns out a small plastic piece inside the 25-year-old camera broke. By chance, our digital data wrangler, Eric, used to work as a camera tech and managed to repair it by pushing the internal microswitch to be permanently “on” so we could trigger the camera with a remote start-stop cable. But by the time it was fixed, we decided to shoot the rest of the 16mm scenes on Monday. Luckily we had already shot the one scene that we needed a 16mm print of to project during a scene on Monday. I guess one advantage of old film cameras is that the repairs tend to be low-tech and mechanical generally….

I used Kodak 7218 for the 16mm scenes, figuring the desaturated look of the movie, the digital color-correction planned, and the softening and fading from rephotographing the image off of a screen during projection sort of negated getting finicky about matching the look (grain-wise and color-wise) of older emulsions and formats, though I did point out to everyone that 16mm industrials made from the late 1930’s to early 1960’s, as ours were meant to represent, should reflect the changes in technology, with most of them being b&w, not color, except for the 1960’s era industrials. But since this movie is highly stylized, I don’t think it is important to get overly realistic about that aspect. Plus there was no time to shoot each 16mm sequence in different styles on different stocks. I lit the faux educational films in a classic hard light style, which was fun. I also am always amazed at how good actors look in that style.

We also shot a long scene in a lab / office set full of animals in cages, including a lion. That was interesting to say the least.

Well, three more days left!

[jbeale]

Thanks as always, for your generosity in sharing all of this with us. What a difference there is between the Day 1 / Day 20 master shots!

[Jarred Land]

David definitely amazes me every day...

[Bob Torrance]

David definitely amazes me every day...

no kidding. To the cinematography students out there, I hope you're reading this.

[Marc Berger]

David,
once your diary comes to an end, it would be fantastic to collect it in a PDF and give it also to AC and other magazines for download. This is so great, it should go over the borders of the Red forum. I´m sure, not only students, also professionals would be happy to get this input! IMO you´re the first one who explore the digital cinema according to its own pure possible aesthetic (and not in comparison to film).
Thank you so much!
Marc

[Rudi Herbert]

Great info David! And wow, June 26th is also my birthday, though I wish I had celebrated mine in as creative an evironment as you did yours!

[Shawn Booth]

David,
once your diary comes to an end, it would be fantastic to collect it in a PDF and give it also to AC and other magazines for download. This is so great, it should go over the borders of the Red forum. I´m sure, not only students, also professionals would be happy to get this input! IMO you´re the first one who explore the digital cinema according to its own pure possible aesthetic (and not in comparison to film).
Thank you so much!
Marc

I've been doing this - the .pdf is over 50 pages so far. I've included almost all of David's posts and the photos as well - so if you want it David, let me know. I'll send it right over.

[SF Geek]

David, are the backdrops all front lit? I also noticed that you had talked about blanket lights for overhead ambient and HMI balloons for the backdrops, but then I saw you talking about lumapanels and HMI goyas. Were these different stages or did you change your setups due to budget or preference?

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, the cycs are all front-lit canvas paintings, they are not translights.

In the main Stage C, where the landscapes and farms are, I have Kino blanket lights, some HMI balloons along two sides, and some 12-lights (tungsten) and 18K HMI's hung from ropes near the top. I also hit the backing with HMI's (18K's, 6K's, whatever is left) from stands on the off-camera sides, flagged off of the ground.

In the smaller Stage B, where we built hotels, diners, etc. we have Lumapanels hung, plus some Goya HMI lights as cyc lights. I took two Goyas though and at some point, added one for each corner of Stage C, plus a 4K HMI in between, to light the far stretch of wall that I constantly was pointing at. So when I moved to Stage B, I often had to take down those Goyas and move them, re-rig them.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Great work David, the re-shot master definitely has more depth and ambience to it, the haze is really the icing on the cake as well.

Looks like you switched out backdrop too.

[David Mullen ASC]

No, it's the same backdrop (you can see some of the same clouds if you look), just that once a week or so, a painter came in and made some changes.

