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(Page 3 of 3 pages for this article < 1 2 3) Filed under: Cameras •Lighting •Post Production •Production •Tips •Training • My Love Affair with AlexaWhen the camera sees more than my light meter does, it’s time to acknowledge that the game has truly changed.
I watch the monitor as director Ian McCamey directs by radio, which is what you have to do when working with long lenses.Welcome back to The Embarcadero. We’ll return to Treasure Island in a bit. Meanwhile, the following shot happened just a bit after sunset:
85mm Super Speed, T1.3, 180 degree shutter.
Same shot, LogC.Look at all that shadow detail in the LogC image! The following shot occurs later on in the edited montage but was shot around the same time:
85mm Super Speed, T1.3, 180 degree shutter.
Same shot, LogC.The only difference is that I kept tilting up to reveal the bridge in the latter shot to reveal some shapes that will be enhanced later. The lighting consists of sky “glow” combined with nearby street lights, some of which can be seen in the bottom right corner. These shots will have symbolic significance in the final project. Right now I’ll just point out that the sky read T0.7 1/2 reflected at the time and we had to darken it and remove some of the blue in the grade to make it match the other shots. A digital grad was added to the top of the frame over the bridge. We didn’t do anything really spectacular here other than to wedge a high-hat between the raised walkway and a lens case in order to get the lens where Ian wanted it—directly over the left edge of the walkway, to create a strong vertical line that runs into the distance. Here’s a shot that we did shortly before Colin’s opening shot on the previous page:
35mm Super Speed, T1.3, 180 degree shutter. All natural lighting.
The same shot, LogC.As I look through most of these shots I think to myself, “Well, not much to write about here. We placed the camera, set a T-stop, and shot. Nothing special.” And maybe that’s what is so special: we did remarkably little to get these shots. We moved quickly, sure—we had to complete all these shots, along with some additional shots not featured in this montage, in a few hours in high traffic areas without legal authority to do so—but we were able to get good results with a minimum of lighting/grip work. That’s not to say that we should immediately eliminate our lighting and grip departments. Lighting people is relatively easy (once you know how to light faces, which is an art form and craft in itself) but they are only part of the equation; we always need a background to shoot them against, and backgrounds are often quite big. In a situation like this, where the background is the Bay Bridge, Treasure Island and The Port of Oakland, we can’t light it—but the Alexa gives us the ability to use the existing light to illuminate the deep background. We’ll still need to light the talent for mood and beauty, and we’ll need to light the immediate background for mood, but distant backgrounds that are self-illuminating can now add an additional layer of depth to a night exterior image. Besides, there’s a difference between “illumination” and “lighting”: “illumination” means that there’s enough light for an exposure, but says nothing about the look; “lighting” creates moods and tells stories, and often doesn’t happen by accident but instead by careful planning and execution. I do hope that this kind of lighting (or un-lighting) doesn’t become standard. Shooting at T1.3 is not a nice thing to do to camera assistants. I had an excellent one in Paul Marbury, but I’d hate to make him, or any camera assistant, pull focus wide open all the time. One should have mercy on one’s minions. I prefer not to shoot wider than T2.8 when possible as that gives focus pullers a fighting chance, and most lenses work better when stopped down a bit. These Super Speeds would have looked a lot sharper if we’d elected to shoot at a T2 instead of T1.3. (A good rule of thumb is that all lenses tend to look their best stopped about 2 1/3 stops down from wide open.) The nice thing about shooting at EI 800 with the Alexa is that it only takes 12fc to get to that T-stop. So while you can shoot at T1.3 with (gulp!) 3fc of light, at that point you’re doing more damage control than anything else: it’s not about adding light at that point, although it’s probably a good idea; it’s more about getting rid of stray sources that do ugly things to your actors. You never know when a car will turn the corner a half mile away and completely change the modeling on your leading lady’s face.
How lucky: a meter reading near Colin’s face says T1.4, and I have a lens that will do that!
