Cinematography Style: Jarin Blaschke

INTRODUCTION

From the stark, black-and-white nightmares of The Lighthouse to the desaturated, painterly frames of The Witch, DP Jarin Blaschke has carved out a career, often in the horror genre, by creating visually strong, graphic, desaturated, textured, yet naturalistic photography.

In this episode of Cinematography Style, we’ll peel back the layers of Blaschke’s craft to uncover how he broke into the industry, the techniques, inspirations, and philosophies that define his work and what gear he uses to execute these ideas. 

BACKGROUND

He first became interested in crafting images as a teenager. At 16 he moved to New York to study cinematography at the School Of Visual Arts. After graduating with a reel of student films he gradually began establishing a network of contacts and eventually became the go-to DP for many Columbia film school grad shorts - as they didn’t have a cinematography department.

Short film directed by Robert Eggers.

“You start with horrible shorts and then they become marginally better. Then they end up being things that actually go to festivals. Then I did my first feature and you start over again with no money. I didn’t have any strategy at all other than ‘I’m just going to meet as many directors as possible’. Eventually one of them has to be pretty good and take me along.”

One of the directors who approached him to shoot a short film in 2007 was Robert Eggers - who he would form a long running collaborative relationship with which would span many feature length projects.

Feature Film directed by Robert Eggers.

Although he has photographed some comedic and drama films, much of his work has included elements of horror - whether that be with Eggers or other directors such as M. Night Shyamalan. 

PHILOSOPHY

Cinematographers often talk about the craft needing a balance of technical skills and creative skills, however Blaschke also talks about needing a political skillset. This may be useful for selecting and managing crew, interacting with the client and agency on commercials, and also for managing a partnership with the director.

“There’s the political and then there’s the technical and then there’s the creative. They all sort of change depending on the situation you’re in. So sometimes it requires more of one than the other. Sometimes it’s more of a political task. How do you get a sense of what the director intends and trying to make my piece work among the rest because it’s such a rich multidisciplinary medium.”

For certain directors who he has a very close working relationship with, such as Eggers, he finds he has a bit more scope to push for ideas or make contributions beyond the usual scope of a DP. For example, making suggestions about changing the sequence of characters’ actions in a scene and how they are blocked.

It helps that he approaches filmmaking almost as an editor would, considering things like the sound and the timing when designing the shots - taking a large picture view of the scene, rather than just focusing on the photographic details.

This helps him to visualise stories by removing the clutter of the outside world and distilling the essence of scenes into succinct visual ideas. When designing the sequence of shots that they’ll photograph, Blaschke and Eggers each come up with their own shot list or storyboard, which they’ll then combine and through discussion come up with a final shooting plan.

“I don’t come from cinema. Jarin is better at camera placement than I am - he just is. I shot list everything, he shot lists everything and then we come together.” - Robert Eggers

These compositions are often quite symmetrical and centre weighted with the subject placed in the middle of the frame, without any extreme negative space which is found in many contemporary films. Rather their compositions are reminiscent of Renaissance art. 

The director DP duo also share certain perfectionist tendencies. These mean that they really narrow down the look and feel during pre-production, leaving less to chance, from the costume to the hair, to how they will achieve the dust effects.  

Since Robert Eggers films tend to be period movies, another point of collaboration is their communal desire for historical accuracy and authenticity. When they embarked on Nosferatu, rather than basing the visuals on the 1920s original, their intention was instead to be true to the 1830s Romanticism period the story took place in. 

For ex-production designer Eggers, a large part of his focus is on the costume and mise-en-scene, while Blaschke’s historical focus is on lighting. 

He likes to design his illumination for interiors or night scenes around practical lighting - which are sources of illumination that can be seen in the shot or are built into the set. For example, if the characters are exploring a space by torch light or even by the flame of a lighter he’ll give them a practical torch to use and let the real light from that illuminate the set, letting the rest of the space fall into darkness, true to how the human eye would see things. 

In many night scenes from period films he’s exclusively lit them with the natural light from candles, fires or torches. Although if the fire sources aren’t bright enough to expose with he may supplement them with either flame bars - which are gas powered torches which produce a continuous and predictable flame. Sometimes bringing in either a mirror or a textile to reflect and increase these fire sources.

He’ll occasionally resort to artificial electrical help. Such as if he needs to fill in a bit more light for candlelit night scenes - which he did with a small tungsten source bounced off muslin. He’s also used electric film lights to produce effects which aren’t possible to do with real sources. For example, on The Northman he used LED Skypanel 360 sources which were dug into the ground with a dialled in effect setting that produced the feeling of lava shifting and bubbling in a volcano.

GEAR

A standout feature of Blaschke’s cinematography is his frequent use of a limited monochromatic colour palette. Whether that be the black and white monochrome found in The Lighthouse or the desaturated, cool, cyan moonlight look in The Northman and Nosferatu. 

The idea behind this look came from his preference for naturalism. In coming up with an approach for lighting these night exteriors, he wanted to depict it as close to how the human eye perceives real moonlight.

This is informed by a scientific principle called the Purkinje effect. At low illumination levels, like night exteriors without artificial lighting, our eyes shift colour towards the blue end of the colour spectrum, and any red colours appear darker.

To emulate this feeling on The Northman and Nosferatu he used a cyan filter which was custom built for him by Schneider - that eliminated red and yellow wavelengths of light as well as most green light. 

This left him with an almost monochromatic image made of blue and cyan densities. Once the colour of this negative was desaturated in post, most of the colour drained out, leaving a low key cyan look.

For exteriors he’ll often combine this lighting with haze - which gives a bit more substance to the mid tones and prevents the whole image from crushing to black.

Most of his work has quite a distinctive look applied in the colour grade - motivated by his lighting. He’ll often opt for a desaturated, cool look for day scenes - with blues and greens seeping into the skin tone. 

Then either light interior or night scenes with the cool moonlight look we discussed, or lean into a warm, practical source, like lamps, candles or fire. His negatives are quite dense with crisp, pure black shadows. 

Each scene in the films he lights will usually have quite a limited colour palette that is either cool or warm and is punctuated by deep dark shadows.

You may think that working with so many moonlit night exteriors he’d opt for a digital cinema camera which comes with a more sensitive ISO base, and lets him expose with less light. Although he did do this on some movies, such as The Witch - which was shot on the Arri Alexa with its 800 base ISO - for most of his recent work he’s shot on less sensitive film stocks.  

“Since The Lighthouse everything I’ve shot has been on film. I like having a lightmeter and I like the repeatability of ‘You know, for this movie my fill light is going to be at this level for night scenes and this level for day scenes’. Sort of having, I guess, a formula, but one that’s tailored to the movie.”

He’s used different stocks on different projects, from the black and white Eastman Double-X on The Lighthouse, which he exposed between 50 and 80ASA, the 50D and 250D stocks on The Northman or the 500T film that he shot at 320ASA on Nosferatu.

Shooting at such a low ASA, compared to digital cameras, means that he needs to let lots of light into the camera - particularly when shooting night scenes. 

He uses large HMIs as his moon source which are suspended high up and far away on a crane lift positioned directly behind the character, opposite the camera, to backlight actors. 

The key to his moonlight look is placing his source a great distance away from the subject. Using strong sources far away illuminates vast areas of land in wide shots and creates dark shadows with hard edges like moonlight does.

To create cool sources of moonlight or daylight coming into interiors his team will rig large textile bounces on frames above windows, which may need to be raised by crane lifts, and bounce light from high output HMIs into them - which softens it.    

Using low ASA film and so much light means he really has to trust his light meter readings since the set in real life will appear much brighter to the eye than what the film recorded by the camera will look like. 

“The way I was filtering it, and I was also pulling it a little bit in the processing, just to get a little more latitude out of it. So, we’re talking about 10 to 12 times more light than a digital camera. On a modern set that feels like a lot of light.”

Another tool he uses to aid exposure for night scenes lit by practical sources like candles, is using lenses with a fast aperture. Such as using a Panavision Super Speed 50mm T/1.4, or even the Ultra Speed Panavision optics capable of opening up to T/1.

These specialty lenses supplement a set of regular speed primes - which often have a vintage heritage - such as the Cooke Speed Panchros with their dreamy textured bokeh, or his favourite set of Bausch & Lomb Baltar lenses designed in the 1930s which he favours for their cool tones and the way they bloom the highlights and soften the image.

Most of his films stick to quite classical camera movement which is buttery smooth, foregoing handheld motion. He’ll regularly push the camera along a straight axis - such as tracking directly backwards, forwards or along a horizontal axis from side to side.

Most of these moves are either done on a dolly, or if the moves need to be done over rough, uneven terrain, on water or from an elevated angle, he’ll use a crane arm with a 3-axis remote head - which gives the motion a smooth stability or places the camera in difficult to access positions.

For example, he’s used a 50’ Technocrane arm to suspend the camera just above the water line of the ocean without submerging it. Or a Scorpio 45’ Telescopic crane rigged onto a ship to position and move the camera with a stable, smooth motion.

5 Of The Biggest Technical Filmmaking Mistakes Beginners Make

INTRODUCTION

Filmmaking is an art, but also comes with a technical side that can take time to master. Beginners starting out with a passion for movies and storytelling will quickly find that these technical mistakes can sever the illusion of movie magic and pull the audience completely out of the world of the story.

That’s why today let’s break down five of the biggest technical pitfalls new filmmakers face - and, more importantly, diagnose how you can avoid making them.  

1 - SPATIAL CONTINUITY

Seated or standing dialogue scenes are what make up the bulk of most narrative scripts and are incredibly important for conveying information and pushing the story along. Making a spatial continuity error when filming these scenes by placing the camera or subjects in the wrong position is therefore an ever present, looming danger which could make entire scenes unusable.

Here’s an example of how most dialogue scenes between two characters would be filmed. Everything seems normal and it’s easy to imagine where the characters are in relation to each other.

 If it was instead shot like this, it makes the spatial relationship between the two characters a bit confusing. Something feels off - like both characters are standing on the same side of the room.

Continuity mistakes can be easily avoided by following one of the most important filmmaking guidelines, called the 180 degree rule.

Here’s what it is. If you place two characters in a room, imagine that there is an invisible line that runs through both of them. The 180 degree rule mandates that all shots filmed of these characters interacting should be done from the same side of the line. 

So if one close up is shot at an angle from one side of the line, the camera should be repositioned on the same 180 degree side of the line to film the other close up.

If the camera crosses this line, the positions of the characters will flip on-screen, creating confusion for the viewer. This is called ‘breaking the line’.

An easy way to check if you have followed the 180 degree rule is to review the two shots and check that one of the character’s eyeline is going from left to right, while the other character’s eyeline is going from right to left. If both characters are looking in the same direction, for example from left to right, then you’ve jumped the line and made a mistake.

There have been a few occasions where established filmmakers intentionally break this rule - often to provoke an emotional tone (like a feeling of unease or disorientation). However, as with most technical guidelines, I’d highly recommend beginner filmmakers stick to convention early on. 

There’s a danger that low budget, student or beginner films that break this rule will look like they made a clumsy mistake - even if jumping the line was a deliberate choice.

If you feel there’s a genuine reason that you need to break the line, it helps to have a wider neutral shot to cut to, that you can place in between the two shots where you want to jump the line.

2 - INCONSISTENT EXPOSURE

One of the most important but often underappreciated parts of a cinematographer’s job is maintaining lighting and exposure continuity across each scene. 

Having one shot with vastly different lighting or brightness in a sequence is a surefire way to disengage the viewer from the story and break the illusion of reality.

One way to prevent this from happening is to set up continuous artificial light sources. If unmoved, these will supply consistent illumination for the extended period of time that it takes to move the camera around and film all the different shots in the scene. 

When these various shots are edited together they will look seamless, as if the scene unfolded in real time.

The choice of what lights you use and where you place them is a nuanced topic, but a basic starting point is to think about where the natural sources of light are coming from and then place your lights in a position that copies the direction and quality of that light. 

So, if there is a lamp on a table, perhaps you can aim your light at the actor from the same direction as the lamp. Or, if there is a window, place your light so that it shines through it - just as the sun would do.

In most cases I’d avoid placing lights in arbitrary positions which aren’t motivated by real or imagined light sources. You don’t want to end up with a frame which is lit by multiple suns - which makes the world unbelievable. 

Maintaining lighting continuity for exteriors can be much more tricky - as you may have to shoot a scene over a day with changing weather conditions - which go from cloud to bright sun.

The most important starting point here is to make sure you maintain a consistent exposure that is neither too bright nor too dark by using exposure tools like a waveform, false colour, or zebras.

Depending on the situation you may have to try and schedule shooting around the weather - for example shoot one scene in the morning when it’s overcast, come inside to shoot an interior, then go back outside in the afternoon once it’s sunny to shoot a new scene.

Another trick is using textiles like diffusion, to create a cloud cover feel which will even out minor changes in natural light.

3 - CAMERA SETTINGS

The camera settings you select are critical because they directly influence the visual style, mood, and storytelling of your project. Although some may say there are no wrong choices when it comes to artistic decisions, there are some basic settings which should be stuck to as a rule in almost all cases.

When setting up a camera you’ll need to dial in your frame rate, shutter, ISO, the aperture of your lens and the white balance. 

Here are the default camera settings you should use in most situations. 

To get a normal, non-slow mo, feeling of motion, PAL countries use a frame rate of 25FPS, while NTSC regions will use either 24 or 23.98. If you’re using a cinema camera with a shutter angle you can set this to 180 degrees. 

Or if using a mirrorless camera with a shutter speed you can set it to approximately double your frame rate, so 1/50.

Most digital cinema cameras these days will come with a recommended ISO, or base ISO, such as 800. In most cases I’d stick to this recommendation.

If you’re starting out I’d recommend setting the aperture of the lens to a low f-stop number. For example in the f/2 to f/2.8 range. If your lens is slower than this then I’d set it to the lowest f-stop value possible. This will give your footage a shallow depth of field, which if you’re starting out is an easy way to visually elevate your footage.

Rather than using auto mode I’d recommend setting the white balance for each scene or new lighting situation you are faced with. There are three main settings I would try to stick to. For exterior daylight scenes I’d select a white balance of 5,600K, for interior or night scenes lit by warm tungsten light you can shoot at 3,200K and for scenes with mixed warm and cool light sources you can set your white balance to 4,300K.

Although this would be the basic starting point it is also possible to play around with different white balances to find a number that you feel gives the scene the colour that you are after.

4 - AUDIO

Beginner filmmakers have a tendency to focus mainly on the footage they’re getting. It’s important to remember that the images only make up 50% of a movie going experience. The other 50% is done with sound.

This is one of the big mistakes we made when filming our first no budget feature called Relics. Without professional sound you don’t really have a usable product.

So, what are different pieces of sound that you’ll need to focus on? Firstly and most importantly you’ll need to record clean dialogue of all the spoken lines. 

To do this I’d recommend recording sound with both a lapel mic, which is placed on whoever is speaking, and also recording sound with a boom mic. Make sure that this boom mic, as well as the microphone packs, are never seen in shot.

Next, it’s good to record ambience or a buzz track. In other words get around one minute of sound where nobody is speaking, recorded in the location that the scene just took place in. This can be layered underneath the dialogue and will help to smooth over any cuts in sound - for example if different pieces of dialogue are used from different takes.

It’s also useful to try to grab wild sound of any foley or sound effects which may be relevant - such as the sound of footsteps, or wind blowing outside. 

5 - COLOUR GRADING

Color grading is essential because it transforms raw footage into a polished, visually compelling final product that aligns with the story’s mood and tone.

When I was starting out as a cinematographer I didn’t know much about grading and often wouldn’t push for a look to be applied to the footage - which left some of the early short films I worked on largely ungraded.

Cameras and post production software have since come along in leaps and bounds and it’s now easier than ever to give your project a nice graded look. Because many beginners won’t have access to a dedicated colourist, there is a simple workflow that will get you around this issue.

Firstly, it’s important that you shoot the footage in log. This is a flat picture profile which will give you more room to make adjustments to colour, contrast and exposure in grading or editing software.

Once you’ve set your camera to log I would import the LUT which you want to use in the grade: either to an external monitor or to the camera itself. These come in CUBE files and can be downloaded online or found in programs like Da Vinci Resolve. 

It’s important that his LUT is put in the correct colour space. For example if using a Sony camera, make sure the LUT is compatible with Slog.

You don’t want to bake this look onto the footage, but rather use it as a way to monitor how the flat footage will look once you apply this LUT later. Make sure that you are happy with your lighting, white balance selection and exposure when you view the monitor on set with the look applied.

Once you’ve shot your footage and brought it into editing software, this LUT can then be applied to give you the same look that you were viewing on set.

Finally, you can do minor colour correction, like adjusting the colour balance or going slightly up or down on exposure - until all the shots in the scene have a consistent colour, look and brightness.

By mastering LUTs and basic color grading, beginner filmmakers can not only improve the quality of their current projects but also lay a strong foundation for creating visually impactful films and using more advanced grading techniques in the future.

How To Shoot A Studio Interview

INTRODUCTION

Interviews are the bread and butter of documentaries. With the rise in popularity of this format across streaming services, commercial content and corporate videos - it’s a technique which should be in every filmmaker’s toolbox.

From framing, to camera settings and lighting, I’m going to show you how exactly you can film a professional, cinematic interview.

To do this I’ve rented a studio where I can set up a portrait style interview against a backdrop. Although I’ve opted for a controlled environment, the principles from this video can also be used as a template for filming interviews in any space.

CAMERA SETUP

Before I start setting up lights I first like to prep the camera so that I can find a frame of the interview subject sitting in a chair. Positioning the equipment after you’ve composed the shot means that you won’t have to adjust or move around gear that’s suddenly in the frame. 

For this shoot I’ve used a very simple mirrorless camera and single zoom lens setup - with a Sony A7s III and a 24-70mm f/2.8. Let’s pop the lens on and dial in our camera settings.

I like shooting almost everything in log, even quick interviews which won’t be graded by a professional colourist, as it’s easy to pop a quick LUT on the footage in post, and if small exposure or colour adjustments need to be made then filming in log gives you more flexibility to do that.

