Stay Cool

[David Mullen ASC]

STAY COOL

I just finished the first eight days of “Stay Cool”, my sixth feature for the Polish Brothers. We started shooting just two weeks after wrapping out fifth feature together, “Manure”. This new movie is much smaller in scale, a romantic comedy about a writer (Mark Polish) with a successful pop novel about high school life to his credit returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak: his home town and high school, to give a graduation commencement speech. He hooks up with old friends and rivalries and finds himself re-experiencing all the pains of his high school years.

We are using the same three RED cameras that were bought for “Manure”, with the same Zeiss Ultra Primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms rented from The Camera House, and PlasterCity Digital again doing the dailies work. The budget is smaller on this movie however, and we are mostly shooting on locations in Santa Clarita.

In a complete twist from the soft, diffused, brown palette of “Manure”, this movie is being shot in a sharp, colorful style, sort of a pop art modernist feeling to the suburban locations.

We decided to update the cameras to Build 16 despite it still being in beta status at the time – it seemed to have stabilized the week before we began shooting so we decided to take a chance. This movie will have a number of low-light scenes and I needed to be able to push an underexposed image around, so the lower noise floor from Build 16 seemed like a good match.

I only had a day to shoot any tests of Build 16, mainly to look at the noise when rating the camera at higher ASA’s. Besides shooting some charts at different speeds, I took a camera out on the road – along with some T/1.3 Zeiss Master Primes -- at night to shoot some residential streets only lit by their sodium streetlamp fixtures.

I digitally projected the tests at 2K in the D.I. theater at PlasterCity Digital the next day. I found the increase in noise at higher ASA ratings to be fairly mild unless you tried to lift up low-end detail buried in the shadows. But the highlights and midtones were quite clean even at 800 ASA. There was enough exposure at T/1.3, 24 fps, 1/48th shutter, 800 ASA rating, to shoot by available light as long as there was a streetlamp right in that spot. Further away, the light levels fell off dramatically. The image was nice and clean and the sodium streetlamp color was closer to how it looks to you eye (orange-ish) compared to that reddish look created in some Sony HD cameras when shooting sodium streetlamps.

I did discover that no matter what frame rate or shutter speed I tried to select, there is a limit of 1/24th of a second for the longest exposure time per frame, so you can’t just go to 8 fps, for example, with the shutter off, to get nighttime landscapes exposed at 1/8th of a second per frame.

We spent the first seven days of the feature at West Ranch High School in Valencia. It was just built three years ago, so we decided that instead of the character seeing his old familiar building, he would discover that his high school had been demolished and replaced by a new structure, with fragments ala the Berlin Wall placed around campus as decorations.

This location is mainly fluorescent-lit and stark, so we had to find ways of adding color to these spaces.

On Day One, we created a local radio station inside one of the rooms in the high school, which I lit with a mix of tungsten practical lamps and color accents (some red hairlight, cooler fluorescents contrasting with the warm tungsten, etc.) We also did a location move in the afternoon to a nearby chemical lab building which could double as a hospital. I let the main hallway be a very strong cyan from the overhead fluorescents but I lit the connecting rooms in tungsten. In a day scene in one hospital room, I had a half-orange light coming through a window flat we added to the larger room.

Then we came back to the school for the next six days. Some rooms had such small windows that I had to keep to the basic overhead fluorescent look (with the tubes swapped out to daylight-balanced ones), augmented in closer shots with Kinos or by bouncing an HMI Source-4 off of the ceiling.

But on our fifth day, we had a big prom scene in the gymnasium, perhaps one of our biggest and most expensive lighting set-ups for the whole movie. Skipping “Manure”, this was the third movie in a row I’ve done with a prom dance in a gym to light (“Assassination of a High School President” and “Jennifer’s Body” had one) and they are never easy – you can’t really use the overhead metal halide fixtures in these spaces for a dance. We hung about 40 PARCAN’s for the dance area, plus four HMI Source-4’s pointed into a mirror ball, a 1200w HMI follow-spot, two MAC lights, and a stage for a band with rows of PARCAN’s mounted to a truss. In “Assassination” I ended up, in the last minute, bouncing an HMI Source-4 off of the ceiling of the gym to bring up the general ambience, since the overhead PARCAN’s are quite spotty. And I had to use extras to hide the stand for that Source-4 in the middle of the dance floor. So for this movie, I added eight Chinese Lanterns to the overhead grid, with blue photofloods inside them to create a cool ambient fill for the room. I used Chinese Lanterns because I figured they might look better if seen on camera compared to some other soft units up there.

