A kind of excited rant about cinematography and my passions and frustrations. Hence any awful grammar

The more I study cinematography the more I realise how much I want to shoot with black and white! I wanted to shoot black and white to match the feeling of and style of the woman I want to represent in the film. But I also wanted to show my passion old cinema really almost all cinematography styles started with black and white with most things done before colour film came around. Of course these have been adapted. But the reason I want to shoot black and white is how different it is to shooting colour it takes more of an eye to consider light. I think one of the things I and people take advantage of is we now have wonderful HD cameras that can capture low light with wonderful images but it can cheapen or lessen the need to light or consider light. We can simply bump up the ISO and get detail in the image. But for me when shooting in black and white we can't get away with it. We need to consider depth and tone and light and shadow far more in my opinion. And my passion for this really struck when I watched a documentary called "vision of light the art of cinematography". Seeing the early cinematographers look at light, shadows, and make the camera do what they want to do by literally manufacture it do get other issues. I love this and how so many of these early cinematographers pushed the boundaries and make and discover new techniques to constantly push it. And this project has started to become more and more about honouring them and the pioneering techniques they made in the era I want to portray. It's hard because I want to consider so many options and spend so much time looking at the lighting for this. And I know student films don't work like this. But I have such a desire to constantly push myself to explore light and make something visually exciting from a cinematographers point of view. I find myself getting very frustrated because I am never happy with anything i do. And although it frustrates me I am proud I feel this way to never be happy with anything means I want to always push myself to learn more to get better results but I just want this piece to show my passion for lighting and cinematography even if it doesn't turn out great I just want people to see and realise this. I have already told everybody on set that we won't be approaching the piece with a half arsed approach to lighting. I want people to appreciate it like i do and to spend time with it and consider it to make it look like I want it to. I know I rant and I know all of this may seem barely understandable but I want to vent my frustrations with things like not being able to rely on actors or get the time to shoot the way I want or the worry of considering shooting using a generator to light outside and not be interrupted. It's just a case of wanting to do things in a more professional way and I realise that isn't viable while in university but I pushes and inspire me to learn and work more so I feel I can go into set and see and feel the lighting I want and know exactly how I am going to do it. I don't feel like that now I feel like I'm always trying to figure something new out to get what I want but it's hard as this can only change with experience and learning, unfortunately it's very hard to find places to learn other than books when really I just want somebody who know their stuff who I can watch work and ask questions and learn from. It's all a dream but one I want to push myself to achieve.

Thinking about my degree show

I have had another offer for work. I have been asked by an old school friend after she had seen some of my work and asked me if I would be interested in acting as a videographer for her wedding. I am still a little tentative about doing so as I would like the opportunity to work for a closer friend or family before taking such a job on. So as of yet I have no real answer as to whether I can do it. However I have stayed in contact with her and had her send me some stuff and ideas over, in terms of what she wanted and have myself started to study the how to be a wedding videography to boost my confidence in taking it on.

Another offer for work has left me quite excited about the possibilities when leaving university

I have had another offer for work. I have been asked by an old school friend after she had seen some of my work and asked me if I would be interested in acting as a videographer for her wedding. I am still a little tentative about doing so as I would like the opportunity to work for a closer friend or family before taking such a job on. So as of yet I have no real answer as to whether I can do it. However I have stayed in contact with her and had her send me some stuff and ideas over, in terms of what she wanted and have myself started to study the how to be a wedding videography to boost my confidence in taking it on.

Film update. Waiting for actresses and actors becoming frustrating

Left a little frustrated with my actress and actor. I have messaged them a few times and as the actor is the friend of the actress I have no point of contact with him so still haven’t received the headshots. I have also messaged her letting her know that everything is ready to shoot when she is available and I have had nothing back. This is starting to become a great concern as the dress was made with her measurements so to find another actress would mean trying to make another dress or buying one to fit her, which I really do not have the time nor money for. It is frustrating as I feel we are already to film but cannot confirm any dates to move the project forward until I get a response from them letting them know when they are available to start or if worse comes to worse they can no longer do it, in which case I will have to try and find another actor actress. Which could prove too short notice.

