Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[Monte Casey]

Hey David -

Next week I'm shooting in a picture house here in Los Angeles over 4 days. One particular sequence has me a bit puzzled. Our protagonist is stuck without power in the house, during a thunderstorm. She needs to use a lighter (implied fill light) and walks out of a room ... (still from our location scout)

... and down a hallway. There should be lightning hits in the background.

You can see the hallway around the 9 second mark here:


The hallway has a recessed part of the ceiling for stashing lights. I was planning on having a tiny bit of implied tungsten coming up through the stairs to give the bannisters a nice silhouette, and then having the large window have lightning hits. Then maybe a joker bounced off a blue card and diffused in the above recessed area for a bit of ambient foreground light.

The director has asked about using strobes as the lightning hits, but I'm a bit worried about the fact that we're using CMOS based cameras (RED) and in my experience it doesn't always play well with strobes. Also, I feel like using multiple lights for the same bit of lightning would be more realistic, as lightning tends to move with each strike, as well as adjusting in diffusion and luminance. I'm going to do some tests tomorrow.

In addition - how about the idea of using just the flame as fill - any way I could/should augment that? Right now my plan is just to use that ambient foreground to help with illumination, but keeping the foreground as a nice silhouette against the bannister and back window.

How would you light this?

[David Mullen ASC]

If you need to see what's going on, then you'd have to go for a fake ambient moonlight look (even though it is cloudy and raining) -- if the flame is big enough then the ambient light can be dimmer in comparison though in this case it would help to use T/1.4 Master Primes or something.

Yes, I'd worry about strobes though something like Lightning Strikes Paparazzi strobes seem better in terms of not causing the rolling shutter artifact. You could mix those with the low-tech approach of using metal blinds in front of a large HMI, opening and closing quickly and randomly by hand.

I'd probably decide that the ambient light would be on the cool side compared to the candle flame.

[Nathan Rosenquist]

A few days ago, Kemalettin Sert had a question about the orange filters used on Breaking Bad.

I just happened across an interview with Michael Slovis, ASC on Kodak's website, where he talks about these filters. During the interview he says: "The only special colors are tobacco filters I use in the desert and Straw that I use when we are in Mexico".

The full article can be found here: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/About...9926/index.htm

[Kemalettin Sert]

A few days ago, Kemalettin Sert had a question about the orange filters used on Breaking Bad.

I just happened across an interview with Michael Slovis, ASC on Kodak's website, where he talks about these filters. During the interview he says: "The only special colors are tobacco filters I use in the desert and Straw that I use when we are in Mexico".

The full article can be found here: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/About...9926/index.htm

yep i read it few days ago..

[Larry Kelly]

First I would like to say thank you so much for the invaluable information Mr. Mullen. I never miss a day of checking your thread to see what I can learn from you.

Monte, I hope I may be able to add a possible option to solve your lightning dilemma. I am preparing for a short film that I will shoot on a rented Epic in the coming months and have both candle light and lightning strike shots in the mix. I have been experimenting with some lightning strike techniques that I believe will work very well for my short. I need to be able to have control of the lightning and make the pattern repeatable take after take but without the banding issues from strobes etc.

I have watched a number of films to see how the lightning looked. Most of the time when you watch closely, the realism goes away quite fast. I think the method that I have put together will work very well, look real, and I will have complete control of the pattern or strikes. Here is what I did.
1.In Photoshop, I generated a series of white and off white panels ranging from full screen to vertical bars of various widths, and positions in the frame, to circles with soft edges ETC.
2. I imported them to FCP and put them on the timeline and cut them, and massaged the frames until I got the pattern I was looking for. These ranged from almost instant full frame white to bars dancing from left to right, to dimmer smooth swells for sheet lightning.
3. I set up a Projector and connected it to my laptop, actually that's what I will do next time, for my first test I output the file to a video player and connected it to the 3500 lumen projector.
4. I played with the positioning and put some diffusion in front and blasted it through my front window.
I did a preliminary test, shooting a little sequence with my EX1 and it looks pretty good for a starting point. If you have more than one window you can position the projector to hit both or just use two or more projectors with a splitter. They will all sync and with some experimentation, you can get just the look and colour you want. The next challenge will be the second candle flicker match fill test in order to magnify the light from a candle and match the flicker.

Larry

[ericyoung]

First I would like to say thank you so much for the invaluable information Mr. Mullen. I never miss a day of checking your thread to see what I can learn from you.

Monte, I hope I may be able to add a possible option to solve your lightning dilemma. I am preparing for a short film that I will shoot on a rented Epic in the coming months and have both candle light and lightning strike shots in the mix. I have been experimenting with some lightning strike techniques that I believe will work very well for my short. I need to be able to have control of the lightning and make the pattern repeatable take after take but without the banding issues from strobes etc.

I have watched a number of films to see how the lightning looked. Most of the time when you watch closely, the realism goes away quite fast. I think the method that I have put together will work very well, look real, and I will have complete control of the pattern or strikes. Here is what I did.
1.In Photoshop, I generated a series of white and off white panels ranging from full screen to vertical bars of various widths, and positions in the frame, to circles with soft edges ETC.
2. I imported them to FCP and put them on the timeline and cut them, and massaged the frames until I got the pattern I was looking for. These ranged from almost instant full frame white to bars dancing from left to right, to dimmer smooth swells for sheet lightning.
3. I set up a Projector and connected it to my laptop, actually that's what I will do next time, for my first test I output the file to a video player and connected it to the 3500 lumen projector.
4. I played with the positioning and put some diffusion in front and blasted it through my front window.
I did a preliminary test, shooting a little sequence with my EX1 and it looks pretty good for a starting point. If you have more than one window you can position the projector to hit both or just use two or more projectors with a splitter. They will all sync and with some experimentation, you can get just the look and colour you want. The next challenge will be the second candle flicker match fill test in order to magnify the light from a candle and match the flicker.

Larry

Great idea Larry! Have used projectors as light sources with programmable gobo/cookie shapes before, but this could be a nice alternative to Lightning Strikes if rolling shutter artifacts become an issue!

[william lan]

Dear David,
Remember you mentioned f/2.8 would produce the same noise as f/5.6 as the same amount of light got into the sensor if I get you right. Does this mean only ASA decides or affects the level of noise? I had posted the same question a few days ago but it did not appear here. Forgive me if I have sent to the wrong forum.

[David Mullen ASC]

Dear David,
Remember you mentioned f/2.8 would produce the same noise as f/5.6 as the same amount of light got into the sensor if I get you right. Does this mean only ASA decides or affects the level of noise? I had posted the same question a few days ago but it did not appear here. Forgive me if I have sent to the wrong forum.

If the amount of light hitting the sensor is the same, how would it know if the lens was set to f/2.8 or f/5.6? Images that are underexposed and brought up in post will get noisier. Images that are underexposed and brought up using gain in the camera will get noisier. Images that go through some extreme color correction changes can create noise in different channels.

[William Dempsey]

Hi David,

When you light a room from outside through windows, and plan to be shooting for a significant length of time, do you typically flag off all the natural ambient light and use just your sources or do you just ride the minor fluctuations? This of course assumes that there is no direct sunlight entering those windows. I figure that this may also depend upon the power of the lighting package . I was just curious about how you typically choose to approach this.

Thanks,

[David Mullen ASC]

I use as much natural light as I can unless it is doing something unattractive in a close-up. When it goes or changes, I adjust my own lighting to maintain the look if possible.

Now sometimes if I can see that the natural lighting effect will be going away soon into the first set-up and never return, I may be tempted to flag it off and work from scratch. But otherwise I like to mix natural and artificial light.