The following day we shot the graduation scene in an outdoor amphitheatre, and the day after that, having cleared out the gym, we shot a pep rally under the normal overhead metal halides.

At the end of Week Two, which was Day Eight (we started Week One on a Wednesday), we had finished with the school and we beginning our scattered location work. Day Eight was spent at a local IHOP restaurant, with a stakebed move down the block to shoot one small scene in a tattoo parlor. Again, Production Designer Clark Hunter and I kept looking for ways to add more color to these locations. The tattoo parlor was basically a big white box with overhead fluorescents, not some black-painted neon-sign-lit funky place like you’d expect. We also had to deal with a big set of windows at one end of the room for a scene that would be shot from sunset into night for a day scene. So Clark suggested that he paint the top row of windows with letters on a color background so that I could backlight the paint and bathe the back end of the shot in colored light. That worked quite well. The back windows were mainly painted red and yellow, so I added cyan gel to the overhead Cool White fluorescents to provide an overall soft cyan ambience. Then I used a tungsten desklamp to light the foreground work stations.

I won’t be able to post many photos on this one as the last one, but I’ll show you a few actual RED frames (reduced in size and compressed as JPEG’s for the web) to give you some sense of the color approach of this movie.

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%201.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%202.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2026.jpg

[David Mullen ASC]

cont.

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2037.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2045.jpg

[Joel Kaye]

Too generous as always. Great info and can't wait to see both movies.

[jbeale]

It's always a pleasure to read these extensive writeups. There is no question that you have a lot of color in those frames!

[Shawn Booth]

Mahalo David -

You are the man

[Kenn Michael]

Fantastic info and lovely images David! Thanks for sharing.

Just a note, to get the 8fps landscape with the slower than 1/24 sec shutter, you should shoot in varispeed mode with the shutter mode set to 'Relative'.

[Terry Delahunt]

It's always a pleasure to read these extensive writeups. There is no question that you have a lot of color in those frames!

Don't know how you find the time to do these write-ups. Much appreciated.
Thank you David.

[Tai Wah Lim]

David, always appreciate your posts and now more confident with B16. Lim

[Graeme Nattress]

Great shots David! I really can't wait to see these movies.

Graeme

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thanks for sharing, David!

Image look great, very colorful.

[Jaime Vallés]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2037.jpg

Hmm... This reminds me of the school in the TV show "Heroes" where Claire the Cheerleader first gets attacked. Interesting. :ph34r:

David, thanks for sharing your experiences on-set. Your threads are an invaluable resource for us all.

[Darren Orange]

Hmm... This reminds me of the school in the TV show "Heroes" where Claire the Cheerleader first gets attacked. Interesting. :ph34r:

David, thanks for sharing your experiences on-set. Your threads are an invaluable resource for us all.

I agree, it does, lol...

David,
How where these frames graded and what system do they plan to finish the film on, SCRATCH?

BTW, awesome work, looks great!

[David Mullen ASC]

I just ran the shots through Photoshop and did a slight increase in contrast and saturation, though for the most part, they come through Red Alert more or less looking correct. I've been getting select 4K TIFF's at night from out data wrangler Eric Yu. I'm shooting with the camera's saturation level boosted from "1" (normal) to "1.5" so that it tracks as metadata for our dailies. Though the boosted color does cause some odd artifacts to appear now & then on the monitors and in the TIFF's, like some faint yellow blotches in skintones.

No decisions have been yet as to where the final color-correction and film-out will take place.

[David Wilson]

David, I noticed your saying "I did discover that no matter what frame rate or shutter speed I tried to select, there is a limit of 1/24th of a second for the longest exposure time per frame, so you can’t just go to 8 fps, for example, with the shutter off, to get nighttime landscapes exposed at 1/8th of a second per frame."