Film update. Poster being made

I have also recently made the decision to have somebody make me a poster for the film. Normally I would have done this myself, like I would have done many other aspects of the film myself but I realised that to truly start to work in a more professional manner I need to work with more people and dictate and of course direct what I want them to do. This seems quite a strong way of putting as most of the people I am working with I know and trust but have branched out in getting actors and actresses on board who I haven’t worked with before and also the same for somebody to the score. This has been great actually as it has slightly lessened the stress of having to do it all myself but has also give me the confidences to speak and communicate with people to what I want them to do and what their role is and so far nobody has let me down in this. It also gives me a different view in approaching the work and allows me the ability to control the areas I need to control. Of course in a bigger film I would still be covering less roles and I would need to accept that I cannot control the cinematography like I want to in this piece as well. It is been hard trying to let go of the desire to do this and just do a standard directors role but I trust Tom and his ability to allow me to step away from that slightly although I feel I will probably still do some parts of the cinematography and camerawork just be sure. I have already warned people that I may not be polite or as friendly as I am outside of this project and apologised in advance if I shout, lose my temper or basically act like an arsehole, to anybody on set.

Anyway going back to the original point I wished to make which was the poster design. I have employed an illustrator friend to take on this role who’s ability I greatly trust and given him the loose idea I wanted for the poster. Which was a very simple idea of somebodies face with a mute sign for a mouth. I also asked him to throw some ideas my way after I sent him the script and development work and asked him to riff some ideas. One of the ideas he came back with which I am very enthusiastic about is the idea of the mouth being ripped away as from a paper and the name of the film being revealed which I am very excited about seeing how this turns out. I am just waiting for the head shots of our male actor so I can sent it to him so I can design the poster using the look of the lead actor. Which I hope I will get soon so we can start to get on.

Film update. Costume and dress

Next came the costume. I knew that putting it in Penny’s hands was always going to be a safe option her dedication and her work has been fantastic and it really shows in the things she makes the make-up she does and dresses she creates, I had seen that on Kyle’s piece so I know how good she is. We have stayed in close contact throughout this process but have only gave her some very loose guidelines within which to work as I want her to be able to go and express herself and make a dress that she will be proud of. She rang me asking me what colour out of several samples she had got and this became a difficult decision as I was trying to think about what will look good on camera bearing in mind the piece for a large part will be black and white. So really the importance of the colour is its tone and texture and how that will look on camera and I think out the samples we looked at the decision was always going to be between the pastel blue and pink. In the end the decision was made to go with the pastel blue as I think it would look better when turning the image black and white although I believe that either would have looked very good such is the quality of her work that the dress will really stand out. We are now at a point in which the dress is finished and it looks great. I am no way surprised about how good it looks as I always knew she would produce some great work. But I am especially pleases with how it has turned out. I will leave some pictures of it below.

Film update. I have somebody writing a score finally

Getting a score sorted has been somewhat a nightmare with me struggling to find somebody wanting to write me a piece for it. I actually considered trying to knock something up myself for it but realised that this would cause far too many issues when trying to film, edit and do the music for my piece. Luckily I have found a guy willing to do it. Danny Downing who has agreed to the score for me. Has been very receptive to the kind of things I want for the piece and has already sent me some of his work, links to his other stuff and some samples for ideas he has for it. This means that I am now very relieved and pleased to have that area of the film sorted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFO0cHptGBM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

A link to some of his work

Film update. Interviewer and production still shooter on board

Another decision I have made is to have somebody employed to shoot interviews with cast and crew and shoot production stills. I think this is a good way to show how professional we are and the ability to release interviews and photos in the build-up, to release of my film on my website, twitter and facebook is, I think a great way to spread the word about the work I am doing on it and create some excitement and attention for the piece. It also adds to work and press releases and such I can release with the film and also send to film festivals should I make to decision to submit it. So I now have somebody on board for that as well now.