I only posted the photos not to say that there was something wrong with the more stylized early version compared to the more realistic later version, just that when you shoot a movie quickly, basically shooting five minutes of scenes every day, some aspects of the look get established right away while other aspects change as you learn more and more everyday -- the learning curve is steeper than on a long shoot with a long preproduction period where the look is locked in early through elaborate testing.

This movie was a bit of an experiment, most indie films of this budget level do not attempt this degree of stylization through art direction and lighting (maybe for an obvious reason, because it's really hard work!) But it's been fun to get this challenge and opportunity and I think the movie has turned out to be really unique and special.

[Douglas Underdahl]

It's wonderful, David.

I like the reshot frame better. It does look more "real", and I think that a big reason for this is that you punched up the sky considerably, to the point that the clouds are not as defined. One might say that this mimics the blown out look one would get by shooting in a real field, as the contrast range would be much more extreme there. So it's interesting to me that you have achieved a greater sense of "realness" by pushing the look into something that so many on this site have worried about: the so called limited range of the camera! Of course, 35mm color negative reacts this way as well.

Thanks so much for your openness and please know that I am quite stunned by your work.

[krisrajan]

David, just like everybody on this board just blown away by the creativity and the openness of your comments.

I have a question on "The Astronaut Farmer". The scene where they bury the grandfather there is a beautuful shot of the people on the graveyard. Is that backdrop a real open ground or a backgroud image on a sound stage like you have in the opening scene of Manure. Just curious.

thanks,

-Krish

[BPrzypek]

Hey David,

I stumbled upon this thread recently and its good to see you are still up to big things.
Its been quite a road since INFESTED.
I have been shooting with the RED regularly since Offhollywood got their first 2 cameras, #6 and #7.
Check out some of my work at: www.red-shooter.com
or:
www.przypek.com
the compression and grading are a bit all over the place as I'm still a newbie
in those areas.
Any comments would be appreciated.

All the best,

BP

[nirav shah]

Yes, the cycs are all front-lit canvas paintings, they are not translights.

In the main Stage C, where the landscapes and farms are, I have Kino blanket lights, some HMI balloons along two sides, and some 12-lights (tungsten) and 18K HMI's hung from ropes near the top. I also hit the backing with HMI's (18K's, 6K's, whatever is left) from stands on the off-camera sides, flagged off of the ground.

In the smaller Stage B, where we built hotels, diners, etc. we have Lumapanels hung, plus some Goya HMI lights as cyc lights. I took two Goyas though and at some point, added one for each corner of Stage C, plus a 4K HMI in between, to light the far stretch of wall that I constantly was pointing at. So when I moved to Stage B, I often had to take down those Goyas and move them, re-rig them.
hi David,
thank you for this thread. Its a TEXTBOOK!
i'm curious about the dimensions of your main stage and about the height of your lighting grid.
Many Thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

I have a question on "The Astronaut Farmer". The scene where they bury the grandfather there is a beautuful shot of the people on the graveyard. Is that backdrop a real open ground or a backgroud image on a sound stage like you have in the opening scene of Manure. Just curious.


You mean this scene?
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/af11.jpg

That's God working in my favor that day, outside. But it is an example of minimal but clever art direction (a few headstones placed on top of a hill at sunset for a silhouette effect, giving the impression of a whole cemetary.)

[krisrajan]

You mean this scene?
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/af11.jpg

That's God working in my favor that day, outside. But it is an example of minimal but clever art direction (a few headstones placed on top of a hill at sunset for a silhouette effect, giving the impression of a whole cemetary.)

thanks David, yes that is the one. its absolutely breathtaking!

I have a kinda silly question. How do you decide that a scene for example like the one above should be staged real and not on a sound stage. In other words when you do the pre-production do you get to the detail of each and every single shot and where its going to be staged or do you sometime feel your way through depending on the location.

My appologies if some of these are really silly amature questions.

thanks,

-Krish

[Jaime Vallés]

David, this thread is both inspirational and educational. Thank you for taking the time to post your experiences. The stills look beautiful, and I can't wait to see the finished film.

I second Mark's statement, that one of his goals in life is to work with you someday.