So I'll record at a 4K resolution in Slog3. In post software I’ve added a Kodak LUT from Da Vinci Resolve and haven’t done any advanced colour grading beyond that.

Next I’ll dial in the basic exposure and motion settings which will remain consistent throughout the interview. Since I work in a PAL zone I’ll be filming with recorded sync sound at 25FPS, but those in NTSC areas may want to record at 24FPS.

We’ll set our shutter speed to double our frame rate, so 1/50, our white balance to 5,600K or daylight, and open our lens’ aperture to its widest stop of f/2.8.

I’ll then throw a variable ND filter on the front, which will allow us to quickly adjust our exposure without needing to change any of the settings we’ve already dialed in. 

FRAMING

Now it’s time to find a frame. Our zoom lens will give us the ability to either punch in tighter or zoom wider depending on the emotional context of the questioning. For example, I can start with a medium shot for introductory questions, then later zoom in to a close up to build more of a connection with the interviewee as the conversation progresses. 

These different shot sizes give the editor more options in post and can be achieved by the zoom lens without needing to move the camera or interrupt the flow of the interview.

Before I place the tripod I’ll set up a chair where the subject will be seated and place our paper roll backdrop on two c-stands and position it behind the chair.

I’ll start by zooming the lens out to 24mm and then slowly zooming in until the frame is filled with the backdrop - which gives me a medium interview shot with a focal length of around 40mm. 

For this tutorial I’ve gone for quite a basic, traditional framing, shooting at a slight angle on the side opposite to where I’ll place the key light.However, you can use your creative license when framing to compose shots of different widths, heights and angles.  

The eyeline of our subject will be on the opposite side to the camera placement. This will be where our interviewer will sit. If you’re filming interviews with a two camera setup then I’d recommend placing the interviewer outside the two cameras. Placing the eyeline in between the two cameras will result in strange spatial continuity. 

With our medium frame set I’ll then zoom all the way into 70mm and find a tight frame. I could punch into this focal length if there’s a more emotionally elevated moment. 

If I wanted to break the fourth wall a bit by including some of our lighting and film gear in shot, perhaps as an introductory moment when they sit down - I can do so by zooming out to a 24mm.

Now that I have my widest and tightest shot dialed in, I’ll zoom back out to the 40mm medium shot, lock off the frame and begin setting up lights, using this composition as an edge for where equipment can be placed.

POSITIONING LIGHTS

Before arriving at the studio, I put together a lighting diagram - which gives an overhead view of where I want to place the subject, background, camera and lights. Having a plan before you arrive on set will save you set up time and will make sure you don’t select or rent too little or too much gear.

For this studio style setup, I’ve gone with a basic three point lighting plan for the interview subject, then I’ve planned to also use an additional light to illuminate our paper backdrop which will be behind the subject set up on two c-stands.

I’ll start by setting up our key lamp: a Nanlite 240C, which is a 2x2 panel light. To this I’d added a softbox with a layer of diffusion and an eggcrate - to soften and angle the source.

I like to place the key on the side of the subject opposite to where the camera is positioned, this is so that there will be a bit more contrast and shadow on the side of the face nearest to the camera, which will make the footage a little less flat.

I’ve positioned the lamp outside of our widest 40mm frame, at roughly 45 degrees on the right side of the subject, lifted it higher than their seated position on the c-stand and angled the lamp down a bit.

Next, we’ll place our fill, a 2x1 120C, with the same diffusion and eggcrate setup. This will be placed out of frame at around 45 degrees to the subject on the same side as the camera - which is opposite our key light.

The last of our three point lights is a backlight - one of Nanlite’s new FC-120C COB sources. I’ll place this behind the subject, opposite the key side and set it up on a c-stand arm that I can boom outwards. This will allow me to hit the subject a bit more back on, while still placing the stand and lamp outside the edge of the frame. I’ve added a diffusion dome to the reflector to soften and spread the backlight.

Now that our three subject lights are set up, I’ll add our background light - another 120C, however this time with a projector attachment - which will give us some cool effects which we’ll get to later. I’ve set this up so that it’s off centre and aimed directly at the middle of our backdrop.

BALANCING LEVELS

I’d say there are two main reasons that studios are often favoured for interviews: firstly, studios are better for recording clean sound, and secondly, with their lack of windows and natural ambience, they make it easy to control the light and exposure for long periods of time using only artificial lamps.

We’ll do this now by balancing levels. This is another way of saying I’ll dim up or down on each of the lamps until I find an intensity which feels appropriate to the look we’re after, is not too bright and blowing out, nor too dim and underexposed.

I like to do this by linking all the lights to an app on my phone, in this case the Nanlink app. I can monitor the brightness of the exposure behind the camera by watching the screen, as I use the app to bring up and find the right level for each light. I find this much quicker and more accurate than manual dimming. 

KEY LIGHT

In the same order I positioned the lamps, I’ll start by turning on the key light. This should be the brightest source which provides the strongest illumination across one side of our subject’s face.

I’ve dimmed up on our key to 56% which is nice and bright, without clipping the highlights or being overexposed. If I’m working with a cinema camera which has false colour I’d probably set our key intensity so that the skin is green or in the middle grey reading, but since I’m using a mirrorless camera without exposure tools I’m kind of eyeing the exposure and making sure it doesn’t clip nor blow out on the zebras.

To make sure the skin tone feels correct, I’ll also set the light to 5,600K so that it matches the colour balance on the camera.

FILL LIGHT

Now it’s time to set our fill. The intensity of our fill will determine how much contrast the face will have. If we’re after a brighter, high key look without any shadows we can dim this all the way up until it roughly matches the strength of our key. 

Or, if we want a low key vibe with more shadow on one side of the face, we can dim this fill way down, or even turn it off.

I’ll go for a middle ground so that we have a little contrast without getting too moody, which landed us at 17%. I’ve also set it to 5,600K to match our key. 

BACKLIGHT

Now let’s move to our backlight - an FC-120C with a diffusion dome. I’ll set this to a 4,000K white balance to provide a backlight that is subtly warmer than the key. If you turn it off and on you can see it subtly gives our subject a hair light, separates her from the background and lifts the overall ambience.

BACKGROUND LIGHT

Finally we’ll illuminate our backdrop. These lights come with a FM mount that allows you to use multiple different modifiers on them, whether those be softboxes, or, in this case, a projector mount.

I’ve decided to use this projector attachment to create a textured lighting effect on the background. I’ve chosen a circular gobo disk with a pattern which I think will work well, slotted it into the projector modifier, flagged the sides to give it a different shape and then adjusted the lens to defocus the effect. You can use this to either have these effects fully sharp, or blurry and less defined. Like our other sources I’ve cooled the light down to 5,600K.

Since I want the light effect to be a bit larger on the backdrop I’ve moved the light further away. Bringing it closer to a surface will make the effect smaller, while creating more distance will enlarge the source.

The light in the background of your interview is just as important as how your subject is lit and has a large effect on the mood of the shot.

I find this texture quite a bit more visually interesting, as it has a bit more contrast between light and dark shades. 

However, if I wanted a clean background that was illuminated a bit brighter with a high key look, like you’d see in a beauty commercial, I could swap the projector attachment for a softbox and get a soft spread of light on the backdrop. This is also a great trick for creating even illumination if you’re lighting a green or blue screen background which will later be keyed and replaced in post.

Higher key look where the background is lit by a softbox.

Or, if I wanted to go for a lower key studio look, which you’d see in a show such as Drive To Survive, then I can turn the background light off altogether.

Lower key look where the background light is turned off.

SOUND

Now that we’re happy with our camera and lighting setup, it’s time to bring in our audio equipment. If I’m recording the sound, I like to position the boom mic just above the subject on a c-stand arm. That way it doesn’t have to be held for the whole interview. 

A lapel microphone will also be worn by the interviewee so that there are two audio tracks that can be used in the sound mix. In case there are any mic bumps or other unwanted sound recorded, there will always be a backup mic in place.

The reason I position the boom microphone last is because now that we know where all our lights are set we can avoid casting the shadow of the microphone in the shot.

Since I’m slightly hearing the sound of the fans that are used to keep the lights cool, I’m going to go into the menu and set the fan mode to low to record nice, clean audio.

Here I’ve plugged the sound into a zoom recorder where the levels can be mixed. It’s also possible to plug the sound into an audio jack or XLR input on the camera. If there’s a sound recordist then they should have their own mixer that they’ll record to.

CONCLUSION

There you have it - the essential tools and techniques for shooting studio style interviews - from camera, to lighting, to sound. This method, just scratches the surface of what is possible but hopefully acts as a great starting off point when you’re planning your next interview.

What Is Depth Of Field?

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever noticed how some shots isolate characters against a soft, dreamy background that fades away, while other shots remain sharp and focused across the entirety of the frame.

This is because of depth of field - a simple but powerful tool in a filmmaker’s arsenal. It draws your eye, creates mood, and, sometimes, tells a story all on its own. But how does it work? What makes one shot shallow and intimate, while another feels deep and expansive? What effect does this have on storytelling?

WHAT IS DEPTH OF FIELD?

Depth of field is the part of an image that appears sharp or in focus. Rather than being a single point of sharpness, there’s actually an area, or zone where objects will be rendered sharp by a camera’s lens.

The position of this zone is determined by what focus distance is selected on the lens - which is indicated by the little distance markings on the barrel. 

For example, if a lens’ focus is set to 10’, everything from the nearest point of 8’ to the furthest point of 12’ from the camera, will be rendered in acceptable focus. Objects closer than 8’ or further than 12’ from the camera will be soft, blurry and out of focus. Therefore, we’ve got a depth of field of 4’.

However, depth of field doesn’t always stay the same. If the depth of field is a small number, more of the image will be blurred and we say that the depth of field is shallow. While, a larger number, where most of the image is in focus, is called a deep depth of field.

Filmmakers can alter how much of the image is sharp or blurred by adjusting three settings or variables: one, the aperture of the lens, two, the focus distance and, three, the focal length of the lens.

Aperture is the opening at the back of a lens that lets light into the camera. On cinema lenses this is controlled by rotating the iris ring on the barrel. The wider this hole is, the more light is let through and the lower the T-stop or f-stop number will be. 

Cinema prime lenses will often have very wide apertures with stops around T/1.3 to T/2.8. Changing this to a narrow aperture, such as T/16, will let in much less light.

The aperture that cinematographers choose has a large influence on depth of field. Opening to a wide aperture like T/1.3 will create a very shallow depth of field and increase the amount of blur in the background.

Closing to a narrow aperture like T/16 will deepen the depth of field, keeping a greater portion of the shot in sharp focus.

The second variable that affects depth of field is the focus distance. In other words, how far from the camera the lens is focused to.

This will be set to the distance of the object that the filmmakers want rendered in sharpest focus, which is usually an actor. 

The closer this distance is between the camera and subject, the shallower the depth of field will be. Moving the focus distance farther away increases the depth of field, bringing more of the scene into focus.

This is why close up shots, where the actors are very near the camera tend to have a shallower depth of field, whereas wide shots, where the subjects are further away will have a much deeper depth of field.

The final variable is the focal length of the lens - which determines how wide the field of view is. Long focal length telephoto lenses, that capture a much more zoomed in image, produce a shallower depth of field which isolates subjects against blurred backgrounds.

While wide angle focal lengths naturally have a deeper depth of field which keeps more of the frame sharp.

Summing up the camera settings, if you want a super shallow depth of field image, which is mostly out of focus, then you can shoot with a wide aperture, like f/1.4, a close focus distance, like 4’, and a long focal focal length lens, like a 85mm. 

Whereas you can achieve a deep depth of field effect with most of the shot in focus by using a narrow f/16 aperture, a far focus distance like 30’ and a wide angle 14mm lens.

One final additional variable which may come into play is the size of the camera’s sensor. Smaller format cameras require the use of wider focal length lenses to get a comparable field of view as a telephoto lens on a large format camera. 

Since, as we now know, wider angle lenses produce a deeper depth of field, this means that using a large format camera, like 65mm, will typically give a shallower depth of field, while using a smaller format, like 16mm, will give a deeper depth of field. 

DEEP DEPTH OF FIELD

Now that we know how to manipulate depth of field, let’s take a look at some films that did just that. Perhaps the most well known use of deep depth of field was in Citizen Kane, which was shot by cinematographer Gregg Toland. He also used this technique in a few other films which he photographed, such as The Best Years Of Our Lives.

Their reason for shooting these deep focused shots stemmed from Toland and director Orson Wells opting for angles and compositions which would allow scenes to take place in single frames - without needing to cut to various characters and shots during a scene.

In so doing, they layered information, having characters and actions play out both in the foreground as well as the extreme background. Such as this famous composition which places the parents and banker in the foreground of the shot, while simultaneously the young Kane, whose future is being discussed, plays in the background.

This then cuts to a three shot, another example of deep focus, where all the characters in the foreground, middleground and background are rendered sharp in a single composition, rather than the traditional method of cutting between single close ups of each character. This way we feel the performances and emotions of all the respective characters play out in real time. 

Using a deep depth of field is also great for contextualising the space. If everything is soft and blurry we get far less of a sense of the environment that the character is in and don’t feel the full vastness of the landscape. Having a deeper depth also lets audiences explore the frame with their eyes and peruse the reactions of various characters in the background.  

Coming back to our depth of field variables, how did Toland practically pull off these deep focus shots in Citizen Kane? He started by selecting a wide angle focal length - in this case a 24mm prime lens which was the widest commonly available focal length of the time.

To further increase the depth of field, he turned to the second variable, aperture. Rather than shooting at a stop of f/2 or f/2.8 which was popular at the time, he closed down the aperture all the way to between f/8 and f/16 for all the deep focus shots in Citizen Kane.

Shooting with a wide angle lens and a deep stop enormously expanded the depth of field, creating images with crisp, deep focus.

However, there’s  one practical challenge that came as a result of stopping the lens down so much. The smaller the aperture the less light is let into the camera. 

When this was combined with the slow film stocks of the time (Citizen Kane was photographed on Super-XX emulsion with an ISO of only 64) this meant that an enormous amount of artificial light was required to expose the image. 

Tolland used a number of high output arc lights to have enough illumination. When these high output fixtures are blasted directly at actors, they tend to create hard shadows against walls. 

Many older movies with interior scenes which were shot with a deep depth of field have these trademark hard shadows, due to the high output lighting which was needed to shoot on slower film stocks with a closed down aperture. In comparison to many of today’s films which are shot with a shallower depth of field and softer light. 

Despite shooting with a wide lens and a deep stop, many of these shots are still not pin sharp across the entire frame. Either the foreground or background subjects are slightly soft. However, to spread the depth of field as much as possible, Tolland used the third variable of setting the focus distance.

To do this he used a technique called splitting the focus. Instead of placing the focus on the foreground subject and letting the background fall away out of focus, he would instead use the depth of field as a whole. 

He would place the focus somewhere in between the back subject that needed to be sharp and the front subject. Normally the focus distance would be placed somewhere in the middle, yet slightly favouring the front subject, since the depth of field is more limited at the front distance than at the rear.

SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD

While a deep depth of field expands the context of our gaze, using a shallow depth of field has the opposite effect of limiting, focusing and guiding the eyes of the audience to a specific part of the frame.

Throwing the background out of focus is a very simple but effective device that immediately lets filmmakers show the audience what the subject is that they want them to look at - whether this is an object, or, usually, a person.

When a shallow depth of field is paired with a close up to draw our attention onto one person, it creates a more elevated, subjective emotional tone, forcing us to sit and empathise with a character. 

Compared to wider, deeper depth of field shots which are often a bit more objective and don’t hold quite the same emotional power.

One example of a film that uses a shallow depth of field is If Beale Street Could Talk. Director Barry Jenkins and DP James Laxton used shallow focus as a tool to isolate his two main characters, putting them at the emotional centre of this cinematic world.

Laxton used all of those variables we discussed to maintain a blurry background. Him and Jenkins used this to create as immersive an experience as possible, which positions the audience in the shoes of the character.

He chose a large format cinema camera, the Alexa 65, which was paired with DNA primes lenses that could be shot wide open with a fast T/2 aperture. The large format sensor allowed him to use longer focal length lenses which made the depth of field shallower.

This meant that it wasn’t only the close ups that had a very blurred background, but even the wide shots had a very shallow depth that could be used to isolate our focus onto specific characters in the frame.

Such as this wide shot, which was done on a long focal length Hawk 150-450mm telephoto zoom. Combining the depth of field variables of a large format camera, a long focal length lens and a wide open T/2.8 aperture, meant they could shoot a wide shot with a deeper focus distance and still blur everything in the frame except the two characters who were the, literal, focus of the shot.

5 Amazing Movie Trick Shots

INTRODUCTION

More often than not seasoned filmmakers watching movies will have a pretty good idea of how most scenes were filmed. However, from time to time there will be a single, dazzling shot which leaves us scratching our head thinking, ‘How exactly was that pulled off?’

Today, I’m going to unpack five of those moments, where creative thinking and technical innovation paired up to create something special.

1 - INVISIBLE REFLECTIONS

One of the earliest movies I remember watching which contained a bunch of unbelievable trick shots, which were done practically - without the aid of computer generated visual effects - was La Haine.

In particular, this mirror shot. The camera starts on the back of our character, slowly tracking in, before he ducks downwards out of frame and pops back up to reveal his face. What makes it a bit confusing is that somehow we see straight into the mirror without picking up the reflection of the camera that should be there.

So, how was this reflective optical illusion pulled off? Well, firstly, this isn’t actually a mirror. It’s a set wall with a hole cut out of it in the shape of a mirror. The actor whose face and performance we will see is placed on the side facing the camera, while a body double is placed with their back against the camera.

The trick to making these shots believable is syncing up the actions of the actor and the body double, so that their movements perfectly match each other. 

Another trick to selling this gag is how the production designer dresses in doubles of all the objects on the counter top: one on each side of the set wall. So we have two hair brushes leaned up against each other, two towels, two pairs of scissors, all carefully placed to create a flipped mirrored perspective.

This practical solution of using a two sided set wall and a body double to mimic the effect of shooting into a mirror has also been used in plenty of other films, whether to create a moment of literal self reflection for the character that removes the camera from the shot, or, even, to show how the character perceives a different version of themself.  

