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Filed under: Cameras •Lighting •Pre-Production •Tips •Training •

A Tale of Forbidden Love, Shot on RED

This sequence was shot on day one at a location halfway across San Francisco from the first day’s location.

This was the project’s very first shot, and it’s a shot I really enjoy from an operating standpoint. I really enjoy how the animal control officer leans out from behind the cop, but I love the primarily vertical move that follows the cop as he approaches the door. During rehearsal I found a frame that worked for the end of the shot, but during the move I didn’t frame to accommodate the animal control officer at all. I framed the cop so that he would land in the right place for the end composition, and then I let the animal control officer land in his proper place without moving the camera.

By framing for the final composition early, as the cop advances, and leaving the frame unbalanced in anticipation of the other actor stepping into his final mark, I created a much stronger shot than if I’d moved the camera around and tried to keep everyone in the frame. Creating an unbalanced composition creates tension, and letting the actors settle into their proper positions over time, without constantly trying to find a balanced frame, gradually releases that tension. I thought this subtle touch helped create more tension in an already emotionally tense scene.

Compositions don’t happen only in space; they also happen over time. I think this is a great example of a composition whose every frame may not work as a still but that pays off over the course of the shot.

Half of camera operating is knowing when NOT to move the camera.

The only lighting in this shot is a bounce card taped to a window just off frame right. You can see it light the cops cheek and give his face a touch more modeling as he approaches the door. I love soft light sources that interact with actors and objects as they move through a space. It creates a greater sense of space and depth in a 2D image.

During the location scout I discovered that the sun would set directly down the entryway of the house (thanks to Suunto and Sun Path). We decided to start shooting at around 2pm and do all of our east-facing shots while the sun was too high for front light but was perfectly positioned for backlight. All of our shots facing out of the house (the cops, looking out the house door, the woman on the street) were shot between 2-4pm. When the sun was low enough to provide flattering front light on faces we turned around, at about 4pm, and shot the rest (the wide shot of the house, the lead actor waving at the woman, the lead actor in the doorway with the dog, etc.). We shot our way out of the house early in the afternoon and then worked our way back in as the sun went down.

We really had to race, though, because while the sun set in such a way that it lit the front door of the house until it was gone, the rest of the street fell into shade very quickly.

For example,

This was among our last shots of the day, and you can see the sun is nearly gone. It’s hitting the actor but not the dog. A rectangular Power Window around the dog allowed us to brighten the dog enough that the lack of sunlight striking him isn’t really noticeable.

This was our second shot of the project. The hot streak of light on the dog is pretty cool, and it’s a complete accident. It’s reflected off an outside window. I added a little bit of fill here by bouncing a 1200w HMI PAR into the wall and ceiling over the camera. The idea was to lift the shadows just enough to see what was going on, but not enough to feel lit.

If you look at the top of the actor’s arm you get the sense that the light was coming from above. Ideally the light would have come from below the lens, as that’s where reflected sunlight would have normally come from, but we didn’t have the technology to get that much light into that small a space. The 1200W PAR was placed around the hallway’s 90-degree turn into the living room as there wasn’t enough room in the hallway for myself, the camera, the camera assistant and the talent.

The direction of the fill light isn’t that critical here, though, because the dimmer a light is the less you can discern its direction and quality. That’s not to say that you can be sloppy, but fill lights or underexposed key lights can be cheated more easily because they create less contrast than bright sources do. Contrasty scenes require more precise light placement than low contrast or dark scenes.

The little bit of light reflecting onto the underside of the actors face, and giving him a little bit of facial modeling, is from a 2’x3’ bounce card laid on the ground just outside the door, in the sunlight.

While we had sun for most of this shot, the fog was starting to roll in and the exposure changed a bit during this take. Our colorist added a ramp to even out the worst of it, and he did a great job. This shot was done entirely with natural light, and worked out so well because we calculated the sun’s path in preproduction and opted to take advantage of it.

This shot, too, was all natural light. For the first take I tried to light up a little of the hallway, just to open the shadows a little, and it didn’t work at all so I turned the light out. The shadows on the actor’s face are natural, a result of the number of power lines crisscrossing the average San Francisco street.

