Cinematography - Week 6

21/03/2019

The plan had changed. Instead of doing more filming in a studio environment, we went on to film a chase scene. I guess it was to give us an idea of what type of chase scene Ash was expecting us to do later for this paper. 

I was assigned to key grip, which was a challenging role for me because of my dyspraxia, so that resulted in a lot of shakiness when help lifting the F3 up for the DOP and difficulty operating a dolly, in which I had to go fast and concisely turn at the same time. 
I did warn the crew that I would have problems with controlling the dolly and that I'm not the right person for the job. 

Nevertheless, I did pretty okay with looking after the camera equipment and preparing the tripod. Every now and then today, I asked those in camera and lighting roles, if they needed help with equipment, but they usually didn't need help with their stuff.
I wondered if c-stands needed to be put together, but the lighting crew saw some in the studio already put together and thought it was unnecessary to put together more, assuming we would be using those c-stand already put together. When Ash came back, he told us that those c-stands are his own and will not be used for filming the chase scene. In the end, lighting had to put together c-stands. 
It was suggested for me to prepare the shoulder rig, but I didn't know how to put it together and at that point, we didn't know for certain whether the DOP was going to need the shoulder rig for filming the chase scene.

Ash walked us through different visual guides of displaying exposure that can be seen on external monitors during production, and post-production software. It was Waveform and Vectorscope. I was familiar with the purpose of Vectorscope, but not Waveform. Ash gave me a better understanding on what Waveform is. Waveform measures how bright things are in a digital image or video. There's different ways to use a waveform; you can ideally aim for 85%, or you could spread it out and have the middle for the midtones, bottom for shadows, and top for highlights.

Ash told us about having our equipment ready and tested at least the night before filming begins, so that you are not fumbling around and wasting hours to get the lighting and equipment sorted.

Stix and legs are other words for tripod. In the film industry, there's no rules on the terminology.

There was a staircase in the basement we went down and was used for filming our chase scene. It was a scene I hope may become useful for one of my films in the future, and I took a photo, in case it does.. It looked creepy like it was a vampire's den or something out of a horror movie.

I was worried about preparing the shoulder rig, but those in camera roles taught me most parts of how to do it. 

Towards finishing filming, I was asked to keep a door open for the DOP after the actor runs and opens the door. It was a challenge to keep it open and not show my fingers. 
I would say at best, the camera likely filmed the very tips of my fingers

22/03/2019

Here's some notes from Screen Arts that I think are related to cinematography. I watched a short documentary on Kubrick (on the DVD of Dr Strangelove), The Art of Stanley Kubrick, and read a book on film techniques, Cinematic Storytelling.

When Oswald Morris was DOP for Lolita, the first thing he asked Kubrick about was 'how he thought the film should look'. Kubrick saw the film as a risque story with a glossy look like in MGM films at the time. Morris found out that MGM used special filters for their black and white films and managed to get a set of them for Lolita.

It's believed that shapes can be used to suggest emotions;
Rounded shapes - confusion, repetition, time, indirect, passive, romantic, pertaining to nature, soft organic, childlike, safe and flexible
Square shapes - direct, industrial, ordered, linear, unnatural, adult, and rigid.
Triangular shapes - Aggressive, dynamic, family, and harmony
Rectangular shapes - logic, civilisation, control

Using shapes in film for the sake of suggesting emotion has a lot to do with and be achieved through production designed like in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film, The Conservation.

27/03/2019

Cinematic Storytelling book

• Prop lens?
• Candlelight used for film lighting can compliment the face, smooth the skin, and a ddd a warm tone
• It does discuss about camera lenses, but focuses on the types of camera angles that the lenses are used for.