[David Mullen ASC]

Normally a day exterior scene would be shot outdoors, so it's rare to fake that inside because it is so difficult to be convincing. On "Big Love", we did the backyard scenes under a soundstage, day and night, because it allowed the actors to move freely from house to house by way of the backyard, a scenario that did not exist in any real locations that could be found. And while one could have shot these houses on an exterior studio backlot (as "Desperate Housewives" does) and gotten real sunlight, the downside is the lack of flexibility in shooting schedules, which is tough for television work.

But beyond that, the real question should be "what works better for the project?" when trying to decide whether to build a set or not. Both creatively and logistically, financially.

Generally daytime wooded scenes are a lot easier to fake on a soundstage than a scene that takes place in open space with a lot of sky, because it is so hard to fake a single sunlight source over a large area. With a wooded set, or a jungle set, multiple spotlights punching through the tree canopy can simulate the real sun more easily, plus you have less sky to fake.

[Yannick Hagman]

David, did you ever had the oppurtunity to work with Chimera Birdcage lights? If yes, what are your thoughts about them?

Link: http://www.chimeralighting.com/dspProduct.asp?productid=296

[Troy Smith]

Hi David, Amazing stuff, I have a question if you don't mind,
where do you get your filmouts done?

Regards Stricko

[Noah Kadner]

David-

Now that Manure is pretty close to done, will we see a new thread on your second RED project with the Polish Brothers?

Noah

[David Mullen ASC]

I haven't tried that Chimera Birdcage yet but it looks interesting.

One cheap method of skirting Chinese Lanterns or taping skirts to the ceiling, instead of using heavy duvetine cloth, is the black plastic tablecloth material you can get a catering supply stores. Very lightweight.

Yes, probably there will be reports from the next movie when it starts shooting in late July, but it is a much smaller, contemporary movie -- small crew, small lighting package, lots of locations.

[Jonathan Payne]

I know this comment is a little late but I just wanted to say that while i really like the look of the outdoor stage sets I really really really like the reshot version with the more heavily lit sky. You're striking this wonderful magical realism balance that is just fantastic.

Can't wait to see the office w/ animals.

J

[krisrajan]

Normally a day exterior scene would be shot outdoors, so it's rare to fake that inside because it is so difficult to be convincing. On "Big Love", we did the backyard scenes under a soundstage, day and night, because it allowed the actors to move freely from house to house by way of the backyard, a scenario that did not exist in any real locations that could be found. And while one could have shot these houses on an exterior studio backlot (as "Desperate Housewives" does) and gotten real sunlight, the downside is the lack of flexibility in shooting schedules, which is tough for television work.

But beyond that, the real question should be "what works better for the project?" when trying to decide whether to build a set or not. Both creatively and logistically, financially.

Generally daytime wooded scenes are a lot easier to fake on a soundstage than a scene that takes place in open space with a lot of sky, because it is so hard to fake a single sunlight source over a large area. With a wooded set, or a jungle set, multiple spotlights punching through the tree canopy can simulate the real sun more easily, plus you have less sky to fake.

thanks David, I understand your point on availability. few years ago I was on the universal lot taking the tour and the announcer mentioned that the "Desperate Housewife" set is open to public only on few weekends as its booked for shooting during the week.

Taking about what works for the project how do you go about decidng the look. Is that a factor determined by DP or really the Director's vision. Some moves like "Traffic" or even "21 Grams" have a very distinct look. Is that look arrived at after some field testing?

I have one final question. I am embarking on a horror/suspense short next week. We have some scenes inside a house (in the living room, dining room etc) where we have to simulate raining conditions to create the mood.
Do you have any pointers for us as to how to light for such a scene? we are totally low budget so you can assume that we will be prepared to throw buckets of water on window from outside if its necessary.

regards,

-Krish

[J.R. Hud]

I know this comment is a little late but I just wanted to say that while i really like the look of the outdoor stage sets I really really really like the reshot version with the more heavily lit sky. You're striking this wonderful magical realism balance that is just fantastic.