Had you been able to accomplish slower frame rates with longer shutter speeds in past builds? I thought I had remembered reading of the possibility of shooting up to 2 fps with basically a 1/2 sec. exposure time.

We just finished a film for our Museum that was almost half shot at between 2 and 8 fps with accordingly long exposure times on our trusty HVX200 and would sorely miss that possibility.

Many thank for your very generous posts,
David

[jbeale]

I know that in earlier builds the longer shutter speeds were not enabled. Supposedly in Build 16 they are enabled but only accessible through the "timelapse" mode: According to the Build 16 (v3.2.5 released) ops guide at http://www.red.com/support on p. 31:

Speed: Specifies the shutter speed to be used during Timelapse. This control is the same as is available in the Shutter menu, but it provides access to additional shutter speeds that may be used in Timelapse recording. The additional exposure time presets are 1/2, 1/3 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, 1/16 second.

[David Wilson]

jbeale,

thanks very much. That information puts my mind to rest.

My understanding is then that RED, understandably, view 2 fps at 1/2 sec. exposure as a variation of timelapse. Makes perfect sense.

Thanks again,
David

[Conrad Hunziker]

I hadnt played around with the timelapse feature, so the additional shutter speeds there are great. But that doesnt solve shooting at 8fps and getting a 1/8th shutter. The fastest the timelapse can do is 1fps. So there is a gap there that would need to be filled. The relative shutter may do the trick.

[jbeale]

Note, I have not used a Build 16 camera, I'm just reading the manual... based on that, my understanding is that in Timelapse Mode using the internal intervalometer, you can shoot only 1 fps max (inter-frame delay goes from 1024 seconds to 1.0 second). You can also use an external GPI trigger mode, but that may be limited to something like 6 or 8 fps, I'm not sure.

The "VARISPEED" mode covers the range from 1 fps up to the maximum framerate, but apparently without the longer shutter times (?).

Since the hardware is apparently capable of it, I assume eventually the firmware will be updated to allow intervalometer mode to shoot faster than 1 fps while retaining shutters slower than 1/24, and/or enable longer shutters in Varispeed mode.

[David Wilson]

Hmmmm... I guess my mind just came out of rest again and will have to wait for future upgrades.

I do love those slow fps/long exposure possibilities.

Many thanks for the input.

[Kenn Michael]

To get 1/8 sec shutter -
Set shutter mode to relative.
While at 24fps, set your shutter speed to 1/24.
Go to Varispeed and set framerate to 8fps.

The shutter will follow the framerate relative to the 1/24 you were on at 24fps.

[David Wilson]

Thank you Kenn. I think I will go spend some quality time with the manual now.

[David Wilson]

Kenn, do you know of any limitation that will prevent the relative shutter from following the frame rate all the way down to a 1 second. In other words is it possible to achieve a 1 second frame rate with (something approaching) a 1 second exposure time?

Please forgive if I have in any way hijacked David's very generous thread on what looks to be another completely splendid Mullen/Polish Brother effort.

[David Mullen ASC]

To get 1/8 sec shutter -
Set shutter mode to relative.
While at 24fps, set your shutter speed to 1/24.
Go to Varispeed and set framerate to 8fps.

The shutter will follow the framerate relative to the 1/24 you were on at 24fps.

I believe Conrad and tried that method, Varispeed, when we discovered the 1/24th limitation -- as we dropped to lower and lower frame rates, the shutter angle / shutter speed kept compensating to limit us to 1/24th of a second. It started when I tried to shoot at 18 fps with a 360 degree shutter -- the camera automatically changed the shutter angle to keep the exposure at 1/24th.

[Casey Green]

...Though the boosted color does cause some odd artifacts to appear now & then on the monitors and in the TIFF's, like some faint yellow blotches in skintones...



Hi David,

We thought we noticed a similar artifact in skin tones on some shots recently. Can you elaborate on this?

We were using tungsten lighting and it seemed that possibly the tone difference was brought out more by slightly uneven makeup.