Apart from capturing this effect practically, in camera, it can also be done using visual effects.

For example, in Birdman there are multiple moments which shoot directly into a real mirror, however the camera and operator are nowhere to be seen. This is because they were painted out, or removed with visual effects.

Firstly, they would shoot these over the shoulder shots with a normal mirror and the camera’s reflection in the footage. Visual effects artists would then take the reflection in the mirror and rotoscope the actor - basically cutting them out as a separate, individual layer. 

They would then replace the reflection with an artificially generated 2.5D matte image so that the camera was taken out of the shot, overlay the layer with the actor on top of this background and, finally, add a bunch of mirror textures, smudges or objects on the mirror to help sell this digital illusion.  

Some other productions may also put a green screen on the mirror, shoot a separate reflection plate shot with the actor, then use the same formula of replacing the image in the mirror.

2 - GUST OF WIND

Recreating weather conditions can be tricky and expensive. So, what if, like Andrei Tarkovsky in Mirror, you want to shoot a wide shot and create a gust of wind effect that seemingly out of nowhere sweeps across a field and then disappears almost magically.

Before we get to this more advanced effect we should probably unpack how exactly wind in movies is created. Wind is quite a difficult thing to visualise, because it is invisible to the eye. While we can’t see wind, we can see the effect it has on the environment. 

This is why to make the presence of wind believable filmmakers often rely on two things: one, having objects in frame flap around, such as clothing or bushes, and two, including moving textural elements like leaves or dust which give substance to air.

To do this filmmakers use massive, custom created fans placed just outside the edges of the shot. Sometimes people operating these machines will feed pre-collected dust or leaves in front of them to create that texture we discussed.

What makes any weather effect tricky is that the wider the shot is, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. Whether it’s rain, wind, fog or snow, the wider the composition, the stronger the effect will have to be and the greater physical area it will need to cover.

A dead give away for fake wind without enough area coverage is when the subject is getting blasted in the foreground, but the foliage or trees in the background remain dead still.

Properly selling this effect requires wind machines to be layered at different distances or planes from the camera so that both the foreground, middleground and background of the shot are affected. 

To get a tree in the deep background blasted by wind in The Turin Horse they came up with a creative solution to get gigantic fan blades hitting it from overhead. Instead of a wind machine, they used a helicopter. They communicated over radio to hover the helicopter as low to the tree as possible, without it being framed within the shot.

This created these incredibly believable frames where wind machines blasted characters or leaves in the foreground while a helicopter simultaneously hit the tree in the background with a forceful gust.

Coming back to Mirror, Tarkovsky used the same technique. Hovering a helicopter high above the shot so that the wind didn’t hit the ground, then as the man walked, cueing the pilot to swoop lower and fly directly towards the camera - creating a magical realist gust. 

If you look carefully you can even see the camera start to shake from the wind as the helicopter passes over. Both The Turin Horse and Mirror frame their shots with limited sky or headroom to frame out the helicopter and pull off this effect entirely practically, in camera.

3 - CRANE STEP OFF

Filmmaking is rife with a varied selection of tools that can be used to move the camera. Most of these rigs are designed with one kind of movement in mind, such as dollies, which are built to push along a straight line of track.

However, some filmmakers have taken two different types of rigs with different types of movement and combined them into a single shot with spectacular results. 

Kill Bill does this a few times. Like this shot, where the camera begins by tracking backwards, out of a church down some stairs revealing the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, before then booming upwards into an expansive high angle wide.

How does this camera float through an interior then drift upwards into the heavens in one take? Firstly, it uses a Steadicam, a device that straps the camera onto the body of an operator with an arm. This stabilises the camera’s moves, giving it a floating sensation as it’s guided through the pew and down the stairs by the operator’s footsteps. 

The operator then steps onto a platform positioned on the ground which is attached to a crane arm. Once secured, this arm can then be raised to smoothly lift the operator with the camera vertically, holding the final frame in a raised position. 

This shot is referred to as a crane step on shot. These shots give the camera an omniscient floating presence as they flow through the air vertically and smoothly track with characters on the ground during the same shot.   

The inverse of this shot, the crane step off, also exists. For this, the Steadicam operator starts out by standing on the crane’s raised platform. The arm is then swivelled and slowly descends to the ground. At this point the Steadicam op steps off the platform and can begin to track subjects with a stabilised motion.

4 - FORCED PERSPECTIVE

Some fantastical movies have characters that are different sizes: whether they be larger than life half-giant or shrunken down hobbits. To create this illusion completely in camera without CGI, filmmakers can use a trick called forced perspective.

This is based on the principle that the closer something is to a camera the larger it’ll appear, while the further away it is, the smaller it’ll be perceived. So, if you have two characters and you want one to appear larger than the other, you can bring that character closer to the lens, while moving the smaller character further away.  

In the case of Lord Of The Rings, they worked out that to get the correct size disparity between the hobbit and human characters, the hobbits would need to be approximately 1 ⅓ further away from the camera than humans. So if Gandulf was 10 feet from the camera, Frodo should be 13.3 feet away.

That’s why in most shots with both Gandalf and hobbits, Gandalf will usually be nearest to the camera. 

To film this two-shot of them, a custom cart was designed which actually seated Frodo a few feet further back and at a lower level than Gandalf. To sell the illusion props or production design near each character also had to be custom scaled. Things near the hobbits were upscaled to be larger than life, while things near humans were downscaled and made to appear smaller. 

Doing a camera move like a track in changes the camera’s relation to the characters, and therefore breaks the illusion. For this reason, most forced perspective shots are photographed with a static camera on a tripod - although the Lord of The Rings team did come up with some complex solutions for moving both the camera and actors at the same time which maintained the correct perspective.

A final rule for this technique when filming a forced perspective two shot is to use a deep depth of field, so that everything is in focus. If a shallow depth of field is used then one of the characters will be in sharp focus while the other is soft, which will break the illusion that they are on the same distance plane. 

5 - ROTATING SET

There are a few ways that filmmakers can bend the rules of gravity, many of which involve some degree of CGI. However, there is one practical, in camera, method which can flip the rules of reality on its head.

The origins of this magical technique can be traced back to an early 50s musical where Fred Astaire defies the laws of gravity by effortlessly dancing on the walls and ceiling.

You may have also seen this set piece used in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. This was inspired by one of his favourite directors, Stanley Kubrick.

“The idea of using a centrifuge to manipulate gravity has been done on various films, most notably Kubrick’s 2001.” - Christopher Nolan

To pull off this expensive effect in camera they constructed a circular centrifuge which could be rotated 360 degrees by motors, inside which they could construct a set.

As the set began to turn the actors could then play out a pre-rehearsed stunt sequence, moving from floor to wall to ceiling as the set rotated.

Both 2001 and Royal Wedding used locked off cameras: meaning that the placement of the camera was fixed in one unmoving position while the set rotated in coordination with the choreography of the actors, making it appear like the actors were defying gravity, as the centrifuge turned, while the composition of the frame remained static.

Instead of locking the camera’s off, Inception used some camera movement in certain moments to inject more tension into the action sequences. They did a straight push in move from a remote controlled dolly system on a track which was bolted into the floor. The head on this dolly could be wirelessly titled or panned to follow the movements of the actors. 

For other shots they used a Technocrane arm which could be placed within the centrifuge and telescoped to either increase or decrease its reach. It too was fitted with a remote head which could be rotated, panned or tilted wirelessly by a camera operator during this action packed, dreamy sequence.

What Gear To Choose For Your Lighting Package

INTRODUCTION

Cinematography is all about controlling light: productions may lean into colour, go for a high contrast look, or light in a bright, high key style. To achieve these looks DPs will need to put together a list of lighting gear. 

In this video I’m going to show you how to create two different lighting packages: one catered to lower budget jobs by solo shooters, and another full package the likes of which would be used on an indie level movie, commercial or music video.

LAMPS

Like in my last video where I created a guide to writing a camera gear rental list, in this video I’ll create a lighting spreadsheet, breaking the gear into five categories: lamps, modifiers, textiles, stands and power. I’ll list the number of items required and leave a section for any notes which I may want to pass on to the gear rental house.

First up I like to start by adding the lamps you’ll need for the shoot, as the lighting fixtures that you choose will determine some of the other gear you’ll need down the line, like how to shape the lamps with modifiers, or how many stands are needed to put them up.

The type and amount of lights you select will be based on a number of factors, such as: whether you want colour, bi-colour, daylight or tungsten temperature light, how many crew members you’ll have to set these lamps up without burning too much time, the intensity of the output that you need to light the area, and your lighting budget.

If you’re unsure of some of these answers what’ll be useful is to do a recce of the location, where you can see the size of the space you will need to light, whether you can control the natural light by closing doors, or curtains, and where you’ll need to place or rig the lamps so that they’re not in the shot. 

After this recce it may be useful to create a lighting diagram to plan exactly what lights you’ll use and where they’ll go. There are a few free apps that you can use to do this, such as the Sidus Link or Nanlink App.    

If you want more info on choosing different lights, I’ve made a previous video that breaks this down. 

In the case of this imagined indie or medium budget feature I’ve gone for a fully LED lighting package, due to the lower power needed to run them and the ability to easily dim and change their colour temperature or RGB colour.

I’ve gone with different types of lamps which may be useful in different situations. I’ve added some higher output COB lights, an XT26 ElectroStorm a 1.2K and a 600, which can be used to create a controllable sunlight effect by placing them outside windows, or bounced or diffused to create a moon source at night.

A few lower power COBs, 300x and 60x lamps, can be diffused and used as fill, bounced into ceilings to lift ambience, or accentuate and spot different parts of the frame.

I’ve also added different intensity mat, tile or panel lights which are slim enough to be rigged as soft, overhead sources, or provide a soft fill. They are also RGB, meaning any coloured tint can be dialed into them, and they come with effects presets, such as a police car light, or fire, which may be useful.

Then we’ve got some tubes in both 4ft and 1ft sizes. These lightweight fixtures can be rigged overhead, used as practicals in fluorescent tube housings, or operated handheld for a quick source on the move. 

And finally we’ve got an LED bulb kit. These can replace the bulbs in practical fixtures, like lamps. Having a film bulb is useful as it eliminates any potential flickering, and allows you to precisely dim or change the colour temperature of the pracs.

There are other levels above this package where you start adding super high output HMIs, like 18ks, and large truck generators and distribution to power them, but for many indie features an LED package similar to this may suffice. 

For our solo operator lighting kit, I’ve also gone with LEDs, this time only enough to do a classic three point lighting setup such as for an interview - with a 300X key light, a F22c panel light for fill and a 60x which can be used to backlight.

These three lamps can be carried around and set up by an individual with fairly limited setup time, and provide enough punch to illuminate an interview subject in most situations. However, you may not have enough lights to focus much on the background of the shot and may need to rely either on natural ambience or real life practical sources for that.

MODIFIERS

Now that we have our lamps, we’ll want to add a few items that can soften the intensity of these lights so that the quality of the illumination isn’t too harsh, doesn’t produce reflective highlights on the skin, or have very sharp, deep shadows. Softening light will help to make it feel a little more natural, like it’s not being artificially overlit, and will render skin tones and subjects a bit more flatteringly.

To our movie gear list I’ve added two big softboxes and two smaller domes. These can be attached to the Bowens mount at the front of COB fixtures. They effectively angle the beam in a more direct path and, if a silk or textile is added to the front, it’ll diffuse the light, making it softer.

I’ve also made a note to include eggcrates or grids with each softbox. These help shape the light into one direction and decrease the amount that it spills across the set.

For our solo operator package I’ve included one mini dome for the 300x, which will give a nice softness to the key light. This dome is quick to set up and is also small enough that it can be used inside small interior spaces.  

Another softening device I’ve added is a lantern. Placing these on a COB source and firing them directly upwards will create a soft moonlight fill effect during night scenes. 

We’ve also got some frames with different strength diffusion gels added to them, which can be placed in front of any light to soften it.

Another way of softening light is by bouncing it. Here I’ve included some polyboards, also called beadboards. Light can be shone directly at this board and angled so that it bounces off it. Bouncing light softens its intensity. This can be done with either lamps or, with natural sunlight.

Apart from softening, we can also use modifiers to intensify or shape the light. For example, I’ve included a fresnel lens which is compatible with the 600 and 1.2K lamp. When this big lens is attached to the front Bowens mount it magnifies the output of the lamp and allows you to either spot the light, intensifying the beam onto a smaller area, or flood it, which spreads the beam over a wider space.

TEXTILES

Textiles are materials which are tightened over a frame and can be used to control light by either blocking it, diffusing it, decreasing its strength or bouncing it. 

Frames usually come in one of three standardised sizes: 8x8, 12x12, or 20x20. For the purposes of this list I’ve mainly gone with 12x12 size textiles, as they’re big enough to cover most situations, and not so big that they’ll need extra rigging tools and time to set up.

The first textiles I’ve added are nets. These are made of a finely woven black material, which decreases the strength of the light passing through it without affecting its quality.

I’ll often use these textiles to target hot spots where I’d like to decrease exposure. For example, if a window is too bright and is blowing out, placing a net behind it will decrease how bright it is, without the net being visible on camera.

They usually come in two varieties: double nets, which cut a full stop of light, and single nets which take away a half stop.

The next textile on the list are silks. Like nets, when light passes through these translucent fabrics it decreases its strength, however, it also diffuses the quality of the light, making it softer. Silks are usually either placed overhead above actors during exterior shots to decrease the harshness of the sun, or can be placed in front of a large light source to diffuse and soften the quality of the light.

Next we have muslin which comes in bleached or unbleached varieties. They are thicker than silks, so decrease the amount of light significantly more when it's shined through. However, their secondary purpose is as a surface to bounce light off of, adding light and softening its intensity. Unbleached muslin gives light a warmer colour temperature, while bleached muslin is more neutral.

Finally we’ve got blackout, which is used to either block light from coming inside a location, or placed to decrease reflections and create more shadows.

Instead of large 12x12 frames which takes a team to assemble, our solo lighting kit has included a lightweight scrim kit, with a silk, reflector and blackout which can be attached with velcro, and serves as a smaller, quicker solution for setting up textiles.

I’ve also added a flag, which can either be set up next to our interview subject to create more shadow on one side of the face, or placed in front of a source to block light and prevent it from hitting a specific area.      

STANDS

Now that we know what lamps and textiles we’ll need to use, we need to add a bunch of stands and rigging accessories which will be used to set this gear in place. 

In some countries this may fall under the grips department, while in other places rigging lights to stands will be done by lighting.

I’d break down the kinds of stands most commonly used into four types. The easiest are lightweight stands, which I’ve used on our solo operator list to rig our small 60x light.

Next we have the popular c-stands. These are heavier and come with a gobo arm which can swivel to boom out the lights, or place them in unusual positions. They can take most light or medium weight lamps and come in either regular size or in a baby c-stand variety.

Then, we have the heavier combo stands. These come in either double or triple rise varieties - which refers to how high they can be lifted. These can take more weight than c-stands, so are often used for supporting either textiles frames or heavier lamps.

Finally we have wind up stands, which are heavy duty and difficult to move around, but provide a very solid base and can take an excessively heavy weight - such as massive 18K HMI lamps or 20x20 frames. They can also be raised higher than combo stands which is useful if lamps need to be placed in an elevated position. 

A number of other rigging accessories have been included, such as: a boom arm to extend lights out from a stand, metal frame kits for textiles and various clamps which can secure lamps to a variety of surfaces or objects.     

POWER

Since our solo operator doesn’t have very strong lights and they are LED, they can be plugged straight into the wall or an extension cable. 

Although the lamps in the feature package can also be powered via house power, I’ve included a 6.5Kva generator which provides an additional line of power so that house circuits aren’t overloaded, or, alternatively will provide power to exteriors or locations which don’t have electricity.

On top of this I’ve put in a set of batteries which may be attached to run lamps if they need to be handheld by an electrician, powered in a remote location, or run without a cabled power connection.

4 Reasons Why Starting In Filmmaking Is So Difficult

INTRODUCTION

I should preface this by saying that this opinion will probably not be very popular. 

If you look on social media, at EPK press kits or listen to interviews about movies, you may be led to believe that a career in the film industry will be an all fulfilling, creative nirvana which also pays well.

While it certainly can be fulfilling, creative and financially viable, I believe that when selling this as a career path what is often left out is that starting in the film industry is also extremely difficult.

Although I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, I do think that it’s important for prospective filmmakers to be informed about both the positive aspects of this career choice as well some of the challenging parts of it and how they may be overcome. 

So in this video I’m going to provide a counter narrative perspective from someone who actively works in the film industry by looking at four of the biggest challenges that come with starting a filmmaking career: financial difficulties, the lack of structure, a demanding work environment and the issue of time.   

1 - MONEY

Unlike having a regular job where you are employed by a company and work five days a week with weekends off, working as a filmmaker means that you’ll be employed on a freelance basis.

This means you can set your own schedule as to when you want to work. However, it also means that you have to generate work for yourself by seeking out clients who need video content filmed, or finding collaborators, such as producers or directors, who will employ you on shoots.

Once you start developing your career and have established a network of clients and collaborators that you work with, it starts to turn into a self perpetuating freelance cycle, where you do a job, shoot, publish that work, have that work seen by clients or collaborators, who then hire you on the next job. This ball then keeps rolling. 

This is all well and good, but the issue is that when you begin working in the industry it’s very difficult to start this ball rolling as you don’t have a portfolio of work nor a network of contacts to kick this cycle off.

This problem is compounded by what I’d call the financial catch-22.

In order to work as a freelancer in film you need a flexible schedule, so that if a client, collaborator or crew member does reach out to you with a job, you’ll be able to free up time in your schedule at short notice to be able to shoot.

Many of these early opportunities may also come in the form of unpaid work, shooting personal projects or helping out as crew for free while you build your skills and learn your craft. While the idea of working for free is neither ideal or popular, it is a reality that you’ll likely have to deal with at some stage if you want to work in this industry. This may be a dealbreaker for some.

This is where the catch comes in. You’ll need a job where you can earn money to support your cost of living and potentially buy some filmmaking equipment or finance film shoots, while you wait around for freelance work. 

However, more often than not, most employers will want you to work full time in a situation where you won’t have much schedule flexibility. This is the financial catch-22 of starting in film.   