Can't wait to see the office w/ animals.

J

I love the stages.

Coppola's Dracula was shot on sound stages and it just has such a magical vibe to it.

[David Mullen ASC]

The last three days were spent at DC Stages in Downtown LA, finishing up a lot of scenes in the Rose’s Manure factory labs, offices, hallways, etc. using modified existing sets.
A number of the standing sets were quite large. A library was converted into a lab/office for a number of scenes. We put two large industrial exhaust fans at the bottom of the two main windows of the room. For story reasons, there couldn’t be any safety cage over the fans and when we turned them on, we found that they were way too powerful to be standing near, not to mention shoot dialogue scenes around. Putting them on a variac dimmer just caused them to stop working. As we scrambled to find a speed control for that model of industrial fan, we took off the motors and fan belts to see if we could manually spin them. But after a few minutes they started turning slowly by themselves at the speed we needed.

Turns out that the huge amount of light I needed right outside the window to both burn-out the brown backdrop hung plus create shafts of light through the big windows, generated so much heat that the temperature difference on both sides of the windows were enough to cause air to flow and turn the fan blades. So we cancelled the plan to find a speed control for the fans.

In most scenes, I had a 20K coming through the main windows & fans, and the two side windows had a 10K each. Plus I had three 5K spkypans outside to light the backing, plus two mini-9-lights. In other scenes, I added a 5K Molebeam to create a stronger shaft of light.

On hiccup was last night when we did two night scenes in the lab/office, and the fans stopped turning without all that heat outside the windows. We had to manually spin them before each take and hope they didn’t slow to a stop before the take was over.

I wanted one scene to have a sunset look, so I switched the RED camera to 5600K balance, and used HMI Source-4’s bounced inside the room for fill, but left the tungsten light coming through the window and lighting the backdrop.

Perhaps our biggest pre-rig job for DC Stages was the main lobby area, a huge rotunda space with a big marble hallway connected to it. The center of the two largest areas (the rotunda and the end of the big hallway) was lit with a skirted 6K spacelight each, with dozens of Source-4’s spotted on various objects in the rotunda, which was a museum space in the movie. The large hallway was lit with a row of spot PARCAN’s.

I started using Kinos less and less for these tungsten scenes – the RED camera seems particularly sensitive to the green spike in these lights. In HMI-lit scenes, the daylight Kinos are fine because all the lights have some degree of green in them that can be timed out, but in tungsten-lit scenes, you can really see how off-color any other source is. So I mainly used bounced tungsten Source-4’s for fill, sometimes key, and bigger tungsten lamps through diffusion. I like bouncing Source-4’s around a space because I can quickly adjust the level by cutting the size of the pattern with the iris blades. And tungsten is the prettiest light I’ve ever seen on skintones.

As for the blue channel noise of the RED in 3200K light, I haven’t noticed it much generally, and truth is that this movie will be timed so warm and desaturated that I’ll probably be working closer to a 5600K balance in color-correcting when opening up the files and then taking down the saturation of the orange tungsten light, rather than trying to get 3200K light to look neutral. But I was playing around with some RED frames from the fake industrial documentary that we shot in the lab on both the RED camera (as a back-up) and on 16mm color negative 7219, and turned the RED frame to b&w to see how that would look (I lit the shot in a classic 1940’s style with hard tungsten light) and was surprised to see how much noise there was in some areas. I can see why you should stick to 5600K lighting for bluescreen work on the RED camera.

Otherwise, tungsten light is too beautiful to be dumped just because the RED prefers daylight, so I’m hoping that Build 16 has improved that aspect. The Macbeth chart tests that someone posted is very encouraging. It looks like the whole color space has been improved with Build 16. I’m just not sure it will be stable enough to switch to for the next RED feature I start for the Polish Brothers in only three weeks, not to mention that we will be shooting pick-ups for this Build 15-shot movie over the next few months probably.

