Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

Depends a bit on what stop you'll be shooting at -- wide-open you might be fine with most diffusion on an 18mm if you are not focused near minimum. But of course, since an 18mm is more likely to be used on a wide shot, you'd probably not want much diffusion anyway.

I'd stick to the Frost filters if you are prone to using very wide-angle lenses. Even they can come into focus though if you stop down too much, so bring some ND's with you. If you are planning on shooting for a "Citizen Kane" style deep focus, I'd leave any softening to post at that point.

Beyond frosts, such as the Schneider Black Frost, if you want more softening rather than glow/halation/mist, I might try the Hollywood Black Magics or HD Classic Softs (or Tiffen Digital Diffusion-FX) rather than any strength of regular Classic Softs. The lenslets in the 1/8 Classic Soft are not much smaller than they are in the 1/4 or 1/2, they are just more spaced apart in some ways, so they can still show up if too wide-angle or too stopped down.

Kubrick was fond of LowCon filters by the way, you can see them heavily in "Barry Lyndon" but also some bits of "Eyes Wide Shut" and even "Full Metal Jacket". A Black Frost or White Frost will give you some similar effects.

[Evin Grant]

We're currently using the Hollywood black magics, they're very nice but for TV we tend to use 1 and 2 strength pretty much exclusively. I'm also fond of the traditional film classic softs on the Red, mostly because they don't affect contrast and allow for a wide range of softening from 1/8th for wides and masters to 1 and 2 for close ups on actors that need a little help smoothing out the skin detail.

[Andrew Rieger]

I guess it would be useful for me to find out the focus distance on an 18mm right before the lenslet pattern shows up, that way I know how close my subject can get to the lens. I had in mind a shot where the actor is close to the camera in focus so that they are slightly distorted but still have a diffusion effect on their face. Thanks David for your help. You were in a great Schneider video on their website describing you filter preferences which I found very helpful as well.

[David Mullen ASC]

I also have a very fine black net, made with some very light black tule / veil material from a wholesale fabric store, stretched and glued onto a 4x5 filter tray. I find it to be similar in strength to a 1/2 to 1 Hollywood Black Magic or Classic Soft. Not that I'd use it in front of an 18mm...

I tend to use the 1/4 Classic Softs for close-ups, 1/2 at the strongest, at least so far on the shows I've shot on the Genesis camera.

[Rob Ruffo]

Here's a quick budget-oriented question:

You have $20,000 to create your lighting kit. You want to cover all your bases (indoor, outdoor lighting, etc) and get the most you can out of it using a Red One Mysterium X sensor.

What do you get?

What do you get?

David's advice is excellent, of course, but as someone who has bought and rented a lot of lights, I cannot recommend CoolLights.biz enough. You'll see that you can get a great LED and other units he recommends a bit cheaper at Coollights - and they are truly stellar.

[Aaron Champion]

I am a DP in Kentucky who is moving to LA in a month. What is a good way to make a career as a DP (best way to get started) in la. Any Advice on my demo reel? Www.zogreo.com

Thank you!

[Joel Jameson]

David,

I have an upcoming small budget feature that the director is wanting that cold/washed out/gritty visual feel similar to "The Road" and "28 Days Later". Location is in MN, so we will have a lot of grey sky coming up, but there are some blue sky moments.

Would you suggest trying to get the look out of the camera close by using filters and adjusting camera colors, or just get the best clean image you could in camera and give the colorist the most latitude to achieve that look?

[David Mullen ASC]

David,

I have an upcoming small budget feature that the director is wanting that cold/washed out/gritty visual feel similar to "The Road" and "28 Days Later". Location is in MN, so we will have a lot of grey sky coming up, but there are some blue sky moments.

Would you suggest trying to get the look out of the camera close by using filters and adjusting camera colors, or just get the best clean image you could in camera and give the colorist the most latitude to achieve that look?

Well, neither of those two movies are what I would describe as diffused-looking, so diffusion filters wouldn't be appropriate anyway -- most of that look is done with timing and production design, maybe some smoke on sets.

So in terms of the blue sky, obviously you can easily desaturate this in post. In general, colors are stronger in front light, weaker in backlight, so shoot in backlight if the sun comes out and avoid colorful objects in the frame. If you can, use some large silks to soften the sun.

But I think a lot of this is going to come from the production design and costuming, and then the color timing. Like I said, maybe some smoke in interiors would help desaturate in-camera. The only reason to try filters like UltraCons or DigiCons outside in sunlight is just whether you felt it would help blend that footage better to the overcast stuff.

Have you seen my work in "Northfork" -- it was shot in Montana in the spring:
http://www.davidmullenasc.com/page4/page3/page3.html

Most of the look is from the location and production design, though I worked hard to pull down the color of the film stock as well since we did not do a D.I. I did everything I could to wash-out the image on the negative (flashing, smoke, ProMist filters) and then restored the blacks in the print using a silver printing process (and also softening the colors further that way.) But the video transfer that these frames were taken from was off of a normal I.P. so I had to create some of the skip-bleach print look in the color-correction by adding more contrast and reducing the color saturation.

[Joel Jameson]

As always, a great big Thank you David!

This gives me a great place to start testing this week.

[David Mullen ASC]

I am a DP in Kentucky who is moving to LA in a month. What is a good way to make a career as a DP (best way to get started) in la. Any Advice on my demo reel? Www.zogreo.com

Thank you!

Not sure if I have any good advice -- when I was making my own movies here in Los Angeles, I couldn't figure out how to break in either, other than some low-budget music video / karaoke work. So I went to film school here and after graduation, started getting work thru fellow graduates. But I'm not sure that's helpful.

You pretty much have to be willing to go out and shoot anything for awhile, just to build up the contacts.

The reel is good but I'd say you could shorten it down to 2 minutes and it would become stronger just by trimming the less interesting shots.