So, how can you overcome this? Option number one is to have rich parents who fund your lifestyle while you wait for creative opportunities to come your way.

But what if, like the vast majority of people, that isn’t viable. Well, then you need to go for option number 2: get a job which has schedule flexibility. This is why there is the stereotype of prospective actors working as servers in restaurants in Hollywood while they wait for their big break.

What I ended up doing was contacting a crew agent and finding freelance work as a production assistant and later as a 2nd AC in the camera department. This became my primary source of income, while I would simultaneously network, organise and shoot my own personal projects, and work as a cinematographer for other directors for free or for minimal pay. Balancing unpaid opportunities with paid freelance work and a relatively low cost of living to make ends meet.

I know other filmmakers whose part time income is subsidised by teaching courses at universities, owning a side business, or even making YouTube videos. 

This financial catch-22 is understandably a non-starter for many, but is one that you should be aware of before entering the industry.

2 - STRUCTURE

Working for yourself, rather than for a company, also means that there is no clearly defined career ladder or trajectory which you can follow. You’re less of an employee and more of an entrepreneur who has to make opportunities happen by yourself. 

In most corporate structures there will be a path which you can follow, making your way up through the ranks of promotion, getting pay raises and more management responsibilities along the way.

However the film industry is a bit of a free for all. Some directors may emerge in their early 20s or even, in the case of Xavier Dolan, in their teens. Others may get their first opportunity at the tail end of their careers. While many may never even get the opportunity to direct at all.

In some departments however, such as camera, art or lighting, there is a bit of a hierarchical command structure through which you can work your way up, although again, how you do so is left up to you.

This lack of structure in a career ladder, also applies to your work schedule. You may get a two month long form job where you work six day weeks, then have no work for three weeks, then move onto a series of different two or three day TV commercial shoots.

While this lack of stability may be less important when you are younger and more down for a bit of adventure, you also have to consider whether as life progresses you’ll still want this same instability. 

For some this lack of structure, life of travel and jumping from project to project, may be liberating, empowering, creatively fulfilling and make life interesting. However, others may want to set up a life for themselves with more structure and stability both economically and in terms of their schedule and work-life balance.  

If you want to create a life for yourself where you work five day weeks, at the same office, get vacation time and weekends off, and a regular and predictable paycheck, then the film industry may not be for you. 

3 - WORK ENVIRONMENT

Much of the online content about filmmaking also romanticises the process, without divulging much of the difficulties behind it. It may appear like all you have to do is get to set, pick up a camera and start getting beautiful images. However, this is just a small part of the filmmaking process. 

If you want to be a creative HOD, like a cinematographer, director or producer, there’s a lot of work to do before you get anywhere near a camera on set. There are a bunch of unseen tasks, like negotiating discounts on rental equipment, managing the logistics of gear collection and transport, organising crew, insurance, filling out paperwork, creating contracts and researching the path of the sun. 

All of these less attractive prep and admin tasks are what make it possible to create beautiful images on set.

Once you’re on set it’s not a walk in the park either. Where I work, most movies are structured around 12 hour shooting days, over six day weeks. These 12 hours don’t include your commute to the shooting location, nor in some cases, even a break for lunch. If working these long form jobs your only real off time is on your 1 down day per week.

Short form jobs on the other hand may often push the over time quite far. For example I’ve done a six day commercial where we shot 14-18 hour days, consecutively. Which means all you can do is go home, sleep for maybe three hours then wake up and head back off to work. 

And we haven’t even gotten into night shoots, where the schedule inverts and you stay up all night and have to try to sleep during the day.

Unlike certain desk jobs, working as a filmmaker also requires physical labour: whether that is operating a camera, lifting a dolly or rigging lights. If you get an injury, or are sick and can’t be on set then you won’t get paid. 

Film sets also come with high expectations. If you’re a DP every pan you make needs to accurately hit the right frame. If you’re a 1st AC, your focus needs to be consistently sharp. If you’re an actor, you need to know all your lines and pull out emotionally correct performances every time action is called.

Since everyone is a freelancer, if you don’t perform, you’ll either be replaced or not hired on the next job. It is a work environment highly bound up in performance. 

Regardless of whether these practices are good or not (spoiler, most are probably not so good), this may be the reality of your working life. This also isn’t to say that every job will be this strenuous or nerve wracking, but it does provide an alternative point of view to the film industry which is not always addressed in the beautiful slow mo shots of people operating cameras that you see online.     

4 - TIME

A final challenge is that of time. When you start out you’re not going to be very good. This is true whether you’re learning how to use a camera, direct or write dialogue.   

Filmmaking requires resources, experience and a very specific skill set all of which take time to acquire. Being able to continue through this learning period until you start to produce work which you are truly proud of is all reliant on being patient.   

With this in mind, the ability to succeed in this industry is largely going to be determined by your ability to endure the financial catch-22, thrive in an unstructured environment where you have to create opportunities for yourself and enjoy a working environment which can be both mentally and physically tiring.

One thing that will carry you through the ups and downs of this career is having a passion for cinema and your work. Working as a filmmaker is difficult to get started in and is not an easy profession, but if you’re able to make it work it can be an incredibly rewarding and viable career. 

The Most Popular Cinema Lenses (Part 7): IronGlass, Lomo, Angénieux, Zeiss

INTRODUCTION

Choosing cinema lenses is like an artist choosing a brush - it affects both how the image looks and how easy it is for the artist to paint with it. 

In the latest addition of this series, let's look at four different sets of cinema lenses used in the film industry and examine both the look that they create as well as their practical and ergonomic capabilities.

IRONGLASS SOVIET REHOUSED LENSES

Since the explosion of large format sensor cameras in recent years, there’s been a bit of a scramble to find vintage cinema lenses with enough coverage to be able to shoot on these cameras without vignetting.

This is because the overwhelming majority of older cinema glass out there was designed for 35mm film, which is smaller than the capture area of modern full frame or large format cameras. 

One very interesting set of large format vintage lenses are the Soviet Rehoused primes from Ironglass.

Rather than regular lenses where the components are manufactured and then put together by a company, rehousing is when the glass from an existing lens is taken, which has old or undesirable ergonomics that make them difficult to work with, and is placed within a modern lens housing with well calibrated focus and iris rings.

This glass dates as far back as the 1950s. They were produced as still photography lenses in the Soviet Union based on the optical formulas of old Carl Zeiss lenses, which gave them a sharpness and solid optical performance. 

For example, the 20mm Mir-20M was based on the layout of the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon. Or, the well known 58mm Helios 44-2 was modelled on the Zeiss Biotar.  

The redesigned Russian glass used to make the lens elements came with some additional funky characteristics like dreamy flares, swirly bokeh and a painterly texture.

This meant that although the centre of these lenses remained sharp, the focus on the edges would rapidly fall off and go soft in an almost anamorphic-like way. The bokeh swirls in a rounded pattern, making the little out of focus balls on the edges of the frame appear slanted and off kilter.  

Ironglass has two versions of these rehoused lenses, with the newest MKIIs, which were used on Dune: Part II being far better. They come with improved close focus distances, a better focus system and universal focus gear positions - meaning that when changing to different focal lengths, the focus motor will not need to be adjusted or moved. 

The full set covers seven different focal lengths from a 20mm up to a 135mm, with stops of T/3.6 for the wider lenses, faster T/2.1 stops for the medium focal lengths and T2.9 for the telephoto lens.

As I mentioned they can all cover full frame, large format and even the enormous Alexa 65 sensor, with the exception of the 20mm which is limited to large format coverage only. 

LOMO SPHERICAL STANDARD SPEEDS

From one vintage Russian lens set to another, let's move onto the Lomo Standard Speeds. Not to be confused with the square and round front Lomo anamorphics, these are spherical lenses designed for Super 35 cameras.

As such they aren’t compatible with large format sensors, unless you want to crop in to avoid the vignette. These were produced from around the 1970s onward, but, unlike the Ironglass set, were designed as cinema lenses rather than still photography lenses.

They range in focal lengths from the widest 18mm T/3, through wide and medium T/2.3 lenses up to a 75mm. They also made some telephoto Lomos all the way up to a 300mm T/3.5 which are a bit rarer.

They are small and light little lenses which makes them nice to work with for handheld operation.

The Lomos have quite a heavy, dreamy vintage look to them. Highlights, especially white colours, are rendered with a glowing halo effect. Such as this shot, which I took on the 18mm. If you focus on the white shirt you’ll see it has a halation effect that gives off a dreamy glow. 

When shot wide open they aren’t the sharpest lenses, however this does soften skin tones in a way that I find pleasing. Their flares are especially pretty and have a rounded, rainbow dispersion.

Overall they have a beautiful, soft, dreamy look, however not without some practical downsides.

The original lenses come in a very outdated housing, with minimal distance markings and, unusually, an iris ring on the front of the barrel, rather than the rear. Because the front of the lens turns to change the aperture, this means that these lenses cannot be used with a clip on mattebox that would clamp onto their fronts. 

Instead you have to use a mattebox mounted onto the rods. This adds a bit more weight to the camera and makes it trickier for certain builds such as a gimbal, where you’d want to lose the bottom mounted plate with rods.

Of course, these issues would go away if you manage to find a nicely rehoused set. 

Another downside is the lack of close focusing ability. This frame is the closest that you can get to a subject on a 75mm for example. This means that if you want to shoot any extreme close ups you’ll need to add a diopter filter in front of the lens to be able to focus closer to the subject.

ANGÉNIEUX EZ SERIES

Next, we’ll fast forward in time a bit and look at a series of lightweight modern zoom lenses - the Angénieux EZ-1, EZ-2 and EZ-3. These zooms were designed to slot into the market place between still photography lenses and high end cinema zooms, such as Angénieux’s Optimo range.

However, despite this placement, these clean looking, well designed lenses have seen a bunch of use on high budget jobs, in place of the Optimos, as well as on ENG style work or documentary shoots.

For instance, they’re a favourite of DP Dariusz Wolski, who favours their image quality and ease of use. 

The EZ series were designed with an innovative interchangeable rear optics design, which allows the rear element to be exchanged between a Super 35 back and a full frame back - depending on what camera is being used and how much sensor coverage is required.

In super 35 mode, the EZ-1 is a 30-90mm, the EZ-2 is a 15-40mm and the EZ-3 is a 45-165mm. Giving filmmakers a wide angle zoom, a medium range focal distance, and a telephoto option. In full frame mode, their focal lengths change to 45-135mm, 22-60mm and 68-250mm - covering a similar field of view on large format cameras.

Like their other lightweight Optimo zooms they have a clean, sharp, cinematic look across the frame, as you would expect of most modern cinema lenses.

The image quality remains consistent across the zoom range, meaning slow zooms can be done in camera without being very noticeable.  

They have a stop of T2.8-3 in full frame mode and T/1.9-2 in super 35 mode. Their front diameter is consistent across all zooms at 114mm, which makes it easier to interchange these lenses while maintaining the same mattebox setup - which saves time.

The EZ-1 and EZ-2 are also basically the same size and weight, which makes swapping between them easy.

Their mount can also be swapped between PL, EF, RF, or E mount depending on which camera it’s being used with. Overall they provide a very solid image, reliable performance, good build quality, and a high degree of flexibility on a range of different cameras.

ZEISS SUPREME PRIME

Ending with a modern set of fixed focal length lenses, we have the Zeiss Supreme Primes. The set offers a near full coverage of focal lengths, from a 15mm wide angle to a 200mm telephoto.

These primes can cover all sensors from super 35 to full frame and beyond - making them Zeiss’ newest flagship set of primes for large format cameras. 

If you’re after an efficient set of spherical lenses with practical ergonomics and consistent performance, then these are the guys you want. They are clean across the frame and render details like skin textures with a razor sharpness - even when wide open.

Their fast stop of T1.5 means that they can be used in low light conditions, or be shot wide open to get a buttery smooth out of focus background. 

Each focal length is also consistent, meaning the colour rendering will be the same no matter what lens you use, unlike some vintage glass where certain focal lengths may be warmer or cooler than others.

Most of the lenses have a 95mm front diameter and a standard positioning of iris and focus gears, making swinging between different lenses easy. However their wide angle and telephoto focal lengths like the 15mm, 18mm and 135mm and up come with a 114mm front diameter. So, if changing to these lenses a different mattebox back will have to be swapped to. 

A great practical advantage to them is their metadata system. When you pop one of these lenses onto an LDS PL mount with a 12-pin Hirose connector, it’ll be able to supply the camera with information such as focal length, focus distance and T-stop. This information is precise and very useful for any VFX work in post production that requires these measurements. 

This information will also be automatically sent through to Arri compatible wireless follow focus handsets. This means 1st ACs don’t need to manually calibrate lenses or manually mark up distances - speeding up lens changes on set.

All of these reasons, along with their exceptional build quality and small size, have contributed to them being a popular choice for DPs wanting a modern, fast set of cinema prime lenses.

What Gear To Choose For Your Camera Package?

INTRODUCTION

Cinematography jobs come in all shapes and sizes: from documentary content shoots all the way to massive budget multi-camera feature films. Despite this, the gear that cinematographers choose to film with follows the same formula. You need a camera, lenses and filtration.

In today’s video I’m going to use my experience as a working cinematographer to break down what gear you should choose for your camera package and how to create a gear list for it.  

GEAR LIST

In a previous video I went through the basics of how cinematographers compile a gear list: by writing down the camera, grips and lighting equipment in a document, which can then be used to source quotes from rental houses or sometimes the gear can be supplied by crew members themselves.

Let's take this a step further by looking at two different example template gear lists I’ve created. One was written for a solo operator documentary or content shoot and the other was made for an industry level feature film where you’d have a full camera crew. I’ve broken the lists into subcategories of gear, listed the quantities of items required and left a column for extra notes to be added for the gear rental house or crew members to read at the gear check.

CAMERA

The most obvious place to start with is the camera itself. In this case I’ve put it under the category of A camera. If it’s a shoot with multiple cameras, such as a two cam documentary interview shoot or an industry job with two or more camera units, then I’d place them under a separate subheading labelled B camera, C camera, etcetera, depending on how many cameras are required.

For our feature package I’ve put in the always popular Arri Alexa Mini and for the documentary package a Sony FX3. Digital cinema cameras will almost always come as a kit with basic accessories, such as: cards, a reader, battery plate, cage, viewfinder and rods.

If slightly more unusual extra accessories are required, such as a viewfinder extension bracket, then it’s good to note these separately. Most standard camera kits will come with three cards, in the case of the Mini this might be three 256GB CFast cards. 

If extra media is required, for example if you’re shooting interviews which will roll for a long time, this can be requested as an additional add on.

 BATTERIES

To power this whole situation you’ll need some batteries. In the case of mirrorless or solo operator cameras, like the FX3, this will often be provided as part of the camera kit, along with a charger. 

However, when renting professional cinema cameras, it’s often advised to explicitly state how many and what kinds of batteries you’ll need. A typical digital cinema camera package will carry a combination of onboard batteries, which are either v-lock or gold mount batteries, and block batteries which are large, heavy 12V or 24V sources of power which provide juice to the camera through a cabled connection.

These block batteries are usually used for studio style setups, such as when the camera can be placed on a dolly, or for rigs where a consistent and large source of power needs to be supplied like with a Russian arm. 

Bear in mind that if you intend to use other accessories, separate from the camera, such as the focus puller’s monitor and transmitter, it may be a good idea to allocate a few additional V-lock batteries to that. This is why here I’ve decided to go with two sets of four V-locks and two block batteries.

LENSES

Choosing lenses is a topic all on its own, but is mainly determined by a few key factors. First, you'll need to decide whether to go for prime lenses with a fixed focal length, zoom lenses, or both.

DPs working on feature films will often go with a set of cinema primes with gears for a follow focus system. These tend to have a faster stop - such as these Superspeeds. DPs may also select a zoom lens which can be used to cover telephoto focal lengths - in this case a 25-250mm. 

Another factor heavily considered by cinematographers when choosing lenses, is their character. In other words do they look modern, sharp and clinical across the frame, or do they err on the vintage side, with a gentle softness and pretty bokeh.

How does their look contribute to the visual language you’re trying to create?

Then there are the practical considerations that need to be made. Do you need lenses with a very fast stop which will make shooting in lower light conditions possible? Do they need to be small enough to be balanced on a gimbal? Are they housed in modern casings with solid distance markings which will make it easier for the 1st AC to pull focus?

All of these factors and many more may be pondered before deciding on a lens combination for the job. 

If you’re shooting lower budget content or documentaries, you may find that still photography lenses align a bit better with your budget. In this world the practical considerations of the lens and its price point may slightly outweigh other aesthetic factors like the look.

On this imagined documentary shoot we’ve gone with some Sigma Arts, partly for their fast stop, and partly for their autofocus capabilities, which makes focusing the lens during interviews and on the gimbal as a solo operator a breeze.

FILTERS

Almost all shoots require a filter of some kind which gets placed in front of the lens. Often this is a neutral density filter which can be used to decrease the amount of light let into the camera, which allows DPs to maintain a wide open aperture and a shallow depth of field.

Even though most cinema cameras these days come with some form of internal ND system built into the body, many gear lists will still have a set of ND filters, such as 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9, to add additional ND to the camera in very bright conditions if the internal NDs don’t suffice.

Our chosen Alexa Mini comes with only three different internal ND settings 0.6, 1.2 and 2.1. Having extra external filters allows DPs to be more precise with their exposure. So, if they need a 1.5 ND strength they could use an internal ND 1.2 and an external ND 0.3 filter to arrive at the correct exposure.

For our lower budget, documentary option which is shooting on an FX3 without any internal ND filters, I’ve added a stackable 5 stop ND and a variable ND filter. 

Variable NDs can easily tweak the intensity of the filter to quickly get solo operators their desired exposure without needing to swap to different filters.  

For both shoots I’ve also added diffusion filters, Black Pro Mists and Black Satins, which are commonly used by many DPs. When renting these filters they may come as a full set. However, I’ll often note the specific strength of the filter that I’d like to use. 

The size of the filters that need to be selected are determined by the kinds of lenses you choose. Most small or medium size cinema lenses will use 4x5.65” filters that can be attached with a clip on mattebox.

