Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

All I said was that doing slow-motion in camera looks better than doing it in post. As for ramping, there are good reasons to do it in post to material shot at a high frame rate, as long as you don't mind the short shutter angle look of the material when it is converted to normal speed.

[Gary McClurg]

Decide to post this here instead of the other thread... Don't Sell your film cameras yet...

Talking about Kodak and Fuji sells... I haven't even thought about it till today... I guess Agfa is dead.... or am I just saying how young I am...

[Rudi Herbert]

David,

since you've been dusting off your knowledge on 3-strip technicolor and other arcane, but beautiful, formats of old, I wanted to ask you something. Last night I was, yet again, sleepless and running through my must-watch-at-least-twice-a-year DVDs and watched "The Vikings", photographed by Jack Cardiff in 1958. I have to say I love that film, it was the first one ever that conveyed to me a very strong sense of the amazing power of photography with all its majestic vistas and the amazing colors. But I wondered about a few technical details as well.

Being shot in 1958, I would assume the only stock available was 100 ASA, yet there are plenty of night and low light interior scenes that look amazing, without a speck of grain or noise and without a hint of being overtly lit. How did they manage something so difficult 60 years ago? Do you happen to know the stock used for the movie, and/or any techniques used by Cardiff to make low light situations look like they were shot on contemporary, faster stocks? And what about the color rendition? Blues are very cobalt like, fire renders orange instead of red, blacks have a bluish hue, but all in all, what a wonderful feast for the eyes that photography is. Do you know what the stock, process and techniques used for that film were?

[David Mullen ASC]

It would have been shot on 5248 (not the EXR 100T 5248 from the 1990's, Kodak reuses numbers...) The first Kodak color negative stock was called 5247 and came out in 1950; it was 16 ASA daylight.

It was replaced in 1952 by 5248, which was 25 ASA tungsten.

A 50 ASA stock didn't come out until 1959, called 5250, and "Spartacus" was one of the first movies to use this new "fast stock". Then in 1962, Kodak replaced it with a finer-grained 50 ASA stock called 5251.

A 100 ASA stock didn't appear until 1968, called 5254. This means that such movies as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "2001" were shot on 50 ASA stocks, which is amazing (particularly "2001".)

The mid 1950's saw the introduction of larger negative formats like VistaVision, 65mm Todd-AO, etc. This compensated for the graininess of Kodak color negative of the day. "The Vikings" was shot in Technirama, which was 8-perf horizontal 35mm (like VistaVision is, and also 35mm still cameras) but with the addition of a 1.5X anamorphic lens to squeeze a 2.35 : 1 image onto the 8-perf negative (which is normally closer to 1.50 : 1). "Spartacus" and "El Cid" were also shot in Technirama, but printed to 5-perf 70mm for release prints, thus calling itself "Super Technirama 70".

Before 5-perf 70mm printing from 8-perf 35mm was an option in the later 1950's, Technirama movies were normally reduced down to 35mm anamorphic (CinemaScope) for release printing, but using Technicolor's dye transfer process. (There was never a dye transfer machine built to do 70mm prints and 8-perf 35mm projection never caught on.) I don't know if "The Vikings" ever got a 70mm release originally.

Anyway, the larger negative accounts for the finer-grained, sharper image, along with the generally harder lighting of the day. And, of course, Cardiff is a great cinematographer.

You can look at a chronology of Kodak stocks here:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/pr....28.14.4&lc=en
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/pr....28.14.6&lc=en

This is a great site to spend some time in, the American Widescreen Museum:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingtr1.htm

[ChrisLyon]

Too... much... knowledge!

[Michael "Dorkman" Scott]

With some of the ramping going on in 300 it would have been very timeconsuming and costly to achieve totally in-camera. You could also argue from a non-purest point of view that doing in post looks better than in-camera because the in and out points and degree of ramping can be so exact, and creative decisions about where they go in the cut can be made after the fact.

I'm pretty sure 300's action was almost all shot at high frame rates (between 50fps and 150fps, according to IMDB).

It's easy to speed up slow-motion in post -- assuming, as David pointed out, you don't mind the higher shutter speed in the "normal motion" stuff. Fortunately, the high-shutter look has become a standard in epic action, so it's perfectly acceptable for the aesthetic.

[Jason Ing]

"I'll take Cinema for $1000, Alex."

"A highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and talented DP who is also a generous and excellent educator."

"Who is David Mullen?"

"That is correct"

It would have been shot on 5248 (not the EXR 100T 5248 from the 1990's, Kodak reuses numbers...) The first Kodak color negative stock was called 5247 and came out in 1950; it was 16 ASA daylight.

It was replaced in 1952 by 5248, which was 25 ASA tungsten.

A 50 ASA stock didn't come out until 1959, called 5250, and "Spartacus" was one of the first movies to use this new "fast stock". Then in 1962, Kodak replaced it with a finer-grained 50 ASA stock called 5251.

A 100 ASA stock didn't appear until 1968, called 5254. This means that such movies as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "2001" were shot on 50 ASA stocks, which is amazing (particularly "2001".)

The mid 1950's saw the introduction of larger negative formats like VistaVision, 65mm Todd-AO, etc. This compensated for the graininess of Kodak color negative of the day. "The Vikings" was shot in Technirama, which was 8-perf horizontal 35mm (like VistaVision is, and also 35mm still cameras) but with the addition of a 1.5X anamorphic lens to squeeze a 2.35 : 1 image onto the 8-perf negative (which is normally closer to 1.50 : 1). "Spartacus" and "El Cid" were also shot in Technirama, but printed to 5-perf 70mm for release prints, thus calling itself "Super Technirama 70".

Before 5-perf 70mm printing from 8-perf 35mm was an option in the later 1950's, Technirama movies were normally reduced down to 35mm anamorphic (CinemaScope) for release printing, but using Technicolor's dye transfer process. (There was never a dye transfer machine built to do 70mm prints and 8-perf 35mm projection never caught on.) I don't know if "The Vikings" ever got a 70mm release originally.

Anyway, the larger negative accounts for the finer-grained, sharper image, along with the generally harder lighting of the day. And, of course, Cardiff is a great cinematographer.

You can look at a chronology of Kodak stocks here:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/pr....28.14.4&lc=en
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/pr....28.14.6&lc=en

This is a great site to spend some time in, the American Widescreen Museum:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingtr1.htm

[Jason Ing]

Thanks for generously sharing your time and wisdom, David. I just wanted to say that I know it takes more then just knowledge and experience to be a good teacher. Teaching is it's own skill and talent. I've read this entire thread, learned a lot like everyone else, and have to say you are an excellent teacher.

[David Mullen ASC]

Thanks, I try.

[Jason Ing]

Seeing that you use frame grabs of dvds as a learning tool (I like to see them in an editing software as well), how visually close are the dvd versions to your original movie version? And, how about any blue ray/hd versions? If I didn't originally see a movie in the theater, I always wonder if I'm watching what the DP really meant to shoot... "Did they really mean to crush all the blacks like that? That's a lot of hot spots. How did they get that look?, etc. etc." Even a difference in tv technology makes a difference; I remember watching Matrix side by side on two 52 inch hdtvs, one a plasma that lost all the detail in the shadows and the other a rear projection that revealed a lot of detail.