Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

I did a golf movie in full sun -- on film luckily -- and mostly used "day blue" bounces (4x4 cards and larger frames). It was pretty subtle fill and kept the shadow side of the face cooler like it would be in real life.

The main thing is to just under do it if you don't want much anyway. If you are shooting digital, you can see the contrast problems on the monitor and decide then whether to get closer with the bounce fill or back off, or get rid of it.

The main reasons why faces get overlit is because the viewer tends to look at whatever has the most light on it in the frame, and directors want the viewers to look at the actors. So even if they don't insist on more light on the faces on the set, they end up insisting on brightening the faces in post because they start to panic that the audience isn't going to see every eye blink and fleeting expression unless there is a lot of light on the face. So often I hear in the color-correction session "I can't see his eyes, expression, face, etc." when you can see all of that clearly! I think it comes from a certain insecurity.

For better or worse, most narrative cinema is driven emotionally by performance, so notions of realism only go so far before the issue of whether the audience is really paying attention to the actor becomes the highest priority. And unfortunately, making the actor's face brighter tends to be the crutch that many directors lean on.

[Joe G.]

Thanks David. You da man.

[David Mullen ASC]

I should add that when I use day blue bounces, I have them made with white on the other side, so when I need more light out of the bounce, I can just flip the beadboard or bounce frame to the white side.

When I don't have a day blue bounce card available I will sometimes clip a single net flag to the white bounce, making it a gray bounce more or less.

[scott william]

Hi David, how do you usually go about deliberately underexposing a shot. lets say it a night interior and the only light is moon glow through the windows. Does noise become a concern and how do you balance it against the underexposed look?

[David Mullen ASC]

An underexposed shot isn't necessarily noisy per se -- let's sat that you do a shot on the Epic at 400 ASA, and it has a normal range of brightness, not a moody shot -- but one part of the room in the shot is darker than the rest, let's say that it is 3-stops underexposed. Is that part of the frame noisy? No. So why would a shot that was entirely 3-stops underexposed be noisy? It wouldn't be if the base noise level was low -- but it would become noisy IF you had to brighten it in post.

So there are a couple of factors at work. One is the general noisiness of the camera at that ASA setting, which will become more obvious if the scene is very dim because the amount of noise relative to the amount of detail would be higher. But if the general noisiness is low than an underexposed shot wouldn't look noisy. However, if you tried to brighten it in color-correction, or tried to brighten one color channel, then the noise would be increased. So the problem with too much underexposure is really just a lack of flexibility in adjusting the image in post if there is a chance you'll have to brighten it.

Now if we are talking about a low-key scene where certain parts of the frame are at key exposure, if not hotter, but most of the frame is dark -- let's say it's a shot of a person at a desk working next to a small desk lamp, but the background is bathed in moonlight, then I would just underexpose the background for whatever amount of darkness I wanted relative to the subject in the foreground.

But if the whole scene was in moonlight, then I'd be more conservative with the underexposure. It would be better to use a mix of mild underexposure with further darkening in post color-correction. When shooting film, for example, I used to rate 500 ASA stock at 320 ASA for dark scenes, but then I'd underexpose them for the dark look I wanted. So let's say that this was a 2-stop underexposure to look correct... but keep in mind that I'm rating the stock 2/3's of a stop slower and printing "down" by 2/3's of a stop to compensate -- so the amount of underexposure on the negative itself was only 1 1/3-stop, not 2-stops.

So if I really were worried about noise for a moonlit scene on a digital camera, I'd start out with a conservative ASA rating. And if the scene did not look quite dark enough on the monitors, I'd consider selecting a lower ASA rating to further darken the image rather than further stopping down the lens.

[scott william]

thanks david. i'm still shooting on the M sensor and i find noise can be a concern. very much looking forward to being able to rate the camera at 800 and having a lower noise floor with the epic or MX.

[paulherrin]

so...has anybody put all this wisdom and knowledge into a book?

[Jed Shepherd]

Bit of a strange question but have you done any Short Films recently? You seem to have worked out a good formula for making feature films but would be interesting to see what a short film made by you now would look like. Most short films have some odd framing, shot choices, lighting etc but seeing as your a pro at it all would be cool to see what you could do in a short film.

[David Mullen ASC]

Short films are a chance to be more experimental and stylized; for one thing, it helps to make them stand-out and be distinctive.

I just shot a short film for a friend this January, the first time in years since I've done one. It was a pretty fast shoot, mostly on one location.

[Kim Frank]

I should add that when I use day blue bounces, I have them made with white on the other side, so when I need more light out of the bounce, I can just flip the beadboard or bounce frame to the white side.

When I don't have a day blue bounce card available I will sometimes clip a single net flag to the white bounce, making it a gray bounce more or less.

Hi Davd,
I'm very intersted in this technique of a blue bounce card, cause I've never seen it or heard about that.
Are you reffering to the blue color of the skylight, that you are enhancing with the blue bounce?
What kind of blue hue do you use, or more specific, what kind of material do you use?
Do you by any chance have a picture of a card like this in use or a frame grab of what it does with the shadows?
Regards KIM