If a lens with a very large front diameter is used, such as a monster cinema zoom, you may need to get larger 6x6” filters and a production mattebox to fully cover the front of the lens. 

Most still lenses and some cinema lenses too, come with a filter thread on their fronts, like these for the Sigma Arts, which means you can use screw-in filters. When renting gear it’s important to ensure that your screw-in filters are either the correct size for the lens, or add a thread adapter which will step up the lens thread size to the filter thread size.  

MATTEBOX

To be able to hold filters and also minimise light hitting the lens and creating flares, we need a mattebox. As we mentioned, the size of this mattebox will be determined by how big the front of the lenses you’re using are. 

There are two standard sizes, 4x5.65” matteboxes which can be clamped directly onto the front of the lens, and 6x6” matteboxes which are usually mounted and held by support rods attached to the camera’s plate.

Clip on matteboxes come with different sized diameter openings that correspond to the front diameter of lenses. The Superspeed lenses we’ve chosen have an 80mm front diameter while our zoom has a 136mm front. This means we’ll need both an 80mm and 136mm back for the mattebox which can be swapped out depending on which lens it’s being used with.

Since we’ve trying to keep our solo operator package nice and easy by going with a screw-in filter - we don’t need to include a mattebox. 

FOLLOW FOCUS 

For our documentary setup we’ve also excluded a follow focus as we’ll be relying on the autofocus lenses or pulling focus manually on the barrel by hand if it’s needed.

Our cinema camera setup will however need a wireless follow focus since the lenses are manual cinema lenses, don’t have autofocus and we’ll have a 1st AC on the crew.

Because the camera is an Arri I’ve also asked for an Arri wireless follow focus kit, however you may want to request a different brand, like a Preston, a Nucleus, an RT Motion kit, or if the focus puller has their own gear go with that.

I’ve made sure to request three wireless FIZ motors, or focus, iris, zoom. This is in case we need to do any aperture pulls, or control the zoom function of our Angenieux lens with a motor.

On some long form jobs, or if shooting on film, a focus or distance aid, like a Light Ranger may be added to make it easier for the 1st AC to accurately pull focus. 

MONITORS & TRANSMISSION

On most professional sets a video feed will be sent from the camera to one or various monitors on the set. This gear is managed by a crew member called a video or VT operator. Often, this gear will be owned by either the video operator themself or a VT company.

Therefore, sometimes cinematographers will communicate the amount of monitors needed, and leave the sourcing of said gear and how the transmission and signal distribution happens to the VT operator. 

The monitors which go on the camera and which are used by the 1st AC to pull focus, are however, usually sourced from a rental house as part of the camera gear.

For the industry budget shoot I’ve accommodated for a one to three video transmission. In other words, one wireless video transmitter will send a signal to three different monitors with wireless video receivers: one monitor for the focus puller, one handheld monitor for the director and one larger monitor on a cart which can be viewed by the director, or other crew that need to view an image such as make up or the continuity supervisor.

One 7” monitor has also been included which will be rigged onto the camera and may be used by the DP or operator to view the image and gauge exposure.

For our smaller shoot we’ve only got one 5” on-board monitor which makes it a bit easier to view the image properly and pull focus than using the camera’s little built in screen. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

Finally we’ve got two miscellaneous add ons. Some handles which can be attached to the camera’s cage or rods that gives the operator a nice grip when shooting handheld.

We’ve also included a magliner, which is a trolley that the camera team can use to store their gear in one place, wheel it around the set and use it as a surface for building the camera.

CONCLUSION

These two lists are a very basic guide to the kind of gear in a camera package. From there, DPs will take these subsections of gear and customise the selection of equipment depending on the technical and creative needs of whatever is being shot.

How Wong Kar-Wai Visualises Time: Chungking Express

INTRODUCTION

Right from the get go Chungking Express throws us into a frenzied spiral of blurred motion as time chaotically rushes by in bursts of speed.

Only to later cut to this shot, which has the opposite effect of suspending time, drawing it out, elongating it, as the outside world flies past while the two characters barely move at all.

Perhaps surprisingly, both of these moments which play with our perception of time in different ways, were actually filmed using the exact same camera and editing technique. So, let's use this video to unpack how this can be done, and what effect it has on how we emotionally perceive the characters and action in Chungking Express.  

TWO STORIES

Chungking Express is like a mirror. It splits the film in two, with two sets of characters and plots ,which each follow the same template, with each part mainly shot by a different cinematographer. Both characters are policemen in Hong Kong. Both are in the aftermath of a breakup.

However, these two sides of the same coin unfold slightly differently based on the divergences in the nature of each character.

The first policeman is an extroverted, outgoing, overtly emotional character, who deals with the breakup by calling everyone he knows - trying to dowse his heartbreak by seeking out the company of people.

Whereas the second cop is more introverted, stuck in his routine, and insular. He deals with his breakup by distancing himself from those around him.

With this in mind, it makes sense why Wong Kar-Wai may want to present how the more fiery first cop perceives time in more of a frenzied, sped up, manic way. Whereas, the second cop’s more inward facing solitude slows time down to a crawl.

To manipulate time and speed, the director and his cinematographers, Andrew Lau during the first part of the story and Christopher Doyle during the second part, used the same camera technique of shooting different frame rates and the editing technique of step printing.

But, before we talk about how they technically did this, it may be useful to examine where this influence may have come from.

FRENCH NEW WAVE INSPIRATION

“The thing that you should understand about Wong Kar-Wai’s style and what makes it different from the majority of films coming out of Hong Kong is almost all the Hong Kong films are either wild, crazy comedies, wild, crazy fantasy films, and then what’s become the John Woo, Ringo Lam action films. He’s also taking a cue from the French New Wave films. In particular, Godard is his man.” - Quentin Tarantino,         

French New Wave filmmakers, like Godard, took genre films and subverted them, deconstructing and experimenting with the very form of cinema. One convention that he played with in a film called Every Man For Himself, was that of time and motion.

STEP PRINTING

Normally films are shot at around 24 frames per second. In other words the camera captures 24 individual pictures every second that it is rolling. When these 24 frames are played back in 1 second, we get a normal feeling of motion. 

If the filmmaker wants a slow motion effect, they can shoot a fast frame rate on the camera, such as 48 frames per second. When these 48 frames are played back at 24 frames, they will play for 2 seconds, rather than 1 second - thus giving a slow motion effect.    

When Godard wanted to slow time down, rather than using the traditional method of shooting a higher frame rate and playing it back at 24 frames, he instead shot at 24 frames per second and used a technique called step printing to artificially and jerkily slow down time.

Step printing reproduces multiple copies or duplicates of a frame. For example, if you took 24 frames of film and printed each frame twice, you’ll end up with 48 frames. When this is played back, it will slow down motion, in the same way that shooting with a higher frame rate would.

Visually however these look different. Because step printing is basically doing a bunch of fast freeze frames, it gives a strange stuttering effect to motion.

This step printing technique later became popular especially in Kong Kong action films which were shot around the time. Allowing them to get a slow motion effect from footage shot at 24FPS, without needing to pay twice as much for film stock when shooting 48FPS. 

Now that this analogue technology of physically printing extra frames of film is obsolete, filmmakers can achieve the same effect by changing the playback speed of the footage in editing software.

STORY ONE

Step printing gave Wong Kar-Wai a way to slow down motion with a stutter, but what if, like in the first part of Chungking Express, he wanted time to instead pass at a chaotic, crazy, blurred pace. Visually represent a feeling of adrenaline in an action sequence or visually exaggerate how a chaotic character perceives life.

They could do this by slowing down the frame rate of the camera. Andrew Lau shot these sequences at only 6 frames per second. Slowing down the frame rate meant that the camera’s shutter stayed open for longer - approximately 1/12th of a second. This longer exposure meant more light was let in and that there would be more motion blur.

Later, they could then use the step printer to print each frame four times to arrive at a playback speed of 24 frames per second.

If you scrub through these scenes frame by frame, you can see that each shot holds on a freeze frame for 4 frames, before moving onto the next image.

This same technique can also be done with modern digital cameras, by shooting with a lower frame rate setting, like 6FPS. You can then either shoot with a 180 degree shutter angle which will automatically adjust how long the shutter stays open for, or you can set the shutter speed to double your frame rate. So in this case double 6FPS is a shutter speed of 1/12. 

Later, once you pull the footage into editing software, you can decrease the playback speed to account for the slower frame rate. A playback speed of 24FPS divided by your shooting speed of 6FPS equals 4. In other words to get back to normal speed you need to step print each frame 4 times or slow your footage down in editing software by 1/4th or 25%. 

This formula can be manipulated based on the frame rate you want to shoot at. If you shoot at 8FPS, you can set your shutter speed on the camera to double that at 1/16. Then in the edit, divide your playback speed of 24FPS by your shooting speed of 8FPS which equals 3. This means you need to print each frame 3 times, or slow down your footage by 1/3rd or 33.3%

Shooting at a low frame rate creates a lot of motion blur - especially if people or objects move through the frame at a high speed, or if the camera itself moves around a lot. 

It’s the handheld camera moves used by Lau that makes these sequences with the first cop feel much more chaotic, blurred and sped up.

Even when they are shooting at a regular frame rate, a bunch of other cinematic techniques also contribute to the chaos. Chungking Express uses wide angle lenses that distort the face when up close to characters. 

This is a technique they’d push even further on the next film they’d shoot, Fallen Angels, which was shot with an ultra wide-angle lens.

The camera is almost always moving and is for the most part operated handheld on the shoulder to give it more shake. 

They will often start the shot on an object and then rapidly pan or tilt off it onto the subject, using these as cutting points to inject more motion and energy into scenes. He also uses a combination of counter moves, where he’ll move in the opposite direction to the character to speed up the motion, or directly track with the motion of the characters.

Quick cuts are made to tight insert close ups, which are sometimes even moving. 

And, even if they do choose to move the camera further away from characters and shoot with longer telephoto lenses, they’ll still make the image feel busy and dirty by shooting through lots of foreground that blocks the frame.

Throughout Chungking Express, a lot of different, mixed light sources in different colours and temperatures are used, many of which are practicals: such as from a fish tank or cool overhead fluorescent tubes.

STORY TWO

As we transition from the intensity of the first story to the second set of characters who either monotonously wait around for their shift to end or deal with a breakup through solitude and stillness, the filmmaking itself adjusts to the pace of the characters.

Stylistically, many of the same camera techniques, such as using wide angle lenses handheld, lighting with colour and shooting with telephoto lenses through foreground, carry through to this second story. However, the intensity of the handheld moves and the frequency of the cuts made in the edit slows down. 

This differentiates how the pacing of time is perceived between the two stories. With the first feeling faster, and the second feeling slower.

The second story also forgoes the manic, handheld, 6 frames per second technique which was so widely used in the first part.

However, there are three moments in the second half that use step printing, but with a very different effect.

Instead of shooting handheld, they lock the camera off on a tripod, and block the actors in the frame so that they barely move, or if they do, they deliberately slow their movements down to a snail’s pace. 

They shot this at 8 frames per second. When each of these frames is later step printed 3 times in the edit, it makes it feel like the characters are moving in slow motion, suspended, while the world around them flies by.

There’s one final interesting use of this technique. This shot starts being filmed and played back at regular speed at 24FPS, however at the end of the shot, Wong Kar-Wai step prints the final few frames, duplicating each frame three times. This gives the impression of time slowing down during the shot. 

The following shot is then also step printed and slowed down. This quite effectively visually represents Faye Wong’s boredom as she waits out her shift.

CONCLUSION

Wong Kar-Wai’s work shows that, just as in the French New Wave, the rules of cinema are made to be broken. Throughout his movies he’s always quite overtly shown that time, and how it is perceived, is a core theme in his work.

It makes sense then that he and his DPs like to play with the very speed at which life itself is captured by the camera.

How Different Directors Create Different Looks: Pachinko

INTRODUCTION

The job of a director is to take the bunch of words written in the screenplay and transform it into an audio and visual work. As you can imagine there are a number of ways this can be done, some lean into stylisation, others side with naturalism, some like to let the performances of actors stand alone, others still like to push the looseness of the camera language. 

Just like how different artists can produce portraits which look and feel totally different, different directors, DPs and creative crew members, with their different points of view, produce films which are unique to them.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at how different episodes of Pachinko, which used the same technical crew and locations, each took a unique creative approach based on having a different director and cinematographer team.

SETTING THE LOOK

Multi part series have a shooting structure which differs from regular feature length filmmaking. Almost all movies will be led by a singular director and photographed by one cinematographer. 

However, due to the extended workload and high shooting volume that comes with long form series, these shows are usually broken into a few different blocks, which are each directed by and photographed by different creative teams.

To maintain consistency, typically the creative team who shoots the first block of episodes will create what is called a ‘bible’, which dictates the look and feel of the series and how it should be creatively produced going forward.

In the case of Pachinko this first block of shooting was done by director Kogonada and DP Florian Hoffmeister.

“The structure is that the first block, which was my block and which includes the pilot, will actually set the look. A lot of creative exploration and a lot of creative development will actually happen in prep for the first block and then the second or third or whatever comes after basically works along those guidelines established by the creative team of the first block.” - Florian Hoffmeister

These guidelines will usually be bound by both technical choices as well as creative ones. For example, the camera selection, lenses, rigging of lighting fixtures at regular locations and the LUT which interprets the look of the colour grade, will remain consistent.

While similarly, visual decisions like the aspect ratio, frame composition and camera movement will try to conform to what has been done before. 

You can see this across the various seasons in shows like Breaking Bad, which was filmed in 35mm with Kodak Vision 2 stocks, a 16:9 aspect ratio, with a warm colour palette with sickly greens, and consistently handheld camera movement.

Or The Bear, which uses quite a contrast heavy, saturated LUT, lots of long lenses, tight close ups, and a cooler palette. 

Or Yellowstone’s use of natural light, sharp lenses and stable frames which are shot with telephoto focal lengths that compress the background of landscapes and bring them closer to the characters. 

What made Pachinko a bit different from your average series, was that when it came to shooting block two with a new creative team of director Justin Chon and DP Ante Cheng, instead of conforming to a ‘bible’, they were given the freedom to depart from the established look and creatively approach their episodes with the look they felt was best suited to the story.  

TWO APPROACHES

So what made the approaches of these two directors different from each other? Kogonada, who shot the first block, is a director to whom form is everything. If you look at his other work, each frame feels carefully considered, deliberately crafted and photographed with a subtle feeling of objectivity. All aspects of his storytelling feel structured and based around form, both narratively, in terms of blocking and performance and visually.

Justin Chon on the other hand, who directed the second block, is a filmmaker with an acting background whose work is very much bound up in performance and emotion. Again, this directorial tone also creeps into the look, with much of his other work having a level of looseness, energy, emotion, texture and far more subjectivity and closeness to his characters. 

“I always felt that if you were to press these two very different filmmakers into this…You know, the constraints of, like, what they call a unified vision or a bible you would lose a lot of emotional and visual variety. So, I very much from the beginning, I love it for a system where the second block would not necessarily work along our lines.” - Florian Hoffmeister

Each block was given the same resources, locations and crew to shoot with, but was led by a different vision from two different directors. So, what were some of the things that each block did differently to create their unique tones?

BLOCK 1: KOGONADA / HOFFMEISTER

Pachinko is an historical epic drama with a storyline which jumps around between the 1920s and the 80s: showing how significantly the past experiences of people inform their present situation. This connection between the past and present is so strong that on a philosophical level, it’s almost as if the story is taking place in one time.

Koganada’s approach stressed that the spaces in the film are more important than time, and in doing so stylistically disregarded the different periods and treated them almost as if they were taking place at one time.

What this meant in terms of the camera language was that they chose not to visually differentiate the different time periods. Not using any different language of cinematography to portray different timelines, like aspect ratios, the colour grade, or different lenses. Kogonada and Hoffmeister made the decision to maintain the same visual look in both the 20s and 80s.

They let the production design, costume and make up work differentiate the time periods rather than the camera.

This look leaned on their preference for structured, formal, objective, stable visuals. They almost exclusively shot off a tripod or dolly - carefully composing each frame and barely moving the camera much. 

If the camera did move it mostly tracked along with the motion and speed of the characters with a high degree of stability from something like a Steadicam or dolly. 

Or, they used some linear push ins or pull outs on stationary characters. However, these were handled almost exclusively with very subtle, barely perceptible, creeping motion done with a dolly and tracks.

In other words the camera never did stylistic moves for the sake of movement and was rather motivated by the movement of characters or an emotion. 

When it came to their shot selection, they often covered scenes with a medium-wide master shot taken from the waist up, before jumping into medium shots, medium close ups, or close ups which very rarely were framed tightly on characters.

They saved using these more intimate close ups for key moments where they really wanted to emotionally elevate a feeling and get inside the character’s head.

Framing scenes from this mid to wide range distance created a little more emotional separation and a greater feeling of objectivity.

The DP and director often balanced these shots with a symmetrical care, lining up centrally framed compositions of characters - especially during wides - which gave a hint of Yasujirō Ozu. 

In terms of their camera and lens selection, they favoured quite a clean, sharp, large format look with a shallow depth of field.

The first block was shot on a Sony Venice with Panavision Panaspeed spherical prime lenses. These come with a very fast stop of T/1.4, which was used by Hoffmeister to separate characters from their background, especially during close ups, by shooting them with a wide stop with lots of bokeh.

Shooting with the wider field of view of a full frame sensor and large format lenses meant that Hoffmeister could choose longer focal lengths and still be able to frame with enough width for wide shots. Using these more medium or telephoto focal lengths, again, created a shallow depth of field which better isolated the characters in the frame by blurring the background. 

Hoffmeister worked with colourist Tom Poole in creating a photochemical looking LUT for the digital camera which was based on the colour work produced by Magnum photographer Burt Glinn in Japan.

Overall, the stylistic approach of this first block relied on creating one consistent, clean look across the different time periods, which didn't try to be too nostalgic or emotional, maintaining more objective, traditionally cinematic, composed frames, never trying to make the audience aware of the presence of the camera.

BLOCK 2: CHON / CHENG

Block two’s approach countered this idea of a clean, objective, formal, structured tone, instead leaning into emotion and subjectivity.

