1st time HMI user

[Todd Terry]

Hey Dan…

Nice… pretty good for a first-effort HMI experience… baptism by fire, huh?

I will say that at first blush some of the lighting on the talking heads seemed just a tad harsh… but not bad… it was actually kind of interesting. I think maybe they could have benefited from a little bit of back lighting to cut them out of their backgrounds a bit more as well. As I’ve said before, sometimes with a single HMI I’ll do that by putting the instrument high and back and blasting it into a white bounce card as the key, but letting it spill a little bit directly as a hair light. I did that in several setups in a shoot I directed yesterday… I’ll try to post some stills from it when it gets into post production. Also, even when you have a daylight lighting plot (HMIs or flos) you can still use a small tungsten fixture as a backlight, often even uncorrected (sometimes the warmer backlight looks good).

Just keep doing it, keep practicing, and keep refining what you do…

I know you were asking for cinematographical advice and not directorial advice… but I’ll give you a little bit unsolicited anyway, if that’s ok. It’s just a couple of things that stood out to me… Firstly, for a talking head shot where the subject is speaking to someone off camera… if the subject is a bit off center in the frame, you’d usually want to have the subject facing the more empty side of the frame. That is, their “look space” is toward the center or more open side of the frame. I.e., if the subject is on screen left, one would usually compose them so they are looking screen right. If you have a subject looking toward the same frame edge as the side of the frame they are on, the scene can look unbalanced and there is some implied tension in the shot (“What is that guy looking at??”) that might be unwanted. It’s not a hard and fast rule, of course… but a good guideline.

Secondly… whenever possible I’d suggest keeping your fingers off that zoom trigger. There’s nothing wrong with zooms, per se… but there’s nothing that will make video look more, well “video-y”, than unnecessary zooms… whereas fixed focal length shots look more cinematic and filmic. Personally, I almost never zoom. I usually shoot with primes only, so it’s not an issue… but even when I have a zoom lens on I almost only use it to take advantage of different focal lengths, not to actually zoom during a shot. I’ll get on my “zoom soapbox” for a second (which I’ve done before)… zooms are often distracting because they are optically unnatural. They are the only camera move that the human eye cannot reproduce. The eye can pan, tilt, dolly, truck, crane… but unless you’re the Six Million Dollar Man (or the Terminator), your eye can’t zoom. I won’t say never zoom… but like any camera move, if you are going to do it, make sure there is a reason for it. You didn’t have many (just a couple, I think), but I remember seeing one zooming hallway shot that made me think “That’d be a nice shot, if he’d just stayed with a nice medium-longish lens.”

All in all, good job! Keep at it.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Daniel Schultz]

Wow. Really appreciate your time and comments!

I agree with everything you said. Funny, I was thinking the same about the lighting–a bit harsh, but kind of interesting. If I double-diffused the key during the talking heads, it would have softened and knocked it down a stop or so, right? How would you reduce the harshness? It was the 800 joker bug passing through a single 5-in-one screen with a bounce on the left for fill.

Also, a question when dealing with different skin tones in the same lighting setup: Do you keep exposure the same and adjust lighting, or vice-versa? I’m used to panasonic with wave form monitor, and was (obviously) not as adept with the zebras.

Yes on the backlighting. Like the one-HMI-bounce as key and backlight idea. Though I had a bunch of 650 Fresnels with me. Coulda thrown one up in two minutes for backlight.

And the off-center talking heads–shoulda known better.

I will re-think the zoom thing… comments appreciated. The lazy novice way to try imitate a dolly shot with a servo zoom…um I guess it doesn’t work.

Thanks again!

Dan S.

[Todd Terry]

Hey Dan…

[Daniel Schultz] “If I double-diffused the key during the talking heads, it would have softened and knocked it down a stop or so, right?”

Well that might work to a degree… but probably not as much as you’d like. Adding another layer of diffusion would, yes, probably cut down a fair bit on the light output, but probably wouldn’t make it much softer. It more depends on where you put the diffusion, rather than how much of it you use…

Say you have a subject six feet from your lighting instrument. Now lets say you have a piece of diffusion material of some kind, say 18 inches square and you put it one foot from the lighting instrument. That will give you one look, probably a bit on the harsh side. Now, lets say you take a bigger piece of the very same kind of material, but instead now you put it two and a half feet from the instrument. Your light will have the same intensity, but now it will be much softer. What you’re effectively doing is creating a much bigger source of light. Bigger, not brighter… as in, more surface area of the lighting source. That will be a much less harsh source, a big soft light that more “wraps around” the subject.

I can’t say I’ve never done it before, but I probably wouldn’t use a Joker-Bug blasting directly at someone as a key, even through diffusion (although I have used Jokers like that with a soft box… there’s a Chimera kit just for the Joker-Bugs). Rather, I’d probably bounce it into a white 4×4 card and use that as the key if I wanted a soft look. Doing it that way, my key is now actually a 16 square foot source (4′ x 4′), rather than the fairly small direct source.

But again, as I said what you didn’t wasn’t a bad look… it was kinda interesting. It had a bit of a direct-sunlight-through-a-nearby-window quality to it, which was kinda cool.

[Daniel Schultz] “I will re-think the zoom thing… comments appreciated.”

OK, back to the zooming philosophy… others may have different opinions, but for me personally unnecessary zooms sort of have a cheapening effect to me.. and often make things look more like news footage or such.