And then perhaps how the color space dealt with the changes in the different hues.

thanks,

[David Mullen ASC]

It was under tungsten lighting -- some of the make-up went a little yellow-ish when the chroma was boosted in camera. It disappears as you lower the chroma again and it can be timed out. Here is a sample of the effect in the 4K TIFF's I got (cropped and converted to JPEG):

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/REDskin1.jpg

[Deanan]

What is the Kelvin/tint set to?

Because it's tungsten, it looks like the absence of blue is pushing towards yellow when saturation is increased.

[Conrad Hunziker]

I believe that particular shot was at 3700k, with 0 tint. There are a few specific scenes we used the tint, and this was not one of them.

We have had other instances shot under 3200k/0 tint with the same result. However in most cases, changing the colorspace and working with less saturation seemed to remedy the issue. This makes me wonder about the exact methodology of processing the colors in build 16 and in RedAlert.

For example in the prom scene we had illegal rec709 colors (purple, yellow, red) that were showing up on the monitoring. The only adjustment we had was the before mentioned saturation boost to 1.5. To me, that means that the rec709 space is applied, then color is adjusted (in this case, increasing saturation) producing colors that are outside of rec709 space.

As for the long shutter issue - its worth noting that we did the tests on a beta build 16. Ill triple check tomorrow on our build 3.2.5 cameras.

[Deanan]

How does the same shot look with redspace or cameraRGB for the colorspace?
The rec709 output is not my favorite as it really pushes the colorspace to hard.

[Conrad Hunziker]

We actually went back to that exact frame and exported a bunch of different versions, at different kelvins, different color spaces, different output LUTs and different saturations - 84 different versions (at 4k tiffs mind you). Ill let David comment on which one was the best.

The nice thing about doing all this is of course that all of this is non-destructive. We can go back and re-do whatever to see how different settings affect the final image. I have a feeling that we will be doing more of this as the production rolls on.

[David Mullen ASC]

I haven't had the time to wade through all those versions yet...

[Rudi Herbert]

On a non technical note, isn't the tattoo artist the actor that plays Sawyer on "Lost"?

[Casey Green]

Here is a shot we had where we noticed some skin tone variances. This was under tungsten lighting (initially I had thought it was fluorescent).

We shot this on build 15. It seems as in your image, the make up shifted slightly yellow, and the difference in hue can be diminished by adjusting saturation, timing, or color space.

Res: 4K, Color Temp: 3200, Tint: 11, ColorSpace: REC709

REDCINE cropped and output to TIFF, then scaled and converted to low res JPEG.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/uploaded/971_1217884149.jpg

[Stuart English]

do you know of any limitation that will prevent the relative shutter from following the frame rate all the way down to a 1 second.

Shouldn't be ...try this

Set Shutter DISPLAY = 1/sec format

Set TIME BASE = 23.98 fps and SHUTTER to 1/24 fps

Set shutter MODE = RELATIVE

Enable VARISPEED and set FRAME RATE to 18 fps

Camera will show 1/18 sec ( which is 360 degrees at 18 fps ) etc

[GlennChan]

What if you set saturation to 1 in Red Alert and change saturation in another program? (e.g. FCP)

There are different saturation algorithms out there... one possibility is that the saturation algorithm is causing shifts in hue. Which would happen if you do saturation via a color matrix on the linear light components... I think Graeme said that this is what Redcine does.
FCP has a decent saturation algorithm; the only quibble is that when increasing saturation, highly saturated colors will be slightly brighter and may appear neon.

EDIT: Well I should have read all of this thread...


We have had other instances shot under 3200k/0 tint with the same result. However in most cases, changing the colorspace and working with less saturation seemed to remedy the issue. This makes me wonder about the exact methodology of processing the colors in build 16 and in RedAlert.

Anyways, regarding the exact methodology... it is (almost certainly) a color matrix on the values before they get converted to gamma-corrected values. If you do things this way, you can keep luminance the same but you get the hue shifting / green crap. In FCP (and probably Da Vinci) and other programs that do a Y'CbCr based saturation, the result is the same as applying a color matrix AFTER the values have been converted to gamma-corrected values. No hue shifting, but shifts in luminance.

Now there's a way to get the best of both worlds (this is what I do for my Photoshop plug-ins)... get to it Graeme! ;)

[Mike Prevette]

I've noticed the same "Jaundicing" of make up on actors when the Saturation gets dialed up even in RedSpace.