This was done by largely forgoing the smooth or locked camera moves, in favour of a handheld camera, deliberately operated with much more looseness and less precision.

Although, like in the first block they would often hold on static frames, Chon and Cheng decided to do this with a handheld camera, rather than off a tripod head, giving the images a subtle looseness.

Sometimes these hand operated compositions would even have a bit of a dutch tilt to them, with a slightly off kilter horizon, or go in and out of focus a little in an organic way as the focus puller reacted to the more improvised camera motion.

When they wanted a bit more energy they also incorporated some handheld camera moves to give the footage a bit more dynamism.  

When it came to portraying the different time periods, the block two team took a different approach. Rather than maintaining the same look for everything, they subtly gave the 20s period footage a different feel by shooting it on anamorphic lenses, then used the same spherical Panaspeeds for the 80s scenes.

When shooting anamorphic they kept the same 2.20 aspect ratio as the rest of the show by chopping off the sides of the wider 2.40 native frame which they extracted from the anamorphic lenses.

These anamorphic lenses provided a greater focus falloff around the edges of the frame. In other words, the sweet spot in the middle would stay sharp while the borders of the shot progressively fell out of focus. 

These lenses also create an oval bokeh shape which is different from the regular rounded bokeh of spherical glass. Anamorphics also tend to flare a bit easier - with a lateral flare.

These flares were another inclusion which differentiated block two from block one and made Chon’s images feel a lot more textural and a bit rougher than Kogonada’s clean frames.

The DP and director also ‘messed up’ the image in other ways. They added haze when shooting interior scenes, especially those in the 20s, to give an additional layer of texture.

Also their images have a higher degree of halation or bloom to the highlights than block one, which looks a bit cleaner. I’m not sure whether this came from the anamorphic glass, the use of haze, effects in post, or by using a stronger diffusion filter in front of the lens, however it too added a smoky texture.

Like in some of their other work together, they also implemented much more colourful lighting than in the first block, pushing in blue or red tones. Or, sometimes, using a very cool colour balance to push tones into an exaggerated dawn, blue look.

CONCLUSION

I think what this case study shows is that there is not necessarily a right or a wrong approach when it comes to making creative decisions. Different directors, DPs and crew members will bring different sensibilities and interpretations to the screenplay. 

Like in art, it's these nuanced differences in how the subject matter is portrayed which are the little signature at the bottom of the painting which show the authorship of each film.  

The Cinema Camera That Dominates The Movie Industry

INTRODUCTION

Camera technology is constantly evolving. Each year different manufacturers introduce new, shiny, better than ever before products to vie to capture market share. Therefore, it may be surprising that when it comes to the world of high end digital cinema cameras there is one clear cut winner, and perhaps even more surprisingly, far and away the most popular camera on the market was released almost 10 years ago.

To back this up with some data, I went and evaluated the cameras used by narrative movies from arguably three of the most influential film awards and festivals, to determine what the most popular cinema camera is, what camera manufacturers claim the top spots, how many productions still shoot on film over digital and what sensor format is most popular.

STUDY

To put together these findings I’ve looked at what cameras were most used at three main film festivals which each represent a slightly different demographic in the market: Sundance - which focuses a bit more on indie productions, Cannes - most of whose entrants favour mid range films with a few higher budget movies, and the Oscars - which tend to favour bigger budgets.

To put this together I’ve gathered data from IndieWire’s camera surveys - which they put out every year and show which productions used which camera. To get a sense of the progression in the camera selection I’ve looked at the festivals over the previous four years.

These results only look at narrative feature films - and exclude other formats like long form series or documentaries - which as an example would feature far more Sony and Canon cameras at a lower budget level.

RESULTS

What emerged was one clear victor: Arri. More specifically, the Arri Alexa Mini.  This Super35 digital cinema camera was by far the most popular, even though it was released all the way back in 2015.

Of the 175 productions over the last 4 years at Sundance an incredible 44% of them were shot with an Arri Alexa Mini. With all Arri digital cameras, including their other large format options, the Amira and alternative versions of the Alexa, being used on 72% of all productions.

This figure pales in comparison to other digital cinema camera manufacturers, such as Sony at 12% and Red at 5%.

This trend of Arri digital cinema dominance showed up at both Cannes and the Academy Awards, albeit at slightly lower levels - with again Sony coming in as the 2nd most dominant manufacturer with their Venice and Venice 2, and Red bringing up the rear.

Sundance typically also featured a greater variety of camera and manufacturer picks, with a scattering of lower end digital cinema choices - like Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras, a Canon C70 or a Red Komodo. 

Interestingly, the Alexa Mini’s dominance as ‘most used camera’ dropped quite a bit, all the way down to 16%, when it came to the Academy Awards. I believe there’s a good reason for this - which we’ll get to a little later. 

Still, across the board the Alexa Mini reigned supreme on both indie film productions, medium budget shoots and high budget movies.  

ALEXA MINI DOMINANCE

In a past video I outlined why it is that Arri’s digital cinema products have dominated the market so much: from their look and colour science, to their compatibility, ease of use, heritage and reliability.

However, why is the Mini specifically still the most popular Alexa model? I’d say the number one reason is its form factor. The Mini was released with the expectation that it would mainly be used for lighter weight builds such as drone or gimbal work, with the other studio Alexas being used as the main workhorses.

However, its smaller profile, which could also be built into bulkier modes by adding accessories meant that it soared in popularity as the go-to camera choice amongst cinematographers.

In other words, you got that sought after Alev sensor and Arri colour science in a package which could be built either compact or large depending on your preference.

In much the same way, the Alexa Mini LF, with its smaller form factor, proved vastly more popular as a large format camera than the bigger body version the Alexa LF. Proving that when it comes to choosing a camera apparently size does matter. 

Before the introduction of the newer model Alexa 35 which can now conform to Netflix’s 4K recording requirements, if you wanted to shoot with a Super35 sensor the Alexa Mini was pretty much the choice. 

Although the Alexa Mini still dominates even in 2024, with its slightly lower price tag and data rates, it has lost quite a lot of market share this year in the high end arena to Arri’s latest Super35 camera - the Alexa 35.

SUPER35 VS LARGE FORMAT

In recent years there’s been a bit of a surge to shoot on large format digital cameras, which have bigger sensors than traditional Super35 - such as the full frame Venice, the Arri Alexa Mini LF or even the Alexa 65 with its wider field of view.

However, looking at the numbers, large format cameras still don’t dominate the market. If we look at every production and sort each camera into either Super35 or large format, the results show that at both Cannes and Sundance there was a similar preference for Super35 with it leading at 65% and 69% respectively. 

Bear in mind that some productions used multiple cameras - and paired up different sensor sizes, such as an Alexa Mini and a Mini LF.

Super35 capture offers cinematographers far more lens options to choose from than large formats do, dating all the way from vintage glass to contemporary lenses. Typically these cameras also come at a lower rental cost than the more expensive large format cameras do.   

Interestingly when we look at the Academy Awards we see a different picture. Only 43% of recent Oscar picks shot in Super35, while 77% of productions utilised some form of large format capture.

This also speaks to our earlier note about only 16% being shot on an Alexa Mini. 

I’d argue that one of the reasons for this may be that Oscar films have the bigger budget to rent large format camera packages, which low budget Indie movies from Sundance may not be able to do.

I’d speculate that perhaps cinematographers also feel that the more contained indie and mid budget dramas which largely come out of Cannes and Sundance are better suited to the more traditional Super35 format.

Whereas, maybe, the higher budget, blockbuster nature of Oscar picks are better enhanced by choosing wider field, higher res formats like Imax or digital 65.   

That’s what the data suggests anyway.

FILM VS DIGITAL

A final question that came to mind was how many productions still shoot on film versus digital?

This number included any production which used any type of film acquisition - from 16mm all the way up to Imax. Over the past four years, 11% of Sundance productions, 22% of movies from Cannes and 30% of Academy Award nominated flicks used film cameras.

Of those film cameras, again, Arri came first, with their LT and ST versions of the Arricam being by far the most popular film cameras.

Although overall, of course digital, cameras dominated I was quite surprised at how high film usage in 2024 still remains. Again, there’s also a possible correlation here with budget. The more money a production has as it scales from indie, to mid, to high budget festivals, the more possible it is for filmmakers to make the choice of whether to shoot on film or not.

Cinematography Style: Agnès Godard

INTRODUCTION

Agnès Godard crafts images that provide viewers with a tactile and sensory experience, that uses textural photography, soft but naturalistic light and an abundance of close ups to immerse the audience and create a visceral impression of how the characters navigate the world.                  

So, let’s dive a bit deeper into how she became a DP, her thoughts on cinematography and look at some of the gear she uses to create images.  

BACKGROUND

After graduating from film school she began working in the camera department as a technician - most notably working as an assistant on movies by Wim Wenders.  

In fact it was on one of those shoots - Paris, Texas - where she met another crew member Claire Denis who was working as an assistant director.

When Denis embarked on her first feature as a director she selected Godard as the camera operator. She later stepped up as a director of photography on most of her subsequent films, forming a long running collaborative relationship with Denis, whose work often focused on intimate portraits of characters on the edges of society. 

“I have a very long collaboration with Claire Denis. We’ve made 16 films together, which is a lot. What I got out of it, in any case, was the following reflection: the more we’ve gone for something that’s concise, the denser and stronger it became. And I realised that sometimes simplicity is the result of work and maturation.”

Much of her work condenses the photography into a fairly simplistic approach where how the camera moves and how scenes are lit isn’t overly convoluted, choreographed or rehearsed. She strives to make the presence of the camera disappear and have each shot contain everything that needs to be said in a primitive, simplistic way. 

As a result, I’d say much of her work errs on the side of naturalism or realism, sometimes elevated by an experimental edit. When shooting exteriors she embraces the natural light and doesn’t try to over diffuse it, shape it or try to contain it. 

However, I wouldn't say that her approach is purely centred on realism either. Sometimes, she’ll add colour to her lighting, going with a sharp blue for night exteriors, or a cool teal for street scenes.  

Another component of photography which she elevates out of the ordinary into more of a dreamy, meandering state is how she frames shots and moves the camera. Her frames will often flow over spaces and characters with gradual pans and tilts, or take on a rougher, handheld perspective.

This framing and movement is considered and based on the foundational idea in her photography that the camera can be used to shape the perspective and the emotional and physical proximity to the characters.

“In terms of the image, perspective is something that defines a distance, first of all. So let’s say, in terms of images, the distance from which we watch a filmed subject. The distance at which the camera will be placed. It’s something very important, as it’s the distance from which you come into contact with the characters of a film.”

The perspective of the camera is rarely locked onto one character throughout a movie, and instead drifts from person to person, or from detail to detail, like the wandering eyes of an observer in a room that is never seen.

This drifting style of operating allows audiences to pursue different details within the frame, as the camera tilts or pans from objects, textures or details up to the subject.

To get this feeling she’ll often position the perspective of the camera to be quite close to whatever is being filmed. Filling the frame with tactile close ups, whether those be of characters, cutaways to details which inform the story, or doing those dreamy camera pans and tilts.

An interesting idea she’s described during her work with Denis is ‘writing’ the movie on set, through how the images are created. Arriving in a space where all the ingredients are put together, from the location, to the actors, the mise en scène and costumes, and then ‘writing’ the film by creating frames in the moment, rather than the standard idea of getting a script and then illustrating what has already been written.     

I’ve noticed that her framing often includes vertical or horizontal lines within frames which intersect the image - whether from architectural or production design elements, or from using the line of a straight horizon to cut across the frame.

GEAR

As we mentioned, perspective and distance hold a very important place in her work. Her decisions as to where to place the characters and the camera, also have a direct impact on the kind of gear which she selects.

Rather than choosing very wide angle lenses and shooting them from a close distance to the character - as has become a popular cinematic trope nowadays - she instead often selects medium focal lengths or telephoto lenses, like a 40mm or longer, and places the camera a bit further away from the actors.

These longer lenses compress the image more, making the background feel closer to the characters and creating a layered feeling of depth where different planes of foreground and background layers are pushed together and assembled within the frame. 

This effect of using long focal length lenses is particularly noticeable in exterior wide shots where far off landscapes feel like they are looming right behind characters. These compressed backgrounds place characters alongside their environment, rather than shooting with wide angle lenses that distances the background from the subject. 

Longer lenses, with their lack of distortion, also make lining up vertical or horizontal straight lines in shots a bit simpler.

 A secondary effect shooting on longer lenses has is that she can place lights further away from characters. The wider focal length that is chosen, the closer the camera will have to be to characters, and therefore the closer lights will have to be placed to actors so that the camera won’t come in between lights and cast shadows.

Godard prefers to have some distance between the light source and the subject, which sometimes makes shooting further away on long lenses easier as the camera and crew won’t get in the way of the light source.

Her camera selection has been split between shooting on 35mm film in her earlier work and on digital cameras in the more recent years.

During her early work she often favoured a lighter camera, which could be easily operated for handheld, and could fit into tight spaces - which, for her, was a Aaton 35 camera body.

She paired this camera with different spherical lenses - normally favouring the height of taller aspect ratios like 1.85 or 1.66 and staying away from the widescreen anamorphic look. Some lenses she’s used include the Zeiss Standard Speeds, Cooke S4s and Panavision 70mm and Primo glass. 

Shooting 35mm film, with its wider perspective than 16mm, on the Aaton 35 with Panavision Primo primes that resolved beautiful skin tones accurately with a fast T1.9 stop was a combination she often arrived at, and can be seen in her iconic work on Beau Travail.

“I really wanted to have this 35mm perspective because I thought that to see the bodies, the men, in the landscapes was the thing. Then I chose very performant lenses. So I worked with Primo lenses from Panavision and they were fantastic. The only thing is that they were quite big.”

She’s also used zoom lenses quite often, usually from Angenieux, such as the classic 24-290mm, the 15-40mm and even the newer EZ Full Frame 22-60mm and 45-135mm zooms on her more recent work. She combined this with a teleconverter when she needed to extend her focal length range even further. 

After transitioning to digital cinema with the Arri Alexa classic, she’s since moved to mainly using Sony camera bodies. From the earlier model F65, to, in more recent years, using the Sony Venice.

This change in camera selection from the lightweight Aaton 35 to the large, cumbersome Sony F65 also yielded a change in approach to how the camera moved. 

The Aaton allowed her to operate raw, handheld over the shoulder shots, or easily place the camera on boats, trains or tight spaces to get shots which vibrated or shook with the movement of said transportation method.

Whereas the larger weight and size of the F65 meant that movies like Let The Sunshine In were shot completely off either a dolly or tripod which stabilised the camera and gave the images a more grounded feel. 

Her lighting largely leans into a natural look, using sunlight whenever she can, whether it's soft, diffused, luminant and ambient, or hard, direct and sharp with strong shadows.

For day interiors she often supplements this with large bounced or diffused sources which illuminates actors with a very soft quality. Then, during night scenes, she has a tendency to introduce colour, sometimes favouring warm tones such as sodium vapour street lamps, and other times going for cooler tones from blue to a teal.   

CONCLUSION

Although her exact approach has shifted from film to film and director to director, there is a certain natural, dreamy, reactive, wandering quality to her photography which has carried through. Transforming the camera from a machine that captures light into a perspective and point of view of an observer in the room. 

The Special Filter That Most Cinematographers Use

INTRODUCTION

One of the great things about working as a camera assistant for a number of years was that it exposed me, if you’ll excuse the pun, to the camera gear that was selected by a number of international cinematographers. 

In the past, these selections were often shielded by DPs, who were hesitant to share their exact recipe and formula for creating images.

One of the biggest takeaways from my time as an assistant was that many, if not almost all productions which were shot on digital cameras, used what are called diffusion filters.     

WHAT ARE DIFFUSION FILTERS?

Diffusion filters are pieces of glass which can be put in front of the camera’s lens that provide a glowing halation to the highlights, soften the image, or reduce contrast.

These filters can either be placed in a tray inside a mattebox which is clipped onto the lens, or screwed directly onto the front filter thread of the lens. 

When light hits a digital camera sensor with enough intensity to overexpose it, a number of pixels will turn to pure white, while the surrounding pixels that absorb less light won’t clip. 

However, when a diffusion filter is added in front of the lens, the light will get scattered. This means that there will be more of a gradient between the pure white, overexposed pixels in the highlights and the correctly exposed pixels. This gives the bright highlights a glowing effect called halation.

Some secondary effects which these diffusion filters may also have is that they add a layer of softness or blur over the image, thus reducing the lens’ sharpness. This decreases the harshness of how details are captured, which means wrinkles, pores and imperfections on the skin will be softened.

Some diffusion filters are also used to reduce contrast. So instead of capturing punchy, high contrast images with bright highlights and deep shadows, some diffusion filters will decrease contrast, retaining and lifting the information in darker parts of the image and crushing the intensity of the brightest parts of the frame.

In the past, before the rise of using glass softening filters in front of the lens, another old school technique which achieved a similar look was to place nets or stockings behind the back of the lens and between the film plane or sensor so that they didn’t come into focus, but they softened the frame. In old Hollywood this technique was particularly popular when photographing the close ups of lead actresses.     

CLEAN VS DIFFUSED LOOK

Now that we know what some of these diffusion filters do, why is it that they are used so often by cinematographers?

In a previous video I’ve mentioned the idea of creating a look that is very clean versus a look that is more textured.

Although some filmmakers do indeed lean into a clean, sharp, digital look, more often than not, cinematographers like to take a little bit of the digital edge off to make images look a little more filmic, soft and textured. They do this by using a low strength diffusion filter that is not too heavy handed.

FILM VS. DIGITAL

There’s a bit of an interesting dichotomy to finding a middle ground between a clean look versus a textured look when it comes to working with film or digital. Film, by its very nature, possesses many of the qualities that diffusion filters provide. Film doesn't have a sharp clipping threshold like a digital sensor does, meaning the highlights are more muted with a natural halation effect.

It also resolves images less sharply than high resolution digital cameras, having a natural, subtle softness.

Therefore, to counteract the natural ‘softness’ of film, many DPs who shoot on film like to do so with the sharpest, modern lenses possible and without using diffusion filters. Whereas those who shoot digitally try to fight the ‘overly-sharp’ feeling of digital by choosing vintage lenses, shooting through diffusion filters, or doing both.    