This brings up another issue. On our day off last Friday, some of the camera crew (operator Theo Pingarelli, 1st AC Marcos Lopez, digital tech / b-camera operator Conrad Hunziker) went out to a wild animal ranch to shoot some efx plates (thanks guys!) and had a giraffe kick one of the RED cameras, damaging the mattebox, follow-focus, and perhaps tweaking the camera. So we rented a RED from a small company for some 2nd unit bluescreen efx work on Monday rather than trust the kicked-by-a-giraffe RED that we had yet to send out for a service check. But the RED that showed up had already been installed with Build 16, and we were shooting bluescreen elements for scenes shot on Build 15 and where some elements had already been shot on Build 15. So the efx supervisor did not want to risk dealing with the color differences of having some elements in a shot using Build 15 and others using Build 16. The efx unit (shot by DP Patrick Cady on that day) ended up using the giraffe-kicked Build 15 RED instead since it seemed to be working OK (a good endorsement for the RED camera… it can be trampled by African wildlife and keep working…) But this brings up all sorts of issue with renting RED’s from different companies and keeping track of the Build level that was installed.

[David Mullen ASC]

My gaffer Keith Morgan (who I have worked with a few times before, notably on “Solstice” in New Orleans) and my long-time Key Grip Brad Heiner have pointed out some of the changes in my style in lighting over the years, since I’ve been out of town a lot lately, or was on “Big Love” for seven months with a different crew – I keep learning by watching other DP’s (most particularly Bill Wages, ASC on “Big Love”, who I consider one of the best DP’s working today) and by talking to crew people. Philosophically, the biggest thing has been to learn to light large spaces so that I don’t have to do much relighting on closer shots (until I turn around to look the opposite way.) This is one reason I prefer sets with ceilings so I can retain the natural ambience from light bouncing all around the room. I’ve also discovered 129 diffusion, which is heavier than 216 (more like Full Grid Cloth) and use it a lot. But the main thing is that I mix things up, I am not always consistent about lighting each scene in a similar manner. I may use Chinese Lanterns for one night scene but bounce a Source-4 in the same room for another scene, just for some variations in look, or because the change suits the action better.

I think one advantage of shooting digitally is that certain things when lighting a wide shot of a room can be judged by a monitor that your eyes don’t always catch – mainly in terms of fall-off. It’s hard in a large room with 20K’s shining through giant windows, flooding the room with light, to see with your eyes that some dark wood bookshelves in one part of the room are going pitch black because they are not catching any light. But looking at an HD monitor, that becomes immediate obvious. Plus I’m constantly running two cameras in these wide shots, and sometimes I catch problems with the backing outside the windows on the HD monitors, like in a high angle, seeing a couple of feet of stage floor on the B-camera. Of course this is all stuff that any traditional DP can deal with when shooting film, by eye and with a light meter, and by looking through the eyepiece, but as I operate less and less these days, it becomes more important to catch problems that are only visible from the perspective of the lens. So HD monitoring is simply a great help in this way. If only I could get a high-quality HD image on a monitor while shooting with a 35mm camera...

On the next movie, we will be moving from location to location constantly with a small lighting and grip package, so I will be putting the RED through the paces of dealing with less controlled situations, lighting-wise – more available light, more day exterior light, more we’re-losing-the-light-but-keep-shooting problems, etc. This tends to be where color negative film really saves you’re a--- because you can’t always balance things. You may end up shooting in full shade with a background in full sun, something that modern color negative film handles just fine most of the time, but most digital cameras have a problem with. I’ve shot some HD movies in this manner and generally there are workarounds, so we should be fine.

