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.