Motion Picture and Video Lighting book

• 2k and 5k are the bulb sizes for tungsten fresnel lights used in film production. An overall small tungsten light (not talking about the bulb sizes) can take advantage oif smaller light bulbs and can be convenient when used on location filming
• Fresnel?
• HMI stand for Hydrargyrum Medium-Arc Iodide and they are high quality lights for film and television production, but are known to be expensive or inaccessible to productions that are on a limited budget. Link: https://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/types/hmi.html
• 12k and 18k HMIs are the most powerful fresnel lights available
• HMIs produce very sharp and clean light. This is because they have a tiny source that focuses on a massive lens.
• HMIs can be an alternative to using reflectors
• Many HMIs tend to have ballasts that prevent flickering in the lights at any frame rate
• 6k and 8k HMIs can produce the same amount of light for low budget film and television productions
• HMI ballasts?
• HMI ballasts have reduced in size, which is convenient for on-set electricians, whom used to have to deal with ballasts that were the size of a small fridge
• Clean and sharp light in 6k and 8k can still be produced through a smaller lens that is much smaller than the lenses on bigger bulb sized HMIs
• When renting a HMI, be sure to ask the provider for the proper means of powering them. Otherwise, the HMI may fail to power up
• 2.5k and 4k lights are used for general purposes. They do all the work that used to be assigned to 5k and 10k tungsten lights.
• Ballasts for smaller HMIs can be hidden on set
• One thing to look out for when using small HMIs is to not strike it longer than it needs to at a high voltage
• HMIs failing to turn on are the second most common cause of malfunction, the other being the safety switch on the lens

Things to do if a HMI fails to operate

• Check that all the power breakers on the HMI are on. They tend to have more than one power breaker
• Make sure the power voltage isn't too low. Power voltage of at least 108 volts is needed for a HMI to operate
• Try another ballast
• Leave the light to cool down

However, rental providers tend to give you spare parts for the HMI like a head, or a ballast, or sometimes both.

Health and Safety tips for HMIs

• Avoid getting dirt or finger marks on the light
• Keep the ballast dry. If the floor is wet, place the ballast on top of boxes or rubber mats

A Skypan light is a white reflective pan that has a bulb in the center of the reflector

• Can be used for lighting a backdrop
• It can use either a 2k or 5k bulb
• You need to be specific when ordering this type of film lighting. Remember to specify what bulb size you want and if you want to have the only two accessories designed for a Skypan light, which is a skirt that controls exposure out of the lens, and a gel frame.

How to Light 4 Genres in 4 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8y9Q0M8MDE

I watched this video to help me think of ideas for what genre to do lighting about for my video blog. It was interesting and they showed how they did it, but didn't give me enough to work with and didn't have clear examples from existing films to narrow down.


Dramatic Storytelling | When to Use Hard Lighting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qokchfzIksU

Hard light used is in the drama genre and can be applied to highlight depth, texture, and features or details on the human body. This is particularly useful if you want the audience to see those features or details clearly. It's ideal for dramatic and suspenseful scenes and can be used on moth male and female subjects. 

For female subjects, it can provoke mystery and definitions of their body or face. Hard light can be not ideal for certain people with wrinkles and blemishes, whom might not want those features or details contrasted onscreen. Hard light can bring a lot of contrast by producing brighter highlights and more shadows. 

To achieve hard light, it's suggested you need to have the lighting as far as away from the subject as possible because it will bring on harsher shadows. The farther the light is from the subject, the harsher the shadows will be. 


Dramatic Lighting for Film | PremiumBeat.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0s83fTOLfY


Lighting a Dramatic Afternoon Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNjycNYbRcM


Cinematic Lighting Techniques | Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ5hpcn6tIM


The One Dramatic Lighting Technique You Need to Know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuwnNSgb3p8


Lighting techniques for Drama based Cinematography (part 1)
https://vimeo.com/210099029


I tried to watch other videos on dramatic lighting because I felt overwhelmed and I was questioning whether it was relevant to the genre because they are lighting techniques that can be used in the action and film noir genres and are ways to bring drama to scenes. It felt like too much information to process and to try to understand
That and some of the techniques was quite familiar from that tutorial we did as a class on filming and lighting in the TV studio. I feel a bit lost at the moment.

I might try and watch some drama films on Netflix and note how their lighting is done. However, I won't have any idea what lighting technique is used, only possibly the look of it.

I played around with saturating the colours in the footage that we did a couple of weeks in the TV studio. It's not a perfect edit because it's time-consuming to get the continuity right, but it's close enough. It was challenge to me because I usually know what to do with it, but because I didn't direct it or clearly knew what was intended. 

I adjusted the saturation and colour temperatures high, as well as adjusting the exposures in the colour wheels and Curves, so that the backdrop wasn't completely hidden. Looking back, I should had followed the Waveform that's somewhere on Resolve

So I went back and it took me a while, but I found the Waveform and I made some comparisons with one of the clips of footage I used today in Resolve. It seems like the high saturation exploded the exposure of the shadows

I have found with editing and colouring on Resolve is that you don't effective notice any film grain after new adding new adjustments until you have exported it into a video file and play it back. In Premiere and After Effects, you would notice well before exporting.