Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

I may be doing a RED feature in the summer and the whole tungsten thing concerns me, especially since I may be lighting a soundstage with hundreds of spacelights, which are tungsten.

I've been thinking that when I have a high enough light level to use a pale blue filter that either has a 1/2-stop loss (which is a 1/4 correction) or a 1-stop loss (which is a 1/2 correction) to at least shift the color temp of the image partly towards daylight.

When I can, I'll use HMI's for day interior work like on location, even if in a soundstage. But I'm sure I'll have a few tungsten-lit scenes in low light levels and have to live with a little blue channel noise.

One advantage though that I'll have on that shoot is that we want a brownish desaturated Chocolate/Sepia look, and one way to get that is to light a scene very warm and pull down the chroma in post, so it may work out to light for 3200K but open up the files as if they are 5500K shots and then take the very orange-ish image and pull down the color to get brown, so I may not have any blue channel noise problems since I'm not trying to correct-out an orange cast to a neutral balance.

[benfilm]

Arigato gozaimasu. I already have Mackendrick's book, as well as the Hitchcock Truffaut book but I've only skimmed through it yet.

When I mentioned moving the camera I did not mean in action scenes, I meant in scenes where dialogue is integrated into some meaningful stage business which gives opportunities to move the camera and the actors.

The stage business must obviously serve the content of the scene but it is also somewhat of an end in itself because moving things on screen gives the scene a more dynamic feeling: even non-ADD people are sensitive to that, humans are not purely intellectual creatures only sensitive to content -- form does count to some extent.

I am trying to learn the basic grammar in that department: things like an actor in a medium shot walking to the camera when his dialogue is getting to an emotional high. This is used in the scene in Schindler's List where the Jewish construction girl is explaining to Goeth (who ends up shooting her) that the foundations will collapse (it works very well in this case, her expression is very touching), and also in the scene in Minority Report where Colin Farrell visits Tom Cruise's wife at her house.

Or the different ways to arrange the stage business to have the two faces in the same shot and how they differently affect the emotions of the scene, instead of shooting the pedestrian over the shoulders. I just want to see a lot of that well done (not only from Spielberg) in order to get some practice and make informed choices.

Thanks for the suggestions. If you have more advice I'll be glad to hear it.

[JasonAvalos]

hey Ben, generally I take it from my acting experience first a.k.a. what is this scene about, who is the dominant in the scene, what clues do you want to show within the frame for the audience, and a biggie is also what is in and OUT of the frame that will activate your actors and thier need to move in the scene. How do you want a audience to feel ? This really goes into an action scene as well as a dramatic scene. I think that is why even though someone doing a action scene just for action's sake never fully takes advantage of the meat of it. take a look at michael mann and how he moves camera within the entire film action/dramatic scenes all interplay. i want to re-watch those two scenes you were talking about know!! peACe, Jason

[J.R. Hud]

Great posts everyone !

The subject of staging and blocking is one that interests me in great detail. (My blog seems to be finding a niche in that area)

The visual language of film; changing the frame and composition within the same shot is super dynamic. We're working essentially in a 2D plane (z and y coordinates) and the combination of moving the talent and the camera while creating depth using the shades of light and dark is imperative.

De Palma, Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino (my personal favorites) are masters at this technique. I see too many young / new filmmakers not at all showing an interest or aptitude for this approach. Shaky cam / snap zoom / as much coverage as possible and then editing in post; many films are becoming more montage visual than actual visual storytelling.

That scene from Schindler's ... powerful.

[David Mullen ASC]

Some other interesting movies for staging of actors to camera and movement are Fellini's "8 1/2" and "La Dolce Vita".

[Thundercross]

What about Sergio Leones' Once upon a time in the West?

There are small movements but very effective ones.

[J.R. Hud]

I cannot remember who said it (either Spielberg or Hitch) but they made it a point to say that every shot should be bookended compositionally.

You're not framing for just the start of the scene, but as the blocking and staging engages, you're framing for the end of that same scene. What happens in between the bookends isn't as important (comparitively speaking).

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, Leone is worth studying for staging of actors. I remember one simple cutaway shot in "Once Upon a Time in the West" of a bad guy stepping out of a door at the train station, and behind his head, Leone had a thousand head of cattle being herded through the streets of the town, with hundreds of extras.

[benfilm]

I cannot remember who said it (either Spielberg or Hitch) but they made it a point to say that every shot should be bookended compositionally.

Interesting. It would be great if you could post the source, so we could have Hitchcock's or Spielberg's complete discussion.

[J.R. Hud]

I will see if I can't track this down benfilm.