Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

If you don't like a lot of non-film-like blur, just stick to 180 degrees or shorter.

[casals]

I need some help with green screen. Shooting on red in a small room with a window, kind of like an attic, the window must me closed and outside of it I need to see the statue of the virgin of the city, which stands on top of a little hill. I have a couple of actors on this scene which is suppose to gloomy. I´m thinking of the right way of doing it, and the concerns and problems that may arise. First green scrren, hanging out of the window far enought to net bounce light back. Piece of wood probably painted in green. One hmi, and probably, natural light might be more than enough to ight the green screen.
I´m concerned because of the glass, how it might affect the green. The windows are a bit dirty from the inside and it is raining. Plus it would be nice to keep some reflections of the actors face on the surface of the window, which would be nice.
Bottom line, medium shot of two people with a statue in the background, seen through the rainy window. Picture of window has two windows, one will be blocked. The third picture is just to share.
Any kind of advice would be appreciatted
thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

The reflections aren't necessarily a problem, the dirt and rain on the glass is a bigger issue because it can be hard to key around such texture. It can be done, but it may be better to clean the glass and get a better view to the green. Perhaps the dirt and rain could be added back in post, maybe you could shoot a separate version with the dirt and rain but with a black screen out there, then you could pull that detail and put it into the green screen composite, though you may need to roto around the foreground actors if they cross the window.

If the shot is a lock-off, you could try a front-lit / back-lit approach -- i.e. shoot the normal version with a black screen in the background, then shoot a second pass with the room dark and the window with a white screen beyond it, and then the compositor may be able to create a luminance key.

This is the sort of thing where you need to talk to your efx person.

[John Logan]

Hi David!

Thanks for such an amazing thread, it really is an asset to this community.

I have a question about shooting in the desert.

What would be your minimum kit be for daytime shooting? Meaning diffusion, bounce, filtration, etc? Not planning on using any lights, just available light.

Thanks David!

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm not sure by what you mean by "minimal" because it would depend on the size of my crew -- I may want to carry a 20'x20' silk, for example, but there would be no point if it was just me and another guy out there trying to set it up.

But on most features with a basic grip crew (let's say, four people), I'd carry 20'x20', 12'x12', 8'x8', 6'x6' frames. I'd also have 4'x4' diffusion frames. I might also carry an odd size like 12'x20'. Plus of course bounceboards, white cards, bedsheets, silver reflectors, etc.

I like to carry UltraBounce, Griflon, Muslin for bounces, and Silk and Half Soft Frost for sunlight diffusion, plus nets and solids. For lighting diffusion, I'd also have Light Grid and Full Grid Cloth for the big frames, plus different plastic diffusion for the 4'x4' frames.

Half Soft Frost is nice because you lose less than a 1/2-stop standing under it, it just takes the harshness off of sunlight without killing the directionality. It's similar to Opal but doesn't rattle.

[Sean Yu]

David

I've been considering using the Cooke Varotal 25-250mm zooms, the Angenieux 25-250mm HR, the Angenieux optimo 24-290mm, and a few others. Do you know how well these lenses perform compared to each other? Also, do you have any recommendations for a zoom lens with a wide range of focal lengths that fairly fast, with decent sharpness, and in a reasonable price to rent (on PL mount).

[David Mullen ASC]

I've only used the Ang. Optimo in that list; normally I shoot Panavision, which would be the 11:1 Primo zoom in this case. Actually I don't like 35mm cine zooms in general and don't like 10:1 zooms or longer in particular, so I don't have a lot of experience with them. I think the Cooke 25-250mm is the oldest one in your list, but I may be wrong. I see the Optimo used the most often, followed by the Ang. HR.

[Larkin Seiple]

Hey David,
I was curious about your approach with RED on set. I understand you keep an additional camera on set because once a week one of the others goes hay wire and needs to be sent in. I was wondering if the major problem was color? I have shot several project on red and each camera has a different over-all cast of green to the image, some it's minor others it's nuclear. I correct the cast in Color with just 2 printer points normally and everything looks fine but on set it becomes difficult to judge the image with such bad colors. How do you judge your images knowing the color will eventually change? or is there something you do to fix the cast when viewing REC 709?

Thanks!

Larkin

[David Mullen ASC]

We carried a third camera, which was useful when one of our A or B cameras needed to be worked on, even if it was just something simple like reloading some software, or it was more complicated like sending the camera back to RED for fixing -- one time it was because a giraffe kicked our camera, which I can hardly blame RED for...

It was a convenience having a spare body, that's all. The problems we ran into varied, like one camera that would shut down after being triggered. One camera seemed consistently more yellowish than the other and we sent it back to RED to look at, but I'm not sure they changed it or fixed it.

I have to say though that I've had to send other camera types back to rental houses, so this is not necessarily a RED issue. It was only slightly more "buggy" than any other camera I have used.

Part of the color issues may be processing related, because I had some Quicktimes come back where the metadata for Chroma tracked with one camera but was ignored on the other camera. So I'm not sure where some of the color mismatching was coming from.

I did notice that the cameras were a lot more sensitive to green and yellowish shifts, and exaggerated the difference between the warmth of the Ang. Optimo zoom and the coolness of the Zeiss Ultra Primes we were using.

It may be that most sensors in digital cameras have some degree of color mismatching that is normally compensated for in signal processing, so a RAW camera may be more prone to show-off those differences between sensors, whereas the processor in a Sony may be set to zero-out the differences.

[DS Williams]

Mr. Mullen,

What is your prefered instrument to use has an eyelight?

I bet this has been asked before so I apologize, but I couldn't find the thread or post.