Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[scott william]

Hi David, I have a question about POV’s.

I have a scene where our character walks to a window and looks out of it. Sounds simple enough only what he see’s will be shot in a different location.

I was thinking I’d shoot him walking towards the window from outside the room looking in. Should the insert (his POV) be shot through glass or is it OK for it not to be even though he is infact looking through glass?

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David, I have a question about POV’s.

I have a scene where our character walks to a window and looks out of it. Sounds simple enough only what he see’s will be shot in a different location.

I was thinking I’d shoot him walking towards the window from outside the room looking in. Should the insert (his POV) be shot through glass or is it OK for it not to be even though he is infact looking through glass?

Works either way, sort of depends on how wide the POV is -- a long-lensed POV that is tighter doesn't really need to be shot through glass unless you are trying to show how dirty or distorted the window glass is. It sometimes helps for the POV shot to include a bit of fuzzy foreground window frame or curtain, etc. just to ground it better to the scene (ensures the cheat looks less cheated), but like I said, on a long-lens pop-in of some object, you don't have to shoot through some glass window, especially if all it does is make it seem like a bad lens was used.

[scott william]

Thanks david.

[Thomas Church]

David, congratulations on those Smoque shots, they were some of the best shots I've seen in a while.

I love "foggy" looking stuff, but couldn't this effect perhaps be achieved in post with greater control?

Or maybe it doesn't look as good?

Can I use the 77mm Tiffen Smoque filter (was this the one you used?) with a Canon SLR lens with an adapter? Is there one?

My plans for the future are to shoot low budget features with an EPIC-S and Canon lenses.

Another question: is there any good book that explains about filters and these kind of effects you can get?

Thank you!

[David Mullen ASC]

I used standard 4x5.6 rectangular filters in an ARRI or Panavision mattebox for those shots. I don't know what sizes Tiffen sells it in for still cameras in terms of round screw-in type filters. It's hard to get exactly the same effect in post instead but it's possible, it just adds time to the post process so you have to decide if it's worth it. If you have hundreds of shots in a movie that you need to add the effect to and you only have a small number of days budgeted for the D.I. sessions, then it may be better to just do it on camera -- just use a milder filter than you want because it's always easier to increase the strength of diffusion in post, but hard to take it away if it's wrong. I also find that these light-scattering hazy filters tend to allow sharper details to still get through (if you use the subtle strengths) compared to digital diffusion effects, which seem to add a bit of blurriness if you are not careful.

Though it won't have modern filters in it, Hirschfeld's "Image Control" is a good book on filters.

[Jed Shepherd]

Hey David.
Thanks for your last reply.
I have three questions this time if you dont mind.

1. Diffusion frame vs white sheet for creating a large soft light. Which do you prefer and for what situations would you use one over the other? I say sheet as thats what i would use but in your world im sure its some form of special lighting sheet made for film-making.

2. When outdoors at say noon, When using an overhead diffusion of some sort to stop harsh sun light do you usually use a bounce card to bring some brightness back onto the face. I shot something recently which when edited the bright light on the actress's faces in the wide shot was noticeablly brighter/harsher to the diffused close up's which i did no bouncing on.

3. When using a spot meter and using nd's do you hold the nd filter you plan on using in front of the spot meter so it gets the right readings or do you just calculate light loss in your head via the stops being lost for the nd. This applies to all light metering I guess but i just used spot metering as an example.

Thanks again

[David Mullen ASC]

1. Diffusing versus bouncing is mainly a space issue, do you have room in front of the surface or behind it for the lights, because the bounce or the diffusion frame is defacto the source of light. You also have to factor actor's movements in the scheme because you don't want their bodies crossing between the light and the bounce surface. What's nice about a white bedsheet is that almost any surface or object can become the light source, but putting lights behind a diffusion frame, assuming there is room, may create a neater space for the actors to work in. Of course there are some differences in light texture depending on any number of factors.

2. When diffusing the sun over the actors with a silk, the shot may seem more low in contrast but sometimes the eyes are still going dark from the toppy light and need some light. You just don't what to overdo it because if the wide shot had some black shadows in it, you want to maintain some feeling of contrast in the softer shots. Sometimes I'll float a small black flag over the actor after they have been silked to reduce the toppiness, and then add some soft side light. Particularly with female actors because top light can be unattractive on some.

3. With ND's, the stop loss is a known factor, I just input it into my meter by lowering the ASA rating, so a 250 ASA stock with an ND.30 becomes 125 ASA on my meter. I might check a pola by holding it over my incident meter to see how much light is being lost, since there are some variations.

[marasco ivan]

hi david,
do you know if you use and stack one double fog 1/4 + one double fog 1/8 you have the effect of 1/2 double fog?
thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

I think Double Fog is a Harrison & Harrison product... but in theory, a 1/2 Double Fog might be the same as stacking two 1/4 Double Fogs.

But the reality is that there is no way of quantifying the effect, I suspect it is more or less an eyeball thing, the filter designers create what they feel are increasing strengths that seem more or less in predictable or logical leaps, i.e. the 1/2 Double Fog "looks" roughly like twice the strength of a 1/4 Double Fog. But I don't know the particulars. Since the Double Fog was created by Harrison by combining their Low Con with their Fog, perhaps they worked from the strengths of those filters as a starting point, perhaps a 1/4 Double Fog started out with a blend of whatever mist particles used to create a 1/8 Fog and a 1/8 Low Con, who knows?

This is one reason why you might favor one line of diffusion filters over another, the leaps in strength between the filters. For example, I've always felt that the leaps between the Tiffen Soft-FX (starting at the 1/2, which is the lightest) were a bit too far, you really see the difference between the 1/2, 1, and 2 -- and generally I always ended up using the 1 because the 1/2 was too subtle and the 2 was too strong. But then they designed the Black Diffusion-FX and the leaps between the strengths are more subtle. Same goes for the difference between the Tiffen Black ProMist and the Schneider Black Frost -- the heavier numbers with the Black Frost don't get as heavy-looking as the equivalent number in the Black ProMist line, but they have similar starting points. I think some of this is just due to design decisions because there is a certain randomness to the particles the make up a diffusion filter, whether you are talking about the lenslets in a Schneider Classic Soft or the mist particles in a Harrison Fog.

[Jed Shepherd]

Hi David
I have another question. When trying to bring the brightness of an image to within a usable range for the camera, mainly in terms of getting exposure in the sky, Would you use a polarizer or a grad ND?
Also if already using a strong nd to bring a, lets say f16 scene down to an f4-5.6 around there would using the secondary grad nd cause issues?