Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

David,

A follow up question to the previously linked image- how do you manage coverage for a scene lit like that- when you go in for singles are you adding fill / lighting each of them? And if so, does it cause much of a problem for continuity / editing since they are not lit in the wide? Or does that get "hidden" in the compositional choices of the singles?

Depends on how different the angle is for the coverage -- we shot angles for that scene with the windows to one side of the frame, and thus the actors were softly side-lit by the windows, but that's a different look than the backlit angle looking towards the window.

You basically cheat on close-ups IF necessary, but subtly. If the face is silhouette in the wide shot, you may add a tiny bit of soft fill. Or you may add a soft edge that wraps around a little more into the shadow side, etc. It shouldn't change the overall feeling or mood compared to the wide master, or the direction of the light established... but you have some leeway to make minor changes if the shot size changes enough, or the angle changes.

You'd be surprised at how much you can cheat the lighting shot to shot though, especially if the editing pattern is shot-reverse shot so you are never cutting directly in tighter on the same axis, but cutting to a reverse first.

I've posted this before, but look at this night exterior sequence from "Tucker":

#1 First you have a wider shot, with Landau kept in a shadowier, harder key light:


#2 Reverse angle on Bridges is softly side-lit:


#3 Cut back to Landau -- he walks forward into a new key light, lighting his face more sympathetically. To signify this emotional "change", the camera also tracks behind Bridge's back to create a new screen direction onto Landau. This:

Becomes this after the lateral dolly move:

[David Mullen ASC]

#4 Cut back to Bridges, but with a new screen direction to match the new angle on Landau. Note that the key light has been flipped to the other side of Bridges compared to #2:


#5 Cut back to Landau in tighter close-up. The same key light has been softened further, making his close-up even more sympathetic:

[scott william]

Hi David,

I’m shooting a short comedy set in a petty drug dealer’s apartment. I wanted to haze the room a little and have shafts of day light streaming in through the non-blacked out windows. I’ve been searching this forum and found that most to the shafts of light appear behind the actors in the background of the frame. Is this because the haze can be to distracting?

[David Mullen ASC]

A shaft of light is most visible in smoke when it is coming at a backlit angle. You can think of this shaft as a hazy white beam. If the shaft is behind the actor, then the contrast on the actor stays close to normal. If the shaft is actually backlighting the actor, then some of the white beam will be behind their face and some in front of the face, hazing up the detail. If the shaft is in front of the actor, then there's a white beam in front of the actor's face, obscuring it.

So generally if you want to see the actor's face more clearly, you want more of the beam to fall behind their heads, unless it is only crossing below their faces.

The other thing is that it is hard to create a beam of light where you don't see the smoke drifting in curls and clumps -- it's hard to get the haze very even in a perfectly sealed-off draft-free room. So at least if the shaft is behind the actor and therefore also not in sharp focus, you may not notice some of the smoke drifting and curling, whereas if the beam was hitting the actor, then the beam itself would be in sharp focus and so might any moving smoke.

Here's some examples of using smoke from my own work in "Northfork". You can see that the beam does cross in front of the faces, but it's a mild haze and most of the backlight still falls behind the actor. It's tricky because if I had panned the beam a tiny bit more in front of the actor, their face would be more washed-out:

[scott william]

Thanks david. I'm lucky enough that i will be able to test before the shoot so will try a few different set-ups, keeping the smoke soft seems the safer option.

[Ryan E. Walters]

Thanks David- that was very helpful and informative! :)

[Matthew S. Smith]

David,

a couple of questions:

1) The look of "Northfork" is amazing. I understand the flashing and post process used for the imaging, but what i am curious about is the use of filters during production. What filters did you use and what was the the motivation behind them. (I apologize if this has been asked before and feel free to post a link if it has)

2) I have been asked to budget an upcoming independent feature. After much discussion of formats, it has been suggested shooting 2 perf 35 for the framing and price considerations. Other than equipment, is there someplace i can reference the workflow and output choices for this format, and in essence, educate myself further?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Matt

[David Mullen ASC]

I shot "Northfork" in 35mm anamorphic and used Tiffen ProMist diffusion filters, fairly heavy ones at times -- the "band of angels/gypsies" scenes in the abandoned house were the heaviest in terms of diffusion, a #1 ProMist. The rest of the movie, it was mostly a #1/2 and 1/4 ProMist. On the widest landscape shots, I used a #1/8 ProMist to retain more sharpness and detail.

What was nice about using the Panaflasher for the negative combined with the silver retention printing process was that I could use less flashing when I had the heavier ProMist filter on, so the jumps in strengths were not as obvious because I counteracted the jumps in contrast and changes in black levels. Of course, if I had color-corrected the movie digitally, I could have matched the black levels even more easily. Leaving silver in the print had the side effect of sharpening the image, so the heaviness of the ProMist was reduced somewhat.

The scenes in the orphanage were shot on a lower-contrast stock, Fuji F-400T, and I used the #1/4 ProMist for most of that stuff -- whereas the dreamlike scenes with the angels/gypsies were shot on the higher-contrast Fuji F-125T, but with heavier diffusion (#1/2 and #1). I've never used that much diffusion since then -- generally a #1/4 ProMist would be the heaviest I would ever use. But in this case, I was working with a silver retention printing process which naturally adds more contrast, blacks, and sharpness, plus I was using a bigger negative format with 4-perf 35mm anamorphic... so I could get away with more diffusion.

--

Whoever is renting the 2-perf camera to you can probably hook you up with some labs or post houses who have handled 2-perf. It's a little like with 3-perf -- you would probably do a D.I. for the final conversion to 35mm 2.40 anamorphic, either 2K or 4K, or a cheaper HDCAM-SR 1080P D.I. workflow. I know that Laser Pacific has been doing some 2-perf D.I. work.

Checking the camera gate for hairs is critical with 2-perf.

[ogauchan]

Hi David,
I am shooting a medium budget commercial in a couple of weeks. You mast have shot so many times Inside the Running BUS but this is my first time. I will be rigging some kino outside the bus and must probably using kino or joker inside the bus. It is not a very wide frame mostly 2 people talking and will have 3-4 extras. I wanted to shoot on RED but client wants on 35. Do you have any suggestion or tips for me. Any help will be greatly appreciate. Hoping to hear from you soon.
Omkar

[Matthew S. Smith]

Thank you David,

Your choice of stocks, filtration and processing were spot on. I'm curious, did you stack filters, incorporating any pola or grads, and are anamorphic lenses affected differently by filtration than spherical lenses?

My knowledge of shooting anamorphic is very limited hence the questions. Regarding hair in the gate, after losing some great scenes shot on S16 due to hairs, I only use bald camera crews now :)

Matt