TYPES OF DIFFUSION FILTERS

Different diffusion filters come in different strengths of intensity: all the way from full 80s music video softening to a very subtle blooming of highlights.  

Likewise, different kinds of diffusion filters do different things. I’d say that there are three main categories: halation expansion and softening filters, contrast reduction filters, and atmospheric filters. 

Halation and softening filters target the highlights and create a blooming effect around them, while at the same time softening the overall sharpness of the image. Probably the most popular example of this filter is the Black Pro-Mist from Tiffen, which can comes in variations all the way from the very subtle 1/8th filter which subtly halates highlights to a 2 and above, which heavily blooms lights, washes out the contrast in the shadows and gives the entire frame a soft look.

Some other popular softening filters are Black Satins, Glimmer Glass, Hollywood Black Magic, Pearlescent and Classic Softs. These all have similar but subtly different ways of spreading the highlights and softening the image.

The second category are contrast reduction filters - which, as you would imagine, decrease the picture’s overall contrast by lifting the detail in the dark parts of the frame and reducing the thickness of darker hues, to produce a flatter look.

The Ultra Con and Low Con filters are probably the most popular varieties. These lift the shadows and wash out the blacks and dark areas so they aren’t as deep and heavy. 

Finally, there are atmospheric filters, which give the illusion that there is smoke or haze in a space. This is a useful tool for sets where it’s not possible to bring a smoke machine, or for wide exteriors where adding haze is difficult or impossible.

It’s also been used on shows like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel to increase and add to the thickness of the haze in the room. 

Rather than focusing on only blooming the peaking highlights, like regular softening filters do, these atmospheric filters give a halation effect across the midtones and shadows in the entire frame, also lifting the detail in darker areas - just like smoke does. 

Some examples of these atmospheric filters are Fog and Smoque filters from Tiffen.

DIGITAL DIFFUSION

Most DPs tend to air on choosing low strength diffusion filters which have a subtle effect on the image, since this decision bakes the diffused look in and is not reversible in post.

If, later on in the grade, the amount of diffusion is not sufficient, it can always be accentuated and added to with software. Some filmmakers even favour adding all diffusion effects during post, rather than with filters, as it gives them complete control over the intensity of the effect that they want.

For example, Bruno Delbonnel changed his workflow from using physical diffusion filters in his early work, to shooting his later work as clean as possible, without effects filters, and adding a digital bloom effect in post that mimicked a softening filter. 

Other DPs, like Erik Messerschmidt, have also mentioned their preference for shooting a clean image and then imposing a filtered effect during the colour grade, such as on The Killer where he used a Da Vinci Resolve plugin called Scatter to get a Pro-Mist like halation effect which he could carefully control to his liking. 

WHEN NOT TO USE DIFFUSION

Although, on average, cinematographers like to shoot with a low strength halation softening filter like an 1/8th Pro Mist, 1/8th Glimmer Glass or a Black Satin 1, there are some occasions where they may want to remove it altogether.

This is often done when shooting in bright environments with a lot of reflected light - for example on a white, sandy beach or in the snow. Adding diffusion may push highlights into blowing out and therefore cause a loss of detail.

When light is shined directly through a filter and into a lens, it may flare in undesirable ways, or create a ghosting effect where a distracting outline of the filter itself is superimposed over the image.

Although the current trend is to pair digital cameras with a light diffusion filter, ultimately the decision comes down to the taste of the filmmaker and the story they are trying to tell - where some may be better suited to a hard, sharp, clean look, while others may benefit from a glossy, soft, blooming haze.

5 Trademark Christopher Nolan Camera Techniques

INTRODUCTION

Christopher Nolan is probably the most well known director working today. His movies use non-linear storytelling, practical effects, powerful, immersive music and impactful setpieces to tell subjective, human centred stories.

His filmography has been split by his work with two different cinematographers: his earlier films with Wally Pfister and his more recent movies with Hoyte Van Hoytema. Through these different collaborations, he, as a director, has carried a few visual techniques across most of his films.

Let’s take a look at 5 of those camera techniques today and break down how he pulls them off.   

1 - ANAMORPHIC & IMAX

An important creative choice when making a movie is considering what aspect ratio, or dimensions, it should be filmed in. The two most common ratios for cinema are 1.85:1, which is pretty close to the 16:9 ratio which you’d see on YouTube, or 2.40:1 which is more of a widescreen image with black bars on the top and bottom of the frame. Although other ratios, such as 1.33, 1.66 or 2:1 also exist.

Filmmakers will almost always decide on using one aspect ratio for the entirety of the movie.

One trademark of Christopher Nolan’s films is that he often cuts to shots with two different taller or wider aspect ratios during the movie, and even, sometimes, during the same scene.

The reason he does this is because he likes to use the native aspect ratios, without cropping, from the two different camera formats he shoots on. These formats are either the wider anamorphic format, or the taller Imax format.

The anamorphic format uses specially designed lenses, which capture images with a squeezed compression that can later be de-squeezed to arrive at a highly resolved widescreen look.

Imax, on the other hand uses regular spherical lenses, however captures images on gigantic pieces of 65mm film which are 15 perforations wide - providing a taller aspect ratio and wider field of view at an unparalleled resolution quality.

“Our film tries to take you into his experience and Imax, for me, is a portal into a level of immersion that you can’t get from other formats.” - Christopher Nolan

Throughout his career Nolan has favoured wider anamorphic capture, with its oval bokeh, distortion and falloff on the edges of the frame, for capturing more traditional dialogue sequences. 

Then he switched to Imax cameras to capture setpieces without dialogue, such as chase sequences, stunts, or aerial establishing shots.   

Although Imax was designed to capture vistas and expansive, wide spaces with impeccable resolution, Nolan has also subverted this expectation in his recent work by also using this large format to capture intimate close ups and personal moments: trying to convert nuances in performance into a cinematic spectacle.

2 - ROLLED CAMERA

There are three different ways or axes, to position and move the camera: pan, tilt and roll. A pan - that moves the camera from side to side - and a tilt - that moves the camera up and down - are both very common and can be done with a regular tripod.

The third axis of movement, roll, is however much more unusual and infrequently used. 

Usually shots are framed with a level horizon, however sometimes filmmakers decide to rotate the camera on its roll axis. Many times this is done with a 3-axis remote head - a tool that holds the camera and can roll it over and position the camera on its side by an operator who controls it wirelessly.

This remote head can also be attached to a crane or technocrane, if the shot needs to push forward or move around within a space.  

He used this remote head and Technocrane setup on Inception but went a step further by even rolling the dream world of the film over on itself. This was done by constructing a set in a soundstage which could be rotated. 

3 - ARM CARS & HARD MOUNTS

An aspect of his blockbuster filmmaking that Nolan is well known for are his use of vehicles in big chase or action set pieces. 

When filming these sequences he’ll mainly stick to using two camera techniques. Firstly, he’ll lock off the camera in hard mounted shots attached to the vehicle. Or, secondly, he’ll use an arm car or some kind of tracking vehicle to get shots that move on the road with the picture car.

“What I wanted to do was really explore the experience of watching an action film. Try and build this big screen, very immersive experience and find a reason for an audience to watch a car chase again.” - Christopher Nolan

Hard mounts are achieved by rigging the camera directly onto the picture vehicle, whether that be a plane, a car, or a spaceship. This maintains the same frame on a character, letting us view their reactions and get inside their head while the background flies past. These shots can feel quite immersive and real, since, well, they are real. 

Audiences are placed directly in the cockpit or driver’s seat and feel all the little, realistic vibrations and reflections as the vehicle moves. These little nuances are part of why Nolan pushes to shoot these stunts practically, rather than using visual effects.

To get wider shots outside which establish the vehicle and action within the world and give a visceral speed to shots, he often uses an arm car. This is a specially equipped, fast driving vehicle, which has a crane arm mounted on its roof to which a remote head is attached with the camera.

Operating this shot requires a few key crew members: one, a stunt driver who drives the car, two, a technician who moves the position of the arm, three, the DP or operator who pans, tilts or rolls the camera's position on the remote head to get the right frame, and four, the 1st AC who rolls the camera, wirelessly adjusts camera settings and controls where the focus is.

4 - KODAK FILM

Unlike most productions nowadays that opt to shoot on digital cinema cameras, Christopher Nolan has a deep love for shooting on film: whether that be 35mm or large format 65mm stock. 

“Film, I think, is uniquely suited to pulling an audience into a subjective experience. Film gives you a depth to the image that I find inherently more emotionally powerful and more accessible.” - Christopher Nolan

He favours the way that the emulsion captures colour, or in the case of black and white, how it captures monochromatic hues. He’s used this on movies like Memento and Oppenheimer as a tool to delineate between the different timelines as the movies weave around their nonlinear narratives.

This black and white work has always been captured in different gauges of Eastman Double-X, from 16mm on Following, to 35mm on Memento, and even getting Kodak to specially upsize the film to 65mm for Oppenheimer.

The rest of his colour work he’s captured on Kodak Vision stocks, mainly using 50D or 250D to capture exterior scenes in natural sunlight, and 500T for darker interiors or night scenes.    

Although the grain is a large part of the film look, because he normally captures in either anamorphic or Imax (which both have very low visible grain), his movies tend to have a fairly clean look, with the exception being his debut feature which he shot on the more inexpensive but grainier 16mm format. 

5 - HANDHELD

A camera technique that Nolan has used in most of his work is handheld. It may have several different practical or emotional purposes depending on the context it's used in, but I’d argue that one of its key uses is as a tool to tell the story from a particular point of view. 

“I’m really interested in cinema’s ability to give you different points of view and multiple points of view within a single film. I’ve always really been fascinated by that relationship between the storytelling in movies and how it works and the way it aligns you with different characters.” - Christopher Nolan

Shooting a far off aerial landscape presents the frame and establishes the space from a more detached, objective point of view. Whereas, a subtle handheld camera, shooting over a character’s shoulder, places the audience subjectively right into the shoes of the character. 

Even with all the high tech toys he has available, Nolan often decides to shoot handheld in this way: moving in the steps of characters as they do, shooting over their shoulder, or framing up singles on characters with a subtle, organic looseness that aligns the audience with their point of view or places them in the same visceral moment that the character themself is experiencing.

10 Tools & Consumables That Every Filmmaker Needs

INTRODUCTION

To capture images, filmmakers not only need a bunch of camera, grips and lighting gear, but also all the bits and bobs that assemble and hold everything together. That’s why today I’m going to go over 10 commonly used tools and consumables which are present on almost every professional film set. 

TOOLS VS. CONSUMABLES

Quickly before we get going, we need to understand the difference between tools and consumables and who usually brings them to set.

Very simply, tools can be used over an extended period of time to assist in assembling gear or to aid the filmmaking process. Consumables serve much the same purpose, but, as their name suggests they are perishable and need to be restocked or replaced over time as they are used up.

On an industry film set, technicians will usually own and carry a kit with their own tools in a unit bag, which helps make their lives easier. For example, a 1st AC may carry items like allen keys, wrenches, magic arms, spigots, cine locks, and screwdrivers - which they will use to assemble and build the camera.

On long form jobs like movies or series, consumables are usually requested by technicians and purchased by production. Whereas on short form shoots, like music videos or commercials, typically these items will be supplied by a technician who purchases these items themselves and rents it out to the production at a daily rate.

For example, a 2nd AC, will bring along a unit bag complete with items such as different shades of gaffer tape, dust off or velcro cable ties.    

1 - GAFFER TAPE 

Gaffer tape, quite literally, holds shoots together.  

This adhesive tape comes in a few variations: the most common, all purpose, being the wider 2 inch black, or sometimes white, gaffer tape. This high tensile, matte tape sticks to almost any surface without moisture and can be used for a number of varying applications by the camera, grips and lighting department. Whether that’s sealing a weather bag on a camera, taping down a power cable, performing a quick fix on technical equipment, or covering a stand to stop it reflecting light. 

Then, there is the narrower 1 inch gaffer tape, which comes in a variety of colours. This is usually used by the 2nd AC in the camera department to mark media or film magazines with a roll number, to apply to a slate where permanent text can be written, such as the production company or title of the movie, to give actors an eyeline mark to indicate where they need to look, to create tracking marks that can be used for visual effects, or to mark the position an actor needs to stand in. 

When marking actors on a long form job, a different colour is used for each character, so that actors can easily identify their colour and where they need to stand. The first lead is usually given a red mark, the second lead a blue mark, and so it goes. Likewise red gaffer tape is usually used on the A camera, and blue tape used for the B camera.

Other types of tape also exist, such as paper tape, which is thinner, lighter and may leave less of an adhesive mark on surfaces. Black paper tape is used by camera assistants to flag or block light from hitting and flaring a lens by attaching it to a matte box. It’s used because this tape has a black colour on both sides, unlike gaffer tape which has a white adhesive side which may, undesirably, reflect more light.

2 - T-BAR

One of the most used tools in an AC’s kit is a T-Bar. This is a flat screwdriver head, which is attached to a T-shaped grip. It’s used by the camera department for any assembling or disassembling of equipment parts.

For example, screwing a baseplate into the bottom sliding plate of a camera. This baseplate can then get attached to a tripod head.

The reason this T-shaped grip is normally favoured, instead of a normal screwdriver, is that it allows ACs to turn screws with more torque and have more leverage to really tighten screws, or untighten difficult to turn screws.

The security of this connection is especially important for certain rigs, such as on an arm car, where lots of violent vibrations may loosen the connection over time if the screws aren’t secured tightly.    

3 - MULTI-TOOL

Most grips, sparks or ACs will carry around some form of multi-tool on their gear belt.

The advantage of a multi-tool is that it’s easy to access and fast - and on a film set saving time with technical fixes is the name of the game.

There are many things that these tools can be used for: from having a quickly accessible star and a flat screwdriver for adjustmenting screws on the camera, to using the knife for cutting lighting gels, or using the pliers to loosen a stubborn, overly tightened piece of gear.

4 - BONGO TIES

Bongo ties are part fashion accessory for camera assistants to wear around their wrists and part consumable. These all purpose ties are made of rubber which can wrap around something, with a bamboo button end that the rubber latches onto.

This makes it easy to tie and release things, such as binding cables together for better management, wrapping a waterproof cover around a mattebox, or tethering a video cable to a dolly.

These ties usually last quite a while until the rubber eventually snaps, or until, more often than not, they end up in someone else's kit at the end of the day.  

5 - DUST OFF

Cleaning filters or lenses is an important procedure which needs to be done with special care - since this glass is very pricey and can’t afford to be scratched. 

The first step in this process, before you apply any lens cleaner or wipe it, is to blow pressurised air at the lens to remove any specs of dust or dirt which may cause scratches if wiped with a cloth.

Dust-off is also used by the camera department for cleaning little sand particles which get lodged in difficult to reach crevices on the camera. This dust collects when shooting in an exterior location such as a farm or a beach. Pressurised air can also be used to spray off water droplets that collect on the filter or lens when shooting in the rain.

Dust-off comes in a can. A burst of pressurised air is released by pushing down on a nozzle. They come in two varieties: one with a fixed valve, and another, which is usually more popular in the film industry, has a removable nozzle which can be re-used with multiple cans of compressed air.

6 - LENS CLEANER

Once the lens or filter is clear of dust particles the next step is to wipe away any smudges. To do this, filmmakers use a lens fluid and a lens cloth. The most common lens fluid is called Panchro, which is basically a rubbing alcohol, which you can spray on to remove smudges, grease or dirt from glass.

Once this is applied you then need to clean it with a lens cloth. This could be something like a selvyt or a microfibre cloth - which can be washed and re-used after cleaning. Some also like to use lens tissue or cleaning paper, which is a consumable that can only be used once. 

7 - ALLEN KEYS

Along with the T-bar, another common tool used by the camera department for building and breaking down cameras are allen keys. Many camera cages and components have hexagonal screws in mounting points that need to be locked or unlocked with allen keys. For example, when derigging the cage on an Alexa Mini and attaching a top and bottom sliding plate for a gimbal. 

Camera assistants will carry around a full set of these tools in case they run into any odd sized screw, however, the two most common and standardised thread sizes for camera components are either 3/16th or 5/32 inch variations.

Many assistants like to carry T handle versions of these 2 sizes as they are quicker and easier to work with and offer more torque to release tightly secured screws. 

8 - DUAL LOCK

To make camera builds nice and compact, assistants will try to attach the accessories as close to the body as possible - which may mean trying to get rid of too many bulky magic arms.

A solution to sticking smaller objects, such as a tiny timecode sync tentacle, directly to the camera’s cage or body is to use dual lock.

This has one sticky side which can strongly bind to a surface, such as a camera cage or a tentacle, and another side with a sort of grooved, interlocking velcro. When these two interlocking sides are pushed together they provide durable and reliable fastening - while also being able to release or connect together multiple times.

9 - CROC CLIPS

If gaffer tape is the most used consumable on set, probably the second most used one, at least by the lighting department, are croc clips. Croc, or crocodile, clips are metallic pegs which are primarily designed to attach lighting gels to barn doors - without melting or slipping, even when exposed to the high temperatures created by these large lights.

Most sparks will also carry around a few of these croc clips on their person for any minor rigging tweaks to gels or textiles, like clamping a wrapped duvetyne around a stand or clipping diffusion gel onto a window frame.

The camera department may also carry some of these useful clips and use them for any clamping that needs to be done. Such as clipping a black and white protective cover over the camera when it’s not being used.

10 - RAIN COVER 

Although some shoots may take place indoors, entirely under the safety of a roof, for other shoots that involve shooting outdoors it’s good practice to have some kind of rain bag at the ready just in case the heavens decide to open up. 

This could take the form of a reusable backpack cover, which can be clipped over the camera to protect it, while shooting in a very light drizzle. Or, if there is more heavy rain a plastic rain bag will be used to protect the camera.

This translucent plastic bag is a consumable, which will be placed over the camera, with the opening facing the ground. The team will then tightly secure the bag around the mattebox, usually with one of those bongo ties that we mentioned, and then cut a hole so that only the lens opening side of the mattebox is exposed to the elements.

This will keep the camera nice and dry, and the electronics safe from harm.