[Noah Kadner]

On a non technical note, isn't the tattoo artist the actor that plays Sawyer on "Lost"?

Exactly. This movie looks like a lot of fun- love that John Hughes era... :tongue:

Noah

[David Mullen ASC]

WEEK THREE

We spent Monday at the Van Nuys Flyaway station doubling for an airport – I was worried about how we were going to do the scene where the main character gets picked at the curb in front of the airport, with all the restrictions these days, but this modern station doubled quite well for an airport.

We also did a lot of driving around Van Nuys using a camera car and a tow rig to shoot some dialogue inside a tiny Mini Cooper. We had to switch to our 8G CF cards and rent a few more in order to avoid the RED drives on a bumpy road – I was happy to find that switching cards in the cameras when they got full was quite fast compared to switching drives, just a few seconds to reformat the card.

Tuesday was spent running around Santa Clarita getting some drive-bys in shopping areas and suburban house areas, plus a quick scene at a convenience store. Then we moved to a house to shoot the final scene of the movie, figuring it would look better to shoot when the sun was low. Trouble is, as we have been discovering, here in California in August, the sun drops like a rock. When you get a nice low backlight, you may have two takes of a dialogue scene before the sun is gone. Anyway, my point is that now we have a few more angles on that scene to shoot when we’re back at that house. After the sun was gone, we did a few driving scenes right next to the house. To match the look of the sodium streetlamps, I used 12-lights with ½ CTO on condors but turned off some of the bulbs to not overpower the real streetlamps, then I rated the RED camera at 640 ASA / 270 degree shutter and used some Zeiss Master Primes that we picked up just for that night to shoot at T/1.3 or halfway between T/1.3 and T/2.0. There was some noise in the image at 640 ASA but it allowed us to create a fairly natural night look.

We spent all of Wednesday at a SuperCuts hair salon in a shopping mall. Being wall to wall mirrors, I was limited on where I could light. I ended up replacing the overhead fluorescents with daylight tubes for the day scenes and then augmenting that look by hanging an HMI Joker Chimera ball over the main workstation. The shop had fluorescent panel lights next to each mirror but they turned out to be 3’ tubes, which we were not carrying replacements for. I decided to add some needed color in the shop by letting them be Cool Whites and augmenting that color by putting some Cyan 30 gel on the white panel covers. Since I had an HMI Chinaball over one workstation, I added to the overall level to the opposite side of the room by bouncing an HMI Joker Source-4 off of the ceiling. Basically I was unable to key from eyelevel because of the mirrors on both sides of the room, so I tried to make the overhead key very soft. For the night scenes, I turned off half the overhead daylight tubes, but left then daylight, then I hung a tungsten Chinese Lantern over the main workstation and switched the camera from 5600K to 3700K.

We were in another suburban subdivision on Thursday shooting a scene inside a tract home, and then moved several blocks uphill to a bigger house to shoot a house party. I had a diffused 18K HMI coming through a window in the tract home for the daytime scene plus some soft fill from bouncing an HMI Source-4, but most of the real illumination came from the natural daylight in there.

The house party scene was tough because we planned a Steadicam shot that moved through parked cars in front of the house, through the living room, and then out into the big backyard. I lit the street with an overhead coop light gelled half-orange for a streetlamp look, used a few small tungstens to uplight the house, just used real fixtures inside the house for the interior, then light the backyard mainly with a tungsten light balloon, plus some practical fixtures, and HMI hydroPAR’s in the swimming pool. I set the camera to 500 ASA with a 270 degree shutter at 3700K.

I often set the camera to 3700K in 3200K lighting for a slight warming effect. It’s all just metadata only anyway.

Friday was a full night of shooting, so we wrapped after sunrise on Saturday (shooting a small daytime scene at the end of our day.) We shot in a couple of backyards of these mini-mansions as the characters flee from the house party when the police arrive, hopping fences. Except for Tuesday night, all of this night work was done with our Zeiss Ultra Primes, usually at T/2.8 or a T/2.0-2.8 split.