Preparing to shoot Colin walking in front of the bridge. While Ian directs from his monitor and Paul gets focus marks, I take a light reading off the fog cover that’s lit by the Port of Oakland lights on the other side of the bay. It was quite lucky for us that we had that brightly-lit foggy background; otherwise the bridge would have appeared as a dark blob in most of the shots.The following shot was the one that gave us fits as we had to wait for trains and hope not to be blocked by a crowd of pedestrians:
200mm Nikkor at T2, 270 degree shutter. The dark parts of the train read T1.05, and the background highlights read T1.4 1/2.
The same shot in LogC.The light on Colin’s face is—yup, you guessed it—a LightPanel Micro held by gaffer Simon Sommerfeld off frame left. Colin started his walk about 25’ away from Simon and exited frame with about 10’ to go. I never thought an LED light would make such a difference over a long distance, but it did.
Shooting the train shot from atop a (not so grassy) knoll.The following shot was a test of the Alexa’s ergonomics:
85mm Super Speed, T1.3, 180 degree shutter, pulling my own focus. Colin’s face was T1.4 when directly in front of a streetlight.
Same shot, LogC.Look how much detail there is in the LogC image! I didn’t bother metering that as it was what it was, and I never thought I’d see so much shadow detail. This is the dead of night, with the light coming predominantly from the row of streetlights on the left of frame. The Alexa’s ergonomics were fine: the camera has a nice little notch for handheld use and it’s surprisingly well balanced for a camera that looks like a large brick. A few more sit-ups per day and this shot would have been a bit steadier, but overall it did what Ian wanted. The following shot was a LOT of fun:
200mm Nikkor, T2, 180 degree shutter.
Same shot, LogC.The main light, as always, was a LightPanel Micro, held this time by production assistant Jim Feeley. Gaffer Simon Sommerfeld was sixty feet behind and to the left of Colin holding a flashlight I’d bought for $10 earlier that day. During the shot he swept it through the grass, to great effect. Just for fun I took a spot reading of the grass in its lit and unlit states. My notes say that unlit read T0.5 and lit read T0.7. It’s hard to believe we were able to pull such detail out of the murk of underexposure. And now, back to Treasure Island:
200mm Nikkor, T2, 270 degree shutter.
The same, LogC.While setting up for a vista of San Francisco Ian noticed Paul cleaning water droplets from the lens and checking his work with a flashlight. He thought it was cool, so we shot it. While it looks like we may have used a grad or a power window at the top of frame to darken the sky, we didn’t. That’s fog. Welcome to San Francisco in August.
200mm Nikkor, T2, 270 degree shutter.
The same, LogC.Camera assistant Paul Marbury was grabbing a focus mark on the bridge in preparation for a shot of Colin when I heard him exclaim something along the lines of “Holy crap!” We turned around and saw this ship moving under the Bay Bridge, beautifully backlit by the lights from AT&T Park. Ian’s one comment: “I hope we’re rolling.” We were. Paul hit the roll button very, very quickly. (We punched in on this shot in post as someone didn’t know we were rolling and stepped into frame left.) And that’s about it for our adventure. Ian spent a couple of hours the next morning doing a rough cut and we graded it immediately before projecting it for the first time. Ian is the in process of re-editing and adding some visual effects, at which point I look forward to showing you what this was really meant to be. I asked Ian for a comment about workflow, as he cut the piece and has a background as a visual effects editor at The Orphanage. He had this to say:
Art Adams is a director of photography who is not afraid of the dark. His website is at www.artadams.net.
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The Best of Stunning Good LooksA directory of my best articles, sorted by topic.
This entry is a guide to my best articles, sorted by topic. Enjoy! |
NAB 2012: Assorted SnapshotsA few cool things I saw at the show that didn’t fit into any other articles.
NAB is too big a show in too short a time to see more than a fraction of it. I’ve covered a few things in some depth (as have other PVC folks), but there’s plenty more that slips by without proper coverage. Here, I have a few photos… |
NAB 2012: Cameras & LensesA brief sampling of interesting photographic tools at NAB.
I’ve already covered the basics of what Sony and Panasonic announced, as well as looking at Canon’s… |
NAB 2012: Trucolor Ohm Space Light400 watts of LED replaces a 6K? Sounds good to me. Next time you need to flood a room with soft light - in whatever color temperature - you should give the Ohm a look. |
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