Film update and location for it

An update that on my film. I know I have spent a lot of time away preparing and writing my film. I know I have updated much on the process of it but I have been very busy. So starting from early on I have been spending a lot of time on the script and the research behind it and I have now wrote what is probably a fourth script. The reason for the several re-writes is to keep the piece tight and as I started to think about the actual process of shooting it, it started to become clear that it would not be that feasible to try and get permission to shoot in a nightclub like I wanted to, nor would it be easy to get permission to shoot in a takeaway especially when I will be using a generator to run the lights I will be using. After thinking this I looked at how I could get this to work within the film without losing the tone of what I am trying to say and I realised that all that is important in these scenes is the interaction between these two characters and I realised that all I had to do was still create an environment for them to interact in. So I decided that I could shoot the scene on a bench instead of a takeaway this way I can still retain the point of the scene without the need to create an awkward place to shoot the scene in. I also think that shooting on a bench means we can keep the shoot more simply without having to bounce between many locations which I was worried about with having lots of equipment to carry with me. Also changing the script to a bench meant that I could frame the scene between a bench and two street lamps that I had an image of. This also made potential lighting slightly simpler as I could use the street lamps to add some more lighting to the scene. This lessened the need for adding extra light. As well as removing the takeaway scene I also moved the nightclub scene outside meaning that I could theoretically shoot the nightclub scene in to an area that looks like the outside of a nightclub. So this also freed me some space to look for somewhere which would be easier to shoot as a nightclub and this led me to a great place in which I realised I could shoot nearly all the scenes of the film in one place. So the outside of a nightclub became the front of Hull New Theatre, the takeaway scene became a bench outside the theatre and the stairs scene moved from the centre of town to the same area which was just a small series of buildings which most were apartments but two next to each other were offices. I was lucky enough to catch somebody coming out of one of the apartments to ask him if he thinks it would be ok to film outside of them. He was very helpful and told us that due to being so close to the theatre, when they are moving the sets they do so loudly all night loading and unloading lorries so we should be fine filming there. This meant that we now had all the locations for the film and all within a small area perfect to help us set up and move about. It means we can spend less time travelling and moving everything about. I will leave some pictures of our locations below.

light meter issues and zone metering

http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/shooting/understanding-using-ansel-adams-zone-system/

I realised I wrote this before the previous post but forgot to post it. So here it is

This is a very good post about the techniques of the zone system for light metering. This is something that I have been looking at a lot of late as I will buying a new digital light meter and want to be able to use the reflected spot meter on it to become a more accomplished cinematographer I feel there is a great need to learn all the light metering techniques one would use and I believe that having the best light meter I can buy will really help my development in this. So far I have been using an old western master 5 analogue light meter which has been very useful for incident light metering, but I have started to find some shortcomings in the way it works that I believe although not completely hamper my ability to get the correct exposure but could start to hamper me when taking on bigger and more elaborate projects. The main issue I find with this light meter is that is set to ASA rather than ISO which means some of the settings don’t quite match. Another issue is that the gate at the back is meant to open under certain lighting conditions when the meter reads under a certain level but sometimes the meter reads slightly in-between these numbers and it is hard to assess whether the gate should be open or closed and I feel sometimes from my eye the lighting has changed yet the meter is not showing this. Another issue is that sometimes when holding the button down to expose I can see it reading a certain level but when I release this it drops under which it shouldn’t do which means when positioning the meter in place where I can’t read it, I am unsure as to whether the reading I am seeing is the correct one. Anyway this is why I have decided to look for a new light meter that I will purchase when my loans come in and I want to learn how to read reflected readings as well as the incident readings I use now. From what I have studied so far there seems to be a lack of articles about how to use reflective metering, at least ones that make enough sense to try out. That was until I read about this article. I believe that this article uses the reflective spot metering system to get the correct exposure from the scene and although the system is a little complicated I do understand it as a theory. I think given time and practise I will be able to achieve this method practically as from what I have read it takes some practise and time to get it correct.

                The system from my understanding works by applying a tone to a colour in terms of black to grey. This works for digital by using a scale from 3 to 7, 3 being black and 7 being white and 5 being middle grey which we will always try to expose for. The system works by assessing a scene and applying the colours to a tone from 3 to 7 with every step down from 5 being a full stop lower and above 5 higher. This means one can assess to judge what level the scene should be exposed to in terms of knowing what the area we want to expose and what tone and this fits into. Although I have probably explained how this works very badly (this is because to some extent I am still trying to completely get to grips with it myself) I feel that this article explains it well should anybody want to read up on how it works without me wittering on trying to explain it in my own haphazard way.

It was expensive but worth it

So I took the jump and bought a sekonic digital light meter. Not just any light meter but the best one sekonic make designed for cinematographers. It cost a hefty £380 and then £42 for the profile target the target is designed to work by recording the range the camera can expose from highlights to shadows without losing details. This is known as the dynamic range of the camera and links do the light meter constantly showing this range on the meter to ensure that when lighting one doesn't over or underexpose the image this is incredibly important as the range ok a canon DSLR is only small so it's very important that you are working within the parameters that the camera can capture. This profile target can be set up for any digital camera so will be incredibly useful when working in the industry especially if i go into freelance work as I can create profiles for any cameras we would be using on the shoot. The light meters lumisphere can also be raised and lowered for taking incident light readings and when the sphere is down one can get more specific readings from individual lights. The meter also has 1 degrees spot meter for reflected readings which is another great tool for getting readings. I imagine this will take some time to master all it's settings and I am still learning reflected readings and lighting ratios and compensations but I feel this is the best meter I can get to learn all of these as it is designed for cinematographers and I feel when I do master it all it will be a great tool for my cinematography and I am very excited to get and play with it. I also hope to have a good enough understanding to use it for my own film. So will continue studying it as we'll as different readings and will probably make a post on here before too long. I will also leave some pictures of it on this post.