We did this shot at 2k, 120fps just as we were losing the sun off the house. The colorist created another ramp that brightened the dog as he entered the shade. If I were shooting with a baked-in camera I’d try to do a stop pull, but on the RED it’s better to let the exposure go and track it in post, where it can be finessed. This assumes that the shadow portion of the shot isn’t horribly underexposed, which could result in a change of noise quality as the shadows are boosted. I pushed the exposure as far to the right as possible in order to ensure good shadow density.

When I first watched the 2k footage in REDCine I was worried about how soft it looked. I’m happy to say that Spy Post’s processing of this footage eliminated most of that softness. The difference in sharpness between this shot and the others was minimal in the telecine suite, and that’s where it looks the best it ever will.

This sequence was the last east-facing shot of the day. We shot everything facing outward, toward the cops and moving out of the house into the street, and after these shots we turned around for our big wide shot and worked our way back in.

There’s no fill on this other than sunlight bouncing off the row of houses lining the street—and that ambient fill looks quite good.

We rolled on the dog for several minutes and just let it do what it wanted to do. That’s the advantage of shooting HD: you can roll and roll and roll and not worry about missing that perfect moment.

This is our wide reveal shot. The shaving cream and toilet paper are real; the spray paint was added in post. The producer was tempted to create actual graffiti but elected not to as it was his uncle’s house and he didn’t want the neighbors to gossip.

We’re starting to play “beat the sun” in this shot. You can see it’s already creeping up the sidewalk and we haven’t started getting our reverse angles yet. Fortunately none of the reverses required much, if any, lighting—something we discovered, and planned for, on the scout. You can work really quickly if the lighting is in place and all you have to do is move the camera around.

There’s a small bounce card just off frame left, but that’s it for lighting. The sun is in a great position, and while it’s not quite getting into the actor’s eyes his face is modeled very nicely.

I love this frame. It’s dynamic and it carries him all the way from the front door to his end position without a single framing adjustment.

I was truly fortunate to have a location that offered such beautiful natural light, along with a producer and director who were happy to plan our schedule around my lighting needs. As a result we moved very, very quickly, and completed this sequence in about six hours. That might be considered a bit slow normally but as my entire camera/grip/electric crew consisted of a camera assistant and two PA’s that were intermittently available I think we did remarkably well.

This was a very satisfying experience, not just because the cast and crew were a lot of fun but because we did some nice work very simply and quickly. I used to love assisting and operating on episodic television shows because it never got boring: I was always moving, always thinking, always trying to figure out how to squeeze a little more out of the shot. At the end of the day it was fun to look back and think about how much shooting we’d done in such a short time, and how nice it looked overall. That’s how I felt at the end of this shoot: proud that we’d done such nice work so quickly and with so little.

Thanks are due to my camera assistant Jamie Metzger, second day gaffer Chris Galdes, and especially to the director and producer who I won’t name yet as they don’t want this short film popping up in Google searches while they’re submitting it to film festivals. (They’re listed in the credits.) Thanks especially to colorist Cary Burens of Spy Post for doing a great job grading this project.

Art Adams is a DP who works doggedly to improve his reel. His web site is at www.artadams.net.

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I very much enjoy reading these Art.  Thanks for taking the time to post them.  Someday I hope to be as good at lighting as you are.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/16  at  02:22 PM

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I enjoyed reading about the production, but I can’t say I enjoyed watching the video.

Sorry Art, not my cup of tea….

Posted by Daniel Weber  on  01/17  at  05:52 AM

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Mitch, you’re quite welcome. Thanks for the compliment. And if you’re as into lighting as I am, and it appears you are… you will be.

Daniel, no problem, I didn’t really post the film as entertainment but as a learning exercise. I know it’s not everyone’s taste.

Posted by Art Adams  on  01/17  at  04:32 PM

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Nick Drake sighting!

That was inspired Art, as was the short.  Always appreciate your lessons…they’re both educational and motivational.  Worth their weight in cellulose acetate.

Posted by Steve Madsen  on  09/19  at  03:23 AM

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