I only have a few innocuous wide shots to post:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2065.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2084.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2077.jpg

[Casey Green]

Thanks for the updates and pics, David.

I like your choices of vanishing point placement throughout your masters.

[Darren Orange]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2084.jpg



David,

What did you use to light this, 18k or 12k day light?

[David Mullen ASC]

It's a 12-light tungsten with 1/2 Orange to match the sodium streetlamps, though in this particular angle, you can't see the orange streetlamps.

[David Mullen ASC]

Monday and Tuesday were spent in Granada Hills shooting in a suburban tract of homes designed by Joseph Eichler in the 1960’s. See:

http://www.eichlersocal.com/

A restored home was chosen for the main character’s house, but we weren’t allowed to shoot the interiors, so we spent the second part of the week shooting on a stage back at Melody Ranch (where we did “Manure”) with the interior recreated, which was tough on our tight budget, since the house is full of glass walls that look out into a hillside and an open atrium. I wanted to light the stage set with daylight fixtures, since the RED camera prefers 5600K, but our budget didn’t allow for that, so I ended up using tungsten spacelights around the set for the daylight effect, plus a 20K and some 12-lights. We did some night exterior work around the real house on Monday and Tuesday night, again lit with 12-lights in a condor with Half Orange for a sodium streetlamp look.

Also on Wednesday night, we did some driving shots near sunset into night around Valencia, and visited a video game arcade for one scene, our last with actors Sean Astin and Josh Holloway. On Thursday, we finished the house scenes with the actors playing the parents, Dee Wallace and Michael Gross.

The RED cameras have continued to perform fine, without problems, even outdoors on fairly hot and sunny days, though we are careful to keep them shaded when working.

Some RED frames (any inconsistencies in black level is more to my lack of skill with Photoshop Elements):

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%2095.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20108.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20110.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20113.jpg

[Shawn Booth]

I really can't wait to see this and "Manure".

[Robert Sanders]

I love the bright colors. I love the orange/yellow hues.

[Jeff Coatney]

Yeah, really dig that palette. Nice work.

[Cüneyt Kaya]

i love davids framing and choice of focal lenghts on the shots.

david you should write a book:

How an artist gets the most out of red--a journey with david mullen...

[Sarah C.]

These are beautiful, Mr. Mullen! Thank you so much for sharing not only the visuals but the know-how behind them!

~Sarah

[Jonathan Payne]

This is very interesting and entertaining David. Thanks for taking the time to post these great journals!

[Johann Schulz]

I want to see those frames move! Really, thanks for sharing, in depth!

BTW, great choice of stills, you can (almost) feel the vibe.

[Noah Kadner]

That looks like Dee Wallace Stone from E.T. and maybe Michael Gross from Family Ties? Love this flick's '80s Vibe!

http://backintheday.blogharbor.com/david_coleman.jpg

-Noah

[Sanjin Jukic]

David great!

"... orange, yellow) the overall feeling of the picture is warm, floppy poppy ...

Chroma, Intensity or Saturation are words, that are often used, ..."

LINK>>> (http://www.zest-it.com/colour.htm)

[Ryo Rex]

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20108.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20110.jpg



Hi David,

What is your preferred focal length for your master wide shots?

Thanks,

[David Mullen ASC]

WEEK FIVE

Monday was a short day; we spent the morning inside a Borders Bookstore shooting under their fluorescent lights, which I augmented with some HMI Source-4’s (gelled to match) bounced into cards. Then we moved across the street into an Italian restaurant and bar to shoot two small scenes, one at a bar (lit with some Kino tubes put behind the bottles on the bar wall, plus a few other Kinos) and one at a dinner table, lit with some tungsten Source-4 bounces and a “Woodylight” (which has four 213 bulbs inside a small Chimera.)

Tuesday involved going back to the stage at Melody Ranch for the last time, to finish a few small bedroom scenes in the main house, plus some bedroom scenes for another house.