This is the part where I want to thank everyone involved with this movie. First, the fun cast – Billy Bob Thornton and Tea Leoni were a dream to work with, clever, inventive, but quick to jump in and get a scene in the can (so to speak) within a few takes, if not the first take. The rest of the main cast were wonderful too, all of them. My crew worked so hard on this one with (almost) no complaints and I’m incredibly grateful for that. Gaffer Keith Morgan and Key Grip Brad Heiner were organized and graceful under pressure, two critically important qualities in a department head. I want to particularly thank B-camera Operator / digital guru Conrad Hunziker and my prep-DP Jim Mathers (who brought Conrad onboard) for making this RED experience fairly painless and for doing my homework for me while I was in Canada shooting “Jennifer’s Body” right up until five days before “Manure” started shooting (so my body feels more like I’m on Day 68 instead of Day 26…) I was also happy to be working with my regular camera guys like operator Theo Pingarelli and 1st AC Marcos Lopez, plus 2nd AC’s Bianca Bahena (another RED shoot veteran) and Ken Tanaka, our data wrangler Eric Yu, and the B-camera focus pullers (alternating between Dominik Mainl and Tom Gleason). Thanks also to Jim Mathers and Patrick Cady for shooting some second unit stuff, as well as some inserts shot by operators Theo and Conrad.

Hats off to the producers, line producers, and production office folk for pulling this ambitious film off. I also want to point out the contribution of long-term Polish Brothers collaborator AD Andy Coffing, who is just as interested in how the movie looks as anyone else working on the show, constantly pushing everyone to do things better (not just do it faster).

The real tour de force work on this show was by Production Designer Clark Hunter, not just in terms of visual design and execution, but also achieving the impossible in terms of the number of high-quality sets built, struck, and built again, over and over and over again.

But primarily, I must thank Michael and Mark Polish for their amazing visual sense and imaginative screenwriting, and their dedication to artistic filmmaking no matter what the obstacles. I usually feel beat-up and exhausted by the feature filmmaking process, but at least when I finish one of their movies, I not only feel beat-up and exhausted… but I always feel I worked to my highest creative potential as a cinematographer, which is the most any artist/technician such as myself can ask for.

A few Nikon snapshots:

A courtroom, lit with 12-lights behind each window (this set had been built for some other show with only five feet of space between the windows and the stage wall, which is nuts...) I think we lit and shot this scene (three angles) in an hour total. I accidentally took this picture with the Nikon camera set to 5600K, but I like the warmth:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900manure183.jpg

The lab/office (with fans turned by the heat of lamps...) with tungsten playing for late afternoon by switching the camera to 5600K:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900manure182.jpg

The museum rotunda and great hall:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900manure184.jpg

[Mark Phelan]

David,

If the world had more generous folks such as yourself, it would be a much better place. Thank you for the terrific insights into this project. Leave it to you to turn manure into art. Please keep the lessons coming. They are most appreciated.

[David Mullen ASC]

Oh, I forgot to mention an interesting artifact the other day...

I pointed a 16mm projector (showing the footage we shot on 16mm) right into the lens during a scene where some characters are watching the reel.

Not only was the purple dot from the sensor protection circuitry quite large, basically the size of the projector iris... but you can see the movie running as a negative image inside the purple dot. Basically whatever was clearish on the print caused the sensor to go dark, but the darker areas of the print cut the light level enough for the sensor to merely clip that area to white, so the result was a negative version of the print image running through the gate. Very bizzare-looking but simple to fix in post by burning out that area to white.

[Tom Lowe]

Congratulations, David.

I hope this film is your most successful to date with the Polish Bros.

Sounds like the next one will be very interesting with all that outdoor work. If you were shooting only landscapes I would say stock up on the grad NDs, but I guess you can't really use those on a narrative feature when you've got actors moving around in the frames. :)

Let us know what happens with Manure regarding distribution, the DI, filmouts, film fests, etc.

[Lachlan Ward]

Oh, I forgot to mention an interesting artifact the other day...

I pointed a 16mm projector (showing the footage we shot on 16mm) right into the lens during a scene where some characters are watching the reel.

Not only was the purple dot from the sensor protection circuitry quite large, basically the size of the projector iris... but you can see the movie running as a negative image inside the purple dot. Basically whatever was clearish on the print caused the sensor to go dark, but the darker areas of the print cut the light level enough for the sensor to merely clip that area to white, so the result was a negative version of the print image running through the gate. Very bizzare-looking but simple to fix in post by burning out that area to white.

Sounds like a cool looking image.

Do you have any idea on the release dates/target festivals that the films will hopefully be screening at?

The images you put up look fantastic as well. It will be interesting to see the full result. Nice Job Mr. Mullen.