Studying contrast ratios light metering, dynamic range, the sekonic l-758 cine and hollywood pin up portraits

I have been studying contrast or lighting ratios a lot lately to figure out the best lighting conditions for my film one of the things I've observed was that film noir, films use a high contrast ratio. So I would say I'm still learning how to achieve it but I believe I understand it in its simplest form. So from my understanding it works as such. If for example the key (main) light is equal to the the fill light (the filling light) the ratio would be 1:1 to do this I would read the light from the key light with the fill light off and get the aperture measurement and then do the same for the fill light. A 1:1 would give a very flat look which is something i don't want. The way to change this is to diffuse or move the fill light back. Using an example from things I've studied if the initial readings were both f8.0 then to achieve a 1:2 ratio the fill light would have to be f5.6 which is a full stop open from f8.0 and therefore the key light is double the fill light (with every stop up or down the amount of light is either double or half) meaning the ratio is 1:2. Then if the fill light was to be moved down another stop because the light has been moved back or diffused more then the fill light would have to be at f4.0 this means the key light is 4 times stronger then the fill light (or double the amount if shooting at 1:2 contrast ratio. So applying that to attain a 1:8 contrast ratio we would move the fill light so the aperture we have to set is f2.8 as this is one full stop down from f4.0. However in modern cameras we have 1/3 of a stop aperture settings which makes the calculations harder and something I haven't figured out yet. The next thing I have learnt from studying this is that we would use an incident reading taking into consideration all the light hitting the subject. The issue is then what can the cameras dynamic range capture this is the difference between under and overexposed that the camera can capture without losing detail. This has been near impossible  to find for my camera. and this is important is I am metering for incident reading which takes into consideration all the light but could result in areas being lost if shooting a contrast ratio of 1:8 that I would want. I would prefer to use a spot meter reading to meter for the area I want to be properly exposed and allow the dark areas to be dark and the light areas to be light to achieve the look I want. Which I think will fit better with the silent movie and hollywood pin up look of the era I want to try and replicate. This is something I will look into more and also find a way of spot metering without the sekonic l-758 cine light meter that I would love but can't afford
I have added some pics of looks I would like to replicate and also of the sekonic l-758 cine light meter

Friday week 3 the raven

Friday we spent the day reviewing the footage i am happy with some of the shots but viewing it on the big HD tv has shown some irregularities between the footage it seemed i was getting on the camera and what we viewed on the TV this was really frustrating as had i know some of the footage would look the way it did i would have made changes during the shoot. As an example i lit the shelves so they were red and on camera the red looked good and lit nicely just covering the shelf and was a lot more subtle than it appeared when watching it on the TV which was an ugly and very saturated looking red which was odd as i had turned the saturation down on the camera. So this was very frustrating but i think and hope this can be changed in the edit with colour correction and grading. However i have learned lessons from this and will hopefully be buying an external monitor for future projects to check against the footage i am getting on camera

Thursday week 3 the raven

Thursday we tidied the set up all went rather quick but was sad to see it all come down after all the work it took putting up

