the hollywood look

[Blub06]

I cant help but to repeat a funny joke that was said on the set of Barry Lyndon as reported by American Cinematographer.

The night scenes shot around a table lit ONLY by candle light was done with candles that had three or more wicks. So, when some one might ask, how many foot candles do we have, all you have to do is count the candles!

As an example of how Stanley Kubric always broke the mold, he took his new 25×1 zoom, made by of all companies Canon, and put the thing on a camera that was mounted on a dolly track and DOLLYED AT FULL TELE!! This was done on one of the battle scenes.

I think one of the teams of this thread is not doing things in a way because they are always supposed to be done that way, like three point lighting as an example. Even the greats think out of the box, or should I say of course the greats work out side of the box. Of course it takes some time to have the skill that lets you do that and get away with it.

Chris

[John Kissane]

WoW
that file is dead on what I’m looking to achieve. As I said–I’m not always a fan of this look but that shot of the barn with the suv next to it was beautiful. Are there any other tips you can give me. How do you keep the background from being washed out or is the back light not to to much brighter than the key? what effect does the slightly telephoto lens have on the image and what do you mean by slightly telephoto?

I’m serving in the Army right now, deployed to Ghazni, Afghanistan. (doe a news article search for ghazni and you should come up with some interesting stuff–If it involves us forces I was probably involved in some way) Until I come home I’m just trying to get a little experiance behind the camera in the time available. Any sort of sophisticated interior set up is out of the question–though there is plenty of very high voltage halogen lighting around. We have no shortage of sunlight and the mountain/desert location is fairly cinematic particurally a few hours before sunset. I can get hold of an unlimited amount of reflector material–large styrofoam boards used for packaging and of course lens’s can be ordered as long as they dont cost thousands of dollars. Time is also available as long as it isnt a very large amount at once. Any further info would be much apprieciated. Aside from experiance I’d also like to take home some fairly nice footage of my time here even if the really interesting bits–rockets impacting, ambush’s, bombing runs doesnt have the “hollywood look” because we have to shoot on the run.

Virgilxavier

[John Kissane]

“think one of the teams of this thread is not doing things in a way because they are always supposed to be done that way,”

And yet remember that picasso firt learned to create art in the style of previous periods before inventing his own. In much the same way the students of an art school in Suzdal russia are taught. I lived in one of their dormitories for about 3 months and got to know the process pretty well–they got a readily available model and I got a class full of people to speak russian with. They are taught to create works in the a great variety of styles. By the time they graduate they have an intimate understanding of how great art has been created in the past allowing them to invent truly new and techinally masterful works rather than arrangements of junk they rescued from the scrapheap.

virgilxavier

[Bruce Greene]

[virgilxavier] “WoW
that file is dead on what I’m looking to achieve. As I said–I’m not always a fan of this look but that shot of the barn with the suv next to it was beautiful. Are there any other tips you can give me. How do you keep the background from being washed out or is the back light not to to much brighter than the key? what effect does the slightly telephoto lens have on the image and what do you mean by slightly telephoto?”

Think of the backlight as the key light… and “slightly telephoto” means kinda zoomed in. Zooming in and moving the camera back helps make people photograph more attractively and also helps make the background out of focus to seperate the subjects from the background. And large pieces of styrofoam make good reflectors. You’ll just have to have some friends help by holding and aiming them.

The shot of the SUV was in overcast light (cloudy), and was done with a wide lens (zoomed out).

And lastly, thank you for your service in Afghanistan.

[Bob Cole]

Sometimes the Hollywood look is not appropriate. For the D-Day landing, Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” emulated the look of film shot with a 16mm wind-up camera.

Afghanistan sounds like a dangerous place to be, and even more dangerous to videotape, because sometimes you can lose yourself in the viewfinder. Not even in a combat zone, just in a chemical plant, I’ve seen a cameraman get so wrapped up in a beautiful shot that he nearly got killed. Be careful over there.

— Bob C.