[Emmanuel Cambier]

David,

Awesome thread, thank you a million times.

I really hope you will be able to use build 16 on this next project, it is remarquably stable, and the new color space and noise texture is well worth upgrading.

here is a thread with some low light footage under build 16:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=15501


Emmanuel

[Sam Roberts]

God, to be an up and coming camera person in your 20's and be able to ask a Hollywood Cinematographer questions about his work. I grew up in the 70's reading and re-reading each issue of American Cinematographer to try and learn some tricks of the trade. But back in those days the top guns held their cards pretty close to their chests, especially when being interviewed by A.C. My how times have changed.

[Justin Kirchhoff]

David, reading this thread for the past hour has been a lesson and inspiration to me. Thank you for posting. I need to shoot more!

[Michael Hastings]

It looks like the whole color space has been improved with Build 16. I’m just not sure it will be stable enough to switch to for the next RED feature I start for the Polish Brothers in only three weeks, not to mention that we will be shooting pick-ups for this Build 15-shot movie over the next few months probably.
.

David:

As always, you are a great read.

Jim has stated elsewhere that he thinks the current build 16 (v3.1.5) is already more stable than the release 15 and another update to squish a few remaining bugs comes in the next couple days. So you may want to consider it for the new movie.

[Eryc Tramonn]

Not that you need to hear this from me as well, but thank you yet again for being so open and sharing so much.

I was recently on a 21-hour day for an NBC promo...upcoming Christian Slater show...and it was brutal. Yet, we only had to deal with the schedule for a few days...not 26. Even then, everyone looked liked zombies at the end of it. So, I can't fathom how you were able to be so thorough in your posts after such a grueling schedule.

I also had the pleasure of working with another brilliant DOP Eric Adkins and he shares a similar, open approach. It's great to be around and learn from such creative visionaries. Truly.

Hats off David. Thank you.

[KETCH ROSSi]

David, again amazing stuff, love it, also enjoying the generousity of your sharing some behind the scene stuff, which I have to say I many times look more forward to it then the actual movie it self:)


On your week four of shooting you used several Blue screens, most on tubular frames, and one as a curtain set up, haver you used the MSE quick corner frames? the Square ones, appreciate the input as I'm out to buy few of them.

Thanks, and thanks again for sharing your work with us.

ciao

[David Mullen ASC]

Not aware of MSE quick corner frames...

[KETCH ROSSi]

Not aware of MSE quick corner frames...

They are from Matthews Studio equipment.

Also sold at B&H http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=RetrieveSku&IC=MAQCF88&Q=&O=


But its okay if you don't know about them, just was looking forward for your opinion on them.

ciao

[Noah Kadner]

Mods- this thread should be a sticky. It would be a useful resource for anyone. :weight_lift:

Noah

[Tom Lowe]

David, are you going to keep this thread going with Post stuff?

My guess is that people are actually as interested in post as they are in the shooting, since it's Red post that is so new and misunderstood.

[David Mullen ASC]

When I get around to doing the D.I., I'll update the thread.

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with us.

This thread was set as my home page. :biggrin:

[Andrew Hewlett]

Wow...I feel like I've totally missed out by not reading this thread earlier...simply awesome! For an AC mag reader like myself, this was like porn.

[David Mullen ASC]

http://photos.latimes.com/backlot

Check out David Strick's Backlot series from the Manure set, while it is still online...

[Tico Llaurador]

When I get around to doing the D.I., I'll update the thread.

Definitely looking forward to that!

Thanks again, David!

:biggrin:

[Tom Lowe]

http://photos.latimes.com/backlot

Check out David Strick's Backlot series from the Manure set, while it is still online...

Very cool.

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/8742/redmanureonsetmm4.jpg

This whole thing has come a long way since Jim first announced it.

[Greg Huson]

Nice shot of one of David's RED Ones on the back of today's LA Times calendar section. Too bad Billy Bob had to get his head in the way!

[Rob Lohman]

AMAZING! Thanks so much for sharing this with everyone David, that is greatly appreciated! Of course thanks to the Polish brothers as well for allowing you to do so.