Wednesday week 3 the raven

Wednesday we shot at the cemetery and I think being able to expose an image with natural lighting from the sun meant that I could use my light meter and we got some very accurate exposures and some nice shots I also got the chance to use my shoulder rig and I liked how it felt. Although I wish I had lenses which worked with my follow focus more. I also wish I had my matt box attached when we got back in the studio as we did get some flare which we had to find a way of dealing with. The end became a bit of a rush and I gave the camera to Zac as it was taking too long for me to check and organise the lighting and getting the shot planned right. This was more enjoyable as I felt that I was missing things by being behind the camera all the time. Stepping away from the camera meant that I could look at the light more which I wasn’t able to do before as we was having to rush to get the shots a little. I think the lighting I started to produce when stepping away from the camera was far better and I enjoyed getting really creative with the red lighting for when I was meant to be losing it and adding more red the more angry he got. I enjoyed doing things like just lighting little strips of red and lighting his eye, just the shelves and then lighting across wall near his table so half of his body was lit I really enjoyed this and I think I got some great looking shots from doing this. I think knowing all this now I would want more time to light and plan shots so we could just place the camera in a planned position and at a planned exposure meaning I could look more at the light without having to worry about the camera as much. I would also like to be able to work away from the camera because trying to instruct Rich my assistant cinematographer as to where to place the reflector while also trying to set up the camera and having to look through the camera makes it hard to see the light and means I was bouncing between trying to explain to Rich talking to Zac and seeing the light. This is very hard to see the light as too much of my focus was on setting up the camera and not enough checking the light. But as mentioned earlier getting to step away from the camera when giving it Zac made the speed of the shoot increase and also allowed me to see the light more. It did become a real rush toward the end as we knew we would be kicked out of the studio at a set time and needed to get the important trashing of the room scene. This was essential to get right as we couldn’t take it again so having to rush this wasn’t good but giving the camera to Zac meant that I could concentrate on the lighting and Zac could get the shot set up meaning everything sped up and we really got the important shots right at the end which was key. I think we got good shots today and although it was hectic I think everybody did a great job and I am quite happy of what we got considering the issues I have mentioned.

Tuesday week 3 the raven

Tuesday we had to really rush to finish the last bits of lighting and it pushed it really far meaning we started shooting later than anticipated it literally got to a point in which we had to just start shooting this has really frustrated me as I have gone from having a good idea of the look I wanted, to just having to settle for a look. However the shoot went well I think we have got some really good shots and Zac allowed me to take shots I wanted according to what I think as well as what he had planned which was really nice to do. Getting to shoot the third man style dutch angles like I wanted was great and I enjoyed the flexibility Zac gave me. My frustration was that I couldn’t get the long shadows in the way I wanted. However I am pleased with what we got despite this. And the fact that the camera had set itself back to auto white balance while I was thinking I was shooting with custom balances.

Monday week 3 the raven

Monday has relieved some of my fears and we have got a lot of lighting and plans done but there is still work to be done like having the board up behind the door which needs lighting, this means this will need to be done on the day of shooting which could put the full shoot behind. It’s nobody’s fault other then it took longer than anticipated to get the studio up but it has meant that I feel I have not been able to do my job to the best of my ability which has disappointed me as I don’t think I have been able to work to my best ability as I really wanted this project to show what I can do. Another issue is to get good exposure I have to over-light the studio which means flooding the candles out or underexposing the image. This was because it took so long to get the candles in and I couldn’t tell whether or not they would give enough light until they was up and lighting the set it turned out they didn’t give enough light off like I imagined so I chose to get more light that looks like candle light by bouncing light from a reflector it is not ideal as I wanted it to look like all the light was coming from candles and through the window that looked like the moon. I will use the reflector to light parts of the room that are too dark but my frustration was that I only wanted this for lighting dark parts of the room and now I am having to use it as a main light if I had more time I could have created another way of getting more light in but feel like we have to settle for this as I have run out of time. I discussed this with Zac and told him that the look I was showing him was underexposed and then showed him the correctly exposed image and he said he preferred the underexposed image. I explained the issues faced with underexposing it and that I would personally like to expose it properly and allow somebody to add the effects later on but he said he wanted to have the underexposed image.

friday week 2 the raven

Friday we got most of the work done still no shelves up and there is still work to be done but we finally got props in and I feel for the space I have to work with, I didn’t get the time I wanted to light the set meaning I literally got 40 minutes to try and rig lights before we was kicked out. This means that we will have to do finish the lighting off on Monday and also plan the shots which is going to be a real rush and gives me very little time to figure things out. It’s really frustrating the amount of time I have spent preparing the set yet been given so little time to achieve the lighting I want and testing it out my fear is that I will just have to settle for something that works rather than planning all the lighting points and what I have started to look at is hanging lights on from above the set and bouncing light back into the spaces we need to light more rather than being able to get goof consistent lighting throughout the set. Only time will tell on Monday and we still need to finish bits off for the set I hoped that nearly everything would be done by now and Monday could be just for some run through’s just to make sure we have everything prepared but now it’s a case of still trying to figure lighting out and shot positions which means that I imagine a lot of it will have to be done on the fly when filming this is something I really didn’t want to do I wanted to have everything set and ready and know what shot we was taking from what angle, on what lens and with what exposure to ensure we get a really nice set up. I also rigged my hand made reflectors above the studio to bounce some light back and it gave the scene a nice speckled look on the walls which I liked.