Watch any movie from the late 60s or through the 70s… they are full of zooms. It was just the film language of the day, and zoom lenses hadn’t been available before so people tended to use them a lot. But watch something high-end from today… a feature film, or a high-end television drama (“Law & Order,” or “Lost,” or something like that). You’d be hard pressed to ever see even one zoom in those. A zoom is like holding a painting at arms length and then moving toward your face. The picture gets bigger, but perspectives don’t change… so it’s very unnatural. The same thing happens if you’re shooting down a hallway… zoom in and things get bigger, but the spatial relationship between the things in frame don’t change. But, if you dolly down the hall instead, things get bigger and the size and shape and perspective relationships of everything in the frame is constantly moving and changing… the scene becomes very dynamic. Whereas with a zoom, everything is static… it’s just getting bigger (and maybe not in a good way). End of sermon. 🙂

Good work, keep at it…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Craig Alan]

Although I agree with the “avoid zooms” aesthetic, I thought once the zoom was engaged, because it was pretty close to matching the speed of the students coming towards us, it wasn’t bad. But the initial start of the zoom is jarring and calls attention to itself. Probably due to the stepped zoom mechanism. I do see how it was imitating a dolly out. Maybe edit out the initial step or apply a dissolve to the beginning of the zoom to disguise the abrupt start. Generally, avoiding it altogether is good advice.

Although zooms are out, ‘they’ are in love with rack focus. Sometimes back and forth and back again. Very unnatural looking too. For a while, panning quickly back and forth for dialog was in fashion. Takes good skill to ill effect. That said, I love how Boston Legal broke all these rules and by using rhythm and humor enhanced the show with it all. I think the key is to make the audience feel that that is how your characters/talent are seeing their reality even if it is unnatural.

Overall, the quality of your shoot is very good compared to most education setting videos. Shooting CUs of people with imperfect complexions distracts from the message. So I would soften things up due to this. I know TV camera operators are using filters on their cameras due to the revealing nature of HD. I’d try more MCUs or even MSs.
Rule of thirds applies to both horizontal and vertical space. But just think about nose room or lead room when framing shots.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Daniel Schultz]

Todd, thanks so much for all your time and help.

I thought of your ‘zoom philosophy’ the other night when watching the movie “Cyrus.” They over-use the zoom, clearly deliberately. I figured they were going for the home-video look to help it seem more “real” and less hollywood. I think the technique was effective in this case, especially considering the storyline. You think?

Dan S.

[Daniel Schultz]

Thanks for your comments craig. Can you suggest a softening filter for closeups? For some reason I do seem to lean towards closeups. I have to remind myself to back up for medium and wide, etc. I guess I like the way the head divides up the 16-9 aspect ratio when it’s so close.

Dan S.

[Daniel Schultz]

Oh, and could you describe the rule of 3rds?

Dan S.

[Craig Alan]

https://www.hippasus.com/resources/viscomp/RuleThirds.html

You’ll find many many hits from a google search for “rule of thirds” This one shows some lead and nose room examples. It’s not a hard rule of composition, but is a pretty good place to start.

Also do a search for headroom and nose room and lead room.

An interesting experiment is to place your subject at perfect rule of thirds with the camera at eye level with the subject. Then move the camera off this plane and see what happens to the subject’s relation to the rule of thirds. If you shoot up at a subject, you are giving the subject a position of power where as if you shoot down at a subject you are, well, looking down at them. To gain an excellent understanding of when to adhere and when to break rule of thirds, just mentally superimpose the tic-tac toe pattern over well-composed footage, photos, paintings, and graphic art. Measure your monitor/TV and place eight marks on the frame at the rule of thirds. Self-stick labels work well for this. You can then just watch TV and movies and your mind will see the composition’s relation to rule of thirds.

Be careful though, with all the different formats, sometimes, the composition has been unfortunately changed from the original.

Check out the skilled camera work of some of the sports videographers. Watch while they try to keep good lead room while following wide receivers or skaters or what ever. You don’t want your talent sailing off the edge of the screen. As TV sets get bigger, directors are allowing for wider shots which I feel gives a better experience in terms of understanding athletic ability. If you stay too close you’re not getting a feel for the athletes relationship to time and space.

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Todd Terry]

I see Craig already answered this… but I had already written my reply so I’ll post it anyway …

Think of your frame divided into thirds, like the diagram below… either horizontally (the one on the left) or vertically (the one on the right).

Often the most aesthetically pleasing part of the frame falls along one of these “thirds” lines. Imagine you are shooting a wide landscape shot that includes the horizon. A lot of novices are tempted to put the horizon right through the middle (center) of the frame… but often that looks terrible. It’s weak composition, uninteresting, and is visually very divisive of the frame. But, if you put the horizon on one of those two “thirds” lines, and it looks much better. The “unbalanced’ frame now has some inherent drama and interest.

The same often goes for interviews… If an interview subject is looking smack dab directly into the camera, then it is often desirable to put them dead center in the frame. But if a subject is looking at and speaking to someone off camera, then one of the “thirds” positions will probably give you better results. Look at the frame above on the right… if a subject was speaking/facing screen right, then you might want to put them on the “thirds” line on the left… which is a more visually interesting position for them, and gives them “look space” into the frame.

Of course, these are very basic rules, and like all rules are made to be broken. Often you might get something a lot more interesting if you purposely break the rules… directors including everyone from Hitchcock to Tarantino have broken these “rules” by the truckload… but they usually do it in a purposeful way that makes the frame more interesting than if they had followed them.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Well, in one of those “rules are made to be broken” examples…

I just got back from finally getting around to seeing “True Grit.”

The very last shot in the movie is this very loooong landscape wide shot…. ground, horizon, sky. The horizon line absolutely perfectly bisected the screen… it cut right across the exact middle of the frame. And it worked absolutely beautifully. Just perfectly.

It certainly broke the “rule of thirds”… and is real testimony that the Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins really know what they are doing.

It’s also a darn good movie, too. Go see it, if you haven’t already.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com