[Mark L. Pederson]

I am DYING to see this movie! Sincerely, I can't wait to see it up on a big sheet.

David, huge thanks for being so generous with your time and knowledge.

The world would be a better place with a few more of you around.

[liquidigital]

Me too and I agree, I really can't believe how generous David is with his contributions.

[Shawn Nelson]

Wow, thanks David! I just caught up today on this whole thread, a real treat to read.

One question, in the stills (captures from Red), the sky looks fake and close...was that a style choice? Is the movie designed to feel like it was shot on a small stage?

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, the movie was shot on relatively small stages...

The sky is meant to be stylized though I also tried to give the sets some feeling of natural light. But some degree of theatricality is inevitable so we embraced it as part of the design. But we did not go out of our way to make the sets seem smaller than they were, quite the opposite. Now on some sets, we literally were on a few feet away from the sky backing so I did the best that I could.

[Shawn Nelson]

It's brave, I havent seen obviously painted backdrops since the 40s.

[Noah Kadner]

It's brave, I havent seen obviously painted backdrops since the 40s.

See SciFi Channel's DUNE miniseries (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/) from 2000 for one. I'd say David did a more convincing job than Vittorio Storaro and that's no faint praise. :spidy:

http://www.firstshowing.net/img/dune-miniseries-pana.jpg

Noah

[Shawn Booth]

It's brave, I havent seen obviously painted backdrops since the 40s.

You look great for having been alive in the 40's Nelson!

[Anderson Laggert]

everything looks amazing. i can't wait to see the film.
one question about lighting: what's a lumapanel and what does it do?

thanks, anderson

[David Mullen ASC]

http://www.lumapanel.com/

Another fluorescent fixture like Kinoflo -- a Lumapanel holds 28 4' T8 tubes. So the light output is much more than a Kino Blanket Lite or Image 80.

[Anderson Laggert]

thanks for the quick reply. i'm shooting a commercial next week, and these might be perfect. did you use the varible color feature? i need to change from day to night and want some soft light movement.
i am blown away by the day interior imagery you created for manure.
i'm hoping to channel it via my taste into a hyundai commercial !!!
best regards, anderson

[Sarah C.]

Some folks get excited to "paint a town red".. Looks like Mr. Mullen painted a class-act feature film with a Red!


Color me excited about seeing it!
~Sarah

[David Mullen ASC]

did you use the varible color feature?

No. If you don't need the full light output at 3200K or 5500K, often you can put mix tungsten and daylight tubes in these fixtures to allow some inbetween color temps, or to switch from one to the other by switching off the other tubes. I've done that in the past with Kinos but didn't try it with the Lumapanels. In my case, I knew that I never wanted more warmth from the overhead soft light, it would always be cool to neutral, so I left them with all daylight tubes.

[SandeepDey]

I am learning more here than many other books I have read!

[Larkin Seiple]

"Then there was an interrogation scene, again lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures and a backlight through the window from the HMI Source-4"

Do you mean a joker bug? a a 400 joker through with a source 4 body?

[David Mullen ASC]

It may have been a Joker 800 in the Source-4.

[Ryan Manes]

I've seen this thing in several photos, on film and RED cameras what is it.

[Conrad Hunziker]

That would be a cinetape. Its used to measure the distance between the focal plane and the actors, to help the focus puller judge distance during a take.

[Ryan Manes]

Thats what I thought it might be for, but its not on the focal plane Its attached where the matte box and lens meet. ?

[Conrad Hunziker]

It doesnt need to be at the focal plane. It can be placed anywhere. The display unit makes an adjustment for the distance it is off the film plane. The typical way to set it up is to put an object at say 3', and adjust the readout to match. It will then consistently add that adjustment to the readout automatically.

[Ryan Manes]

Got it, thanks for the feedback,

[Julien Lambert]

Thank you David for sharing your experience.
Julien.

[Sarah C.]

Congratulations to you and the gang from Manure for making it into the Sundance Film Festival 2009!!

~Sarah