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Blind cameraman??? I need some advice please…
First, let me start by saying that I’m editing a pretty bad HD feature for some friends, which I may or may not be able to salvage, simply because there is precious little story and what there is, is pretty bad. But, making matters worse is the fact that the prima donna French cameraman, who speaks almost zero Englaise, seems to be blind, at least with regard to certain aspects of basic composition.
After viewing nearly ten hours of dailies, its quite obvious that everything is weighted very heavily toward the top of the frame. Closeups cut off peoples heads, but even the wide shots clearly have too little headroom and way too much of everything else, so much so that I originally suspected that issue might be paralax in the camera. However, after watching Mr. French go on a ten-minute tirade completely defending his compositions, I realized that he must have some sort of fundamental problem with perception. There is no doubt in my mind that any of you on this forum would be able to see the issue in a heartbeat after watching just a few takes of any randomly selected roll in the entire production.
So, should I just blowup everything slightly and repo every offending shot in the movie? Or do I insist that the producers have the material evaluated by an outside party? BTW, for the record, the money is good and I’m doing it for the money, so walking is not a great option.
THNX for any help any of you might be willing to offer,
DRW -
20 Replies
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First things first, edit the thing. After that do the reposition with blow up. As you know music and all the layers of story telling can mask bad stuff enough that what seemed a joke actually fools some into thinking its the real deal.
If the Producers are freaked, you might want to cut a scene or two with all the sound and visuals and reposition to show the producers what you can do. In other words, you get to imply that you can save the day. Will anyone other then the French guy know the image is degraded somewhat?
You could use a popular and modern technique of using several shots on the screen at once. I think the show 24 does this as well as others. You can reposition blow up and then reduce and keep the quality.
You could also go Cinemascope. Dramatically reform the frame so it is crazy wide. Sometimes it works.
Chris
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[Blub06] “First things first, edit the thing. After that do the reposition with blow up.”
Agreed Chris… Telling the story certainly comes first, but, I’m concerned that the blind, defensive, argumentative Frenchman will go on shooting the same lousy compositions for the next five weeks of scheduled shooting.
A big part of the post process should involve providing helpful feedback to those in production. I know if I were shooting this stuff I’d give a medal to the editor who helped me improve the project. But, this guy is just acting like a threatened little boy. I suspect its because my experience clearly trumps his own many times over. Its not a good scene…
DRW
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Sounds to me like the director is just as big a problem as cin
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Just thought of another potential solution, depending on the shoot format…
You said this was an HD movie… but I got to thinking that maybe that means you are cutting it in HD, but the acquisition format might have been film, transferred to HD for editing (a couple of your terms like “dailies” and “rolls” makes me think that’s the case).
If so… and you decide that blowing up the frames can help the composition, you could insist that they have the negative re-telecined and enlarge it optically at that stage of the game, rather than enlarging the HD version which would lose resolution.
If that’s the case, you could blow up 16mm or S16mm a tiny bit (although not much) without noticable resolution loss or grain increase. If it was shot on 35mm or S35mm, you could probably blow it up tons before HD showed grain or resolution problems.
Downside: another 10-hour telecine session would be costly… but it might take that to salvage the project.
T2
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Holy smackola, you are still shooting and he is still shooting it!
I thought you had all the footage in hand…
You only have one or two goes at solving this as the shoot goes forward. After that no one will want to listen to the complaining editor they have other things to deal with. Get the Producers on your side, that includes the line producer. Get the Director on your side, get the first AD on your side I would even get the lab guys on your side if you are shooting film. By this I mean make your case and have all of them share their opinions about the way its being shot. Then tell them all that needs to be done is more head room. IF there is a need for a creative visual treatment they should want to make their project viable for both markets not just the art market.
Argue that shooting it in a more traditional way would let you have it that way and then if you needed do some dramatic cropping after the fact for the full flower of creative expression you could have it that way too.
Depending on how unknowledgeable the folks are you might slip in a little fib, when you do the film transfer you lose some of the frame, the way its being shoot will only be worse.
I wish I could make strong arguments FOR the Cinematographer, after all this is the cinematographers forum, but I have seen this kind of stuff before and sometimes even the DP is wrong. I think we all know there is clever creative insightful fresh vision and then there is a total emptiness of vision mixed in with no skill and little experience. The two can be confused for each other, but only by the person that is in position of the later.
As Gordon Willis (DP for all the Godfathers, Annie Hall etc) has said, its easy to make pretty pictures its hard to tell a story (with the camera). Its always disappointing to see a film where the cinematography has a odd ball vision that gets in the way of the story.
Chris
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[Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.] “The first person to direct your worries to is the director, not the producers.”
Yep, however, in this case I’m dealing with one of those tricky situations you only find in good old Hollywood, with a wealthy producer/director/actor making only the second film of his life. He is a painter however, and thus he sees that there is an issue, but Mr. Frenchie continues to maintain that this is simply “artistic” framing. And so the plot thickens…
DRW
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[Blub06] “I thought you had all the footage in hand…”
Nope, just the first week in hand at this point… So, I’m simply trying to get everybody onboard the reality train before the hole gets deeper.
[Blub06] “Depending on how unknowledgeable the folks are you might slip in a little fib, when you do the film transfer you lose some of the frame, the way its being shoot will only be worse.”
They do want to do a filmout in the end, and so maybe that is the best argument.
[Blub06] “I think we all know there is clever creative insightful fresh vision and then there is a total emptiness of vision mixed in with no skill and little experience.”
This one is clearly the later rather than the former… The bad composotion is just one of many faults Mr. French has as a camraman.
Its all a very tangled web… You see, if Frenchie quits or gets fired, then Mr. moneybags feels like a failure. Meanwhile, I don’t want to go nuts trying to edit around the crappie camerawork, nor do I want to be viewed as the big bad guy with all the bad news. So, this isn’t easy, but then it never is…
DRW
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[Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.] “You said this was an HD movie… but I got to thinking that maybe that means you are cutting it in HD, but the acquisition format might have been film,”
Acquisition format is actually HDCAM, with a filmout being considered. Ha!!!
I tend to use film chat, i.e. dailies etc. cuz I started in the film biz and still like to think that way. I think they call that wishful thinking…
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Have you seen the actors? Maybe they have enormous warts on their foreheads.
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It could be that the DP is simply after a low brow look?
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