Wednesday was a long day… we started at a drugstore, again shooting under their fluorescent lights augmented with some Kinoflos with the same Cool White tubes. Then we moved across town to an outdoor mall to shoot some night exterior scenes, one by a parking spot and another was a big Steadicam walk-n-talk through the mall, lit with some 12-lights, one as a backlight on top of a building, the others coming from the sides through frames of Light Grid Cloth. Then we moved into a restaurant to shoot a romantic dinner scene. I had to quickly light this entire restaurant so I started by swapping all their light bulbs with brighter bulbs. In the background, I hid two 2K Zip lights in the ceiling. The foreground was crosslit by Chimera/Woodylights and some Source-4 bounces. I decided to use some light diffusion for the romantic dating scenes, the #1/8 Classic Black we got for “Manure”.

Thursday and Friday were spent at a suburban tract home where the character played by Winona Ryder lives. We started out by finishing the last scene of the movie, started here two weeks ago as the sun was dropping. We started an hour earlier than before and I used a Half Soft Frost over Winona, who was facing the setting sun. In her closest, tightest angle, I flagged off the silked sunlight and lit her with a diffused 18K gelled to match the setting sun. Then we flipped around and I shot Mark Polish’s coverage (backlit) as the sun dropped lower; I just used some white cards for fill. So we managed to get all the coverage of the scene in the late afternoon light we needed.

Then we did some night exterior work in front of the house, lit from a condor with a 12-light with Half Orange to create a sodium vapor streetlamp look. After that, we moved inside for some dialogue scenes.

Friday had more night exterior scenes in front of the house, one involving a monster pick-up truck with powerful spotlights on it shining onto the house. Then we did some camera car work, towing an SUV in circles around an unlit neighborhood. Because we were driving through blocks of a tract home area lit with only a few sodium streetlamps, I decided to boost the camera to 640 ASA and use some Master Primes at T/1.3 to capture as much available light as I could. I lit the car itself with a Kino Miniflo taped to the dashboard, and then the grips mounted some speed rail off of the roof so I could shine a 1K Zip light through the side windows, plus a 1K fresnel armed off of the camera car shining through the front windshield. These lights were gelled with Half Orange, 216, plus ND.60 gel to knock their intensity down, and then they were run through a small dimmer box so we could fade them up and down individually as if we were passing lights outside the car. This was all kept pretty dim to match the ambient sodium streetlamp level. At 640 ASA with fairly dark footage, and the camera set to 3400K, there was some blue channel noise over the image that I will have to diminish later in post. But at least we got the sense of driving through a dark neighborhood at night.

Three days left, all night work.

Some RED frames:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20127.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20140.jpg

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/900%20Stay%20Cool%20141.jpg

[Nicholas Shields]

David: What are the basic settings you are using on the Red (ie. iso, shutter angle, color space, 2:1 protecting for 2.40). Thanks.

Nick.

[David Mullen ASC]

Normally I'm at 320 ASA with a 180 degree shutter (1/48th).

The night exterior scenes though have been at a variety of ASA ratings, depending on how much light I have, and often with a 270 degree shutter (1/32nd). The night scenes above were at 400 ASA, for example, even for the restaurant.

Last Friday night I was at 320 ASA for a night scene in front of the house, then 640 ASA for available light driving shots, then at 500 ASA for when the car pulls over to the side of the road where I could add some lights for the street.

I often shoot tungsten interiors with the camera set to 3400K or 3700K for a warmer look.

[Mitch Gross]

Are the colors of the photos shifted a bit or is she really drinking some purple wine? Or is this one of your Art Director's color palette tricks again, like the grey ketchup bottles in Northfork?

[David Mullen ASC]

That's the way it looked on the set monitor (it was grape juice I think) -- I'll fix the color later. It was 3 in the morning...

[Mitch Gross]

Thought you guys were going for some kind of effect. It certainly appears to be quite a vibrant color palate for this one.

[Robert Sanders]

I think a lot of people forget how much the art department can impact the "look" of a movie. While it's obvious that Mr. Mullen is having fun with the color of his backlights, etc., you can also tell that vibrant pallet is also a major contribution from the art department and wardrobe: the primary red color of the patch on Polish's jacket at the bar (which compliments the primary red color of the candle holder); Polish's deep blue cardigan; Ryder's deep red blouse; the interior design of the house; etc.

Very very well done, well incorporated, and perfectly complimented by Mullen's impeccable lighting.