How Cinematographers Spend Their Gear Budget

INTRODUCTION

Cinematographers are hired partly for their artistic capabilities, and partly for their technical and management skills. It’s fun to talk about creating beautiful images, but what’s less discussed is the logistical and financial processes that go unseen by audiences. 

So, in this video let me invite you behind the scenes and guide you through how exactly DPs select, rent gear, and allocate the camera budget based on my own experience as a working cinematographer.  

EQUIPMENT RENTAL

The gear that you see on film sets is more often than not rented out for each production, rather than purchased, by whatever production company is organising the shoot. 

This gear will need to be sourced for rental from a gear owner, who is typically either a rental house, such as Arri Media, Panavision, or a smaller, locally owned rental business, or is rented directly through a crew member who owns gear, such as the focus puller, the gaffer, or even the DP.  

GEAR LIST

The decision as to what technical gear is required for each shoot is decided upon by the cinematographer. It’s their job to liaise with the line producer, production manager, or responsible person working for the production company, and often with the rental company too, to come up with a list of equipment that will be used to shoot the production based on the budget.

In order for this financial negotiation to take place, the first step is for the DP to create a list of all the technical equipment they will require, which is called a ‘gear list’.

This list will be broken down into three sections based on the three technical departments which are run by the DP: a camera gear list, a lighting gear list and a grips gear list.

The equipment for camera will be run and managed by the 1st AC or focus puller, and is mainly made up of the camera itself, the lenses and all the necessary accessories needed for running the camera package, such as the follow focus.

The lighting gear list, which is managed by the gaffer and their team, will include all the lamps, textiles, and, in the British system, the stands needed to set up and rig these lights. However, in the US system, any stands and rigging gear will usually fall under grips.

Any gear needed to move or position the camera, such as a dolly, slider, crane or apple boxes, will fall into the grips gear list and will be managed by the key grip.

This list of gear will be written down by the DP, usually in the form of a spreadsheet or document, and sent on to the production team.

As I’ve mentioned many times in my Cinematography Style series, the exact gear that is selected will be determined by a number of factors, most notably: what kind of shots need to be executed, the look that the filmmakers want to create, the budget that they have to hire gear, and how many crew will be on set.

This crew consideration is especially important. If it’s a documentary shoot where you’re working by yourself then you’ll need gear that is easy to set up and use as a solo operator. 

Or if it’s a low budget feature with one gaffer and one spark, then you can’t rent a million lights as they’ll take too long to set up.

The challenge of assembling a gear list is to select only the gear that you know you’ll be able to realistically use without carrying a lot of dead weight around, while at the same time having enough equipment to be able to adapt to most shot requests that the director may make.

WRITING A GEAR LIST

Everyone works differently, but my usual process is as follows. After meeting with the director, reading the script, or taking in their visual treatment, I’ll assemble a rough gear list which estimates the gear package. 

Often this selection will be based on similar past gear lists I’ve made before. For long form projects I may also go into a rental house and do camera, lens and filter tests to find a look I’m happy with.

As pre-production commences, a recce will be organised. This where the director, DP and the HODs, will visit the locations which will be used. At this stage, new ideas for shots may emerge, and you’ll be able to see more clearly the spaces that you will need to light and the camera moves you’ll need to do.

The gaffer and key grip who attend this recce, will then also be able to provide gear recommendations for the kinds of technical setups you are imagining. 

Additional equipment may be added to the rough gear list at this stage, for example getting blackout to shoot certain spaces day for night, or adding items like a ladderpod if the directors decide they need a high perspective shot.

Some cinematographers' lists may be more prescriptive and detailed than others. For example, many DP’s lighting gear lists may just note the lamps and textiles that they want to use, then leave the addition of the accessories, such as the stands, power generation, distribution packages, sandbags and other details about rigging, or selection of the brand of the lamp, for the gaffer to determine and organise. 

Others may like to be very specific about exactly what gear they want, down to what brand of ND filter they require, or the exact make of an on-board monitor they want to use. 

After the recce, DPs will want to start finalising their gear list, and send this through to production who will begin the financial calculations and negotiations. 

DISCOUNTS

The rule of thumb when it comes to gear rental where I’m from is that each item of gear comes with a set daily rental cost - however, this day rate is rarely the final amount which is paid by the production company.

Gear rental is usually quite negotiable. Quotes will usually display the full cost item of each piece of gear, then apply a discount percentage to reduce the amount.

I can’t speak to other regions but where I work, I’d say an average discount rate for short form or commercial gear rental is about 40%, whereas long form or feature discounts are usually higher at around 60%.

Although depending on the length and scale of the job, these discounts may vary. 

Most rented items will have their own, individual rental rate, even down to clamps or c-stands, but some items will come as a kit, such as a camera package, which may include things like recording media, a cage, and a dovetail plate.

Some rental companies also only offer lenses to be rented as part of a full kit and prohibit breaking up the lenses into individual focus lengths.

For long form jobs that operate in terms of the number of shoot weeks, as opposed to shoot days, discounts are sometimes applied in terms of how many days per week will be billed for.

A standard deal would be to bill for the gear for 4 day weeks. In other words, for each week of shooting, each item will only be invoiced for 4 shoot days, even if the production is shooting 6 days per week.

PACKAGE DEAL

Another approach to sourcing gear is for the producers to try and get what’s called a ‘package deal’.

In this case, the producer will approach a gear rental company with the list that has been supplied by the DP, and provide them with the line item for gear on their budget: so, the camera, grips, and lighting gear that they have budgeted for.

Basically, they will offer to pay their full gear budget to the rental company, ask for the listed gear in exchange, in the hope that the rental company will provide the necessary discount to arrive at their budget.

If the discount is too heavy, this may involve discussions with the DP about losing or replacing some of the items of gear, until a deal is found for both sides.

RENTAL HOUSES VS CREW RENTAL

If the gear is rented from crew members instead of a rental company, the crew will be asked by production to provide said gear at the same discounted, matched rate that the rental house would’ve rented the gear at.

BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS

On top of this, there are some other financial considerations to take into account when renting gear. One, is that insurance will need to be paid. This is so that if the equipment is damaged or stolen during the shoot, then insurance can be paid out to cover what may otherwise be a very expensive cost to replace the item.

Sometimes, gear rental companies will even kindly offer gear for free for passion projects without much of a budget. In these cases the only thing they will require is that the insurance fee for the gear is paid.

It’s also important to consider the downstream implications of your camera selection. It’s easy to want to shoot on an Alexa 35, but will your DIT be able to handle the speed of data transfers that this requires? How long will it take to transcode this footage? Is the production able to afford the hard drive space to store the media? 

If working with a lower budget in post it’s important to think about this before shooting on a camera that will be impractical or unfeasible.     

GEAR AVAILABILITY

Another factor when sourcing gear is its availability. Not all rental houses will have every piece of gear under the sun. For example, Arri Media won’t be able to provide Panavision lenses, which are solely rented out by Panavision and not sold.

A solution to this is to of course source gear from multiple vendors, however often, producers will try to rent the entire gear package from a single rental company - as bigger discounts are possible when rental houses are approached with a full budget, rather than part of one. 

CONSUMABLES

Consumables are another line item in the budget relating to gear. These are perishable items which are needed on the set by technical crew: such as gaffer tape, dust off, or croc clips. 

For long form jobs, each department will be given a budget for consumables, and sometimes, on short form jobs, crew members, such as the 2nd AC, will purchase their own consumables kit and rent it out to production for a daily rate.

CONCLUSION

Having a relationship with rental companies is an important part of being a cinematographer. It’s a reciprocal bond, where if you’re able to bring them work for some of the bigger jobs, they will likely be more inclined to grant discounts or give out free gear when your next passion project comes around.

Cinematography Style: Rob Hardy

INTRODUCTION

Rather than dissecting a movie into its various parts, Rob Hardy’s approach to cinematography is to craft an environment on set for the actors which gets as close to the world of the film that is being shot, through both his selection and application of technical gear, as well as his broader philosophy.

Let’s unpack this a bit further by looking at the work of Rob Hardy in this edition of cinematography style. 

PHILOSOPHY

One of the ideas at the core of Rob Hardy’s cinematography is to translate the psychological feelings and thoughts of the characters onto the screen using images.

An example of this can be found in his early feature work on Boy A where Hardy and the director decided to play out a scene in a single take with a Steadicam rather than getting traditional dialogue coverage of it. For him, it made sense for the camera to slowly move around the action, experiencing the moment in real time, in a way which represented how the protagonist's own mind was circling the scenario, surrounded by characters, as he tried to prevent his past from catching up to him.

Or, in Shadow Dancer, where they decided on the perspective of the camera taking on that of the central protagonist and representing how much pressure she was under through either the proximity or detachment of the camera. 

Or, how the camera in Civil War takes on an on-the-ground perspective that moves with characters when shooting action scenes - in a photojournalistic style reminiscent of how the characters themselves are experiencing the moment. 

These are just some examples of him using the camera to translate a psychological moment, feeling or idea onto the screen.

As he likes taking the story and the underlying emotions in the screenplay into account first when coming up with a visual approach, Hardy, unlike many other DPs, doesn't like to use other movies as references for the look.

When working with a frequent collaborator such as director Alex Garland, conversation around the story will be the basis for the look and they’ll usually avoid visual references altogether.  

Or, in cases where he does want to communicate a visual reference, such as for the Grand Palais sequence in Mission: Impossible, he’ll instead draw from the world of art, in this case Olafur Elliason’s gallery installation piece ‘The Weather Project’.

An important aspect of filmmaking which isn’t necessarily seen on screen is creating an environment on set which suits the kind of work that is being done. Whether that’s honing in on a focused energy from crew for a technical long take, a more lighthearted, jovial mood for a comedy, or a more serious atmosphere for dramatic scripts. The biggest contributing factor to curating this energy around the camera is through choosing the HODs of the various departments on the set, such as the gaffer or key grip, and the team that they bring onto the set.  

“It’s easy for someone to walk onto set and do something at absolutely the wrong time. Having a sense of awareness is very, very important. Everybody learns that through doing jobs together and the more jobs you do together obviously the tighter of a team you become. So, I’ll always push to work with specific people.”

Creating an environment that is conducive to the kind of energy in the story, applies not only to crew, but also to creating the right feeling with of course, the set design, and also, for the DP, the lighting.

Rather than taking a more old school approach of breaking scenes into the specific shots that will be covered, then giving actors specific marks and lighting those exact points that they will land on with a precise kind of light, Hardy likes to instead light the entirety of the space that the scene will take place in.

This gives the actors the freedom and room to move wherever best suits their performance in that space. It also makes it easy for the filmmakers to make adjustments or implement new ideas on the fly without having to spend lots of time re-lighting specific marks. If you go in with the philosophy of lighting the entire space it makes it much easier to quickly reposition the camera anywhere within that environment.    

“If you light a room, if you light a space, and you give it a feeling, that when the actors walk into that space they’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ It exists, you know. It doesn’t exist as a series of shots or an abstract sequence, it exists as a space. It’s a playground then for the director and the actors to really exploit that space.”

GEAR

One continuous thread across his lighting is his persistent use of tungsten lights. These are a bit old school and generally aren’t used today as often by cinematographers as they create a lot of heat, aren’t bi-colour or RGB, change to a warmer temperature when dimmed and require large amounts of power to run. However, they are favoured for their high quality output of warm 3,200K light.

A popular choice for a high output fixture these days is an HMI, while various LEDs are often used for fill, practicals or a soft, ambient lift.

However, Hardy likes using tungsten fixtures instead, such as: a massive 24K, Wendy lights, Dinos, or Par Cans. 

Most DPs light studio sets these days with overhead LED panels and LED practicals which are embedded directly into the set. On movies like Ex Machina he instead decided to use a huge amount of tungsten bulbs as practicals, 15,000 in fact, which were built into floors, ceilings and walls behind a diffused perspex.

When these 3,200K lights are shot with a 5,600K colour balance on the camera, or a daylight film stock, they will have a beautiful warmth. Because there are so many bulbs, which are spread over a larger surface area and hidden behind diffusion, rather than lighting from a direct, single source, the light has a beautiful, soft, diffused quality to it.  

If a cooler look is desired from these warm, tungsten lights, he would then either balance the colour temperature in camera by changing it to record at a neutral base such as 3,200K, or a slightly warmer base such as 4,300K. 

Or, he sometimes balances the lights themselves, cooling them down to a daylight colour temperature by adding a blue CTB gel in front of the light. 

Even his recently released studio work, such as Devs, uses the same idea of lighting with loads of tungsten fixtures. In this case, a combination of ceiling and floor mounted tungsten bulbs, such as nine lights and par cans, were reflected off the textured, gold tiled set walls. 

These were run through a board that could dim various lights up and down to create shimmering, golden reflections.

After only shooting on film for the first half of his career, he finally had to make the move into working with a digital cinema camera in 2015 on Ex Machina. Instead of going with far and away the most popular high end camera manufacturer of the time, Arri, he made the unusual call to shoot on the Sony F65. 

Hardy often talks about wanting the camera to see and represent what he sees with his own eye, and, for him, the F65’s true reproduction of colour stuck out as the best way of capturing the movie.

He continued shooting on Sony cameras, using the larger F65 for studio mode shots and the lighter F55 for Steadicam or shots which needed a lighter build. He later replaced this with the newer Sony Venice upon its release.

He has also paired these Sony cameras with other cameras which are always chosen for a specific purpose. Whether that be shooting at higher resolutions with the Red Weapon Dragon, or handing out the light DJI 4-D with its in-built 4-axis gimbal to loads of on the ground operators to get stabilised, documentary style coverage of action scenes.

He often pairs his camera selection with older anamorphic lenses - which have optical imperfections and a bit more character than super sharp, optically perfect, modern lenses.

Sometimes those are Panavision anamorphics, such as the C-series or E-Series, and other times, such as on Ex Machina he chose the vintage Xtal Express anamorphics - which have lots of distortion and falloff towards the edges of the frame.

“We shot the film anamorphically and we settled on these old Cooke Xtal Express lenses. They’re basically like old, rehouse Cooke Speed Panchro spherical lenses. So, the reason I picked them was that it became about personality. If you choose a 32mm for a certain scene, it’s not because you want to go wider, its because you want that feeling of this 32mm which is off the scale in terms of its personality.”

He favours wide to mid focal length anamorphics - most often using a 35mm, 40mm or 50mm. 

When shooting digitally, like most DPs, he likes using a light diffusion filter - like this BTS photo which shows him using a 1/8th Black Pro Mist filter. This filter takes the edge off digital images, blooms highlights in a subtle, filmic way and washes out the mid tones a bit.

CONCLUSION

Whether it’s his method of lighting the entire space of the set, curating the crew that is there, or selecting the camera package and LUT which will provide colour which is true to his eye - his method is always on getting the set to feel as close to the world of the film as possible.

From there it’s then a matter of bottling that feeling, so that what is captured by the camera mimics the tone of the story and impacts the audience in a real way.

Trick For Shooting Interviews With Only 1 Light

INTRODUCTION

A cinematographer’s biggest enemy are images which look flat. The best way to counteract this is by introducing contrast: which can either be done by using different areas of light and shadow, or by using different colours.

So, let’s take a look at a specific type of colour contrast in an interview setting: warm and cool tones, and show how you can very simply create images like this by using only a single film light. 

COLOUR TEMPERATURE

When an object is heated to a high enough temperature, it emits light. This light can fall across a range of different colours - and is commonly measured through the unit Kelvin.

A lower Kelvin value represents light sources which are considered warmer: for example an incandescent light bulb. Whereas cooler or more neutral sources of light, like sunlight, will have a higher kelvin value.

Although there are a whole host of different light sources that can be used which come with a diverse range of cooler and warmer colour temperatures, I’d say there are 2 main Kelvin values which are most often used by filmmakers.

The most popular warm light source is what we call ‘tungsten’ - which has a value around 3,200K - the value that old tungsten filament incandescent bulbs give off. 

The other popular cooler light source is ‘daylight’ - at 5,600K it’s the approximate temperature of natural sunlight.

Before LED lights, which are now capable of easily changing to a range of different colour temperatures, most film lights either emitted tungsten light or daylight. Whether that was the warmer incandescent bulbs, fresnels, par cans or dinos, or the cooler daylight kino flo bulbs, HMIs, or even the sun itself.

Because of this, film stocks were designed to capture light at either a 3,200K tungsten balance, or a 5,600K daylight balance. These same Kelvin balances can be found on digital cameras, as well as giving you the option to dial in a custom Kelvin value anywhere in between.

However, many cinematographers still stick to filming with the camera colour temperature set to either 3,200K or 5,600K.   

WHITE BALANCE

Let’s take a look at what happens when you shoot cameras in different lighting conditions at these two different Kelvin bases.

If we set the colour temperature on a camera to be 5,600K and we light it with natural sunlight that also has a Kelvin value of 5,600K, then the image will have true, natural colour.

However, if we keep the camera at 5,600K and instead light with a 3,200K source, then the image will appear warm.

But, if we keep this warm light and change the colour balance on the camera to 3,200K then, again, the colour will be captured with a true and natural look.

However, if we take that same camera set to 3,200K back outside under natural sunlight, then the image will be cool. 

COLOUR CONTRAST

If we circle back to the beginning, I mentioned how cinematographers often make footage more interesting by lighting with different colour temperatures in the same frame - to create contrast.

If those different colours are placed at different planes of depth, it can also make images feel a bit more three dimensional.

An easy way to apply this idea is to light the subject in the foreground with light that has a different colour temperature to the light that is in the background. 

For example, lighting the subject with a lamp that is a warmer 3,200K, and lighting the background with a cooler 5,600K light.

One of the reasons that this is quite visually pleasing is due to complementary colour theory. 

If you look at a colour wheel, complementary colours are those which are opposite each other. Because of this contrast they are often viewed as being visually pleasing when placed next to each other. So a green and a red are complementary, or, for the sake of this video, a warmer, orange colour and a cooler, blue colour are complementary. 

TUNGSTEN INTERVIEW SETUP

For this first interview setup we’re going to set the colour balance on our camera to 3,200K in the menu. Then we’re going to place our subject in a room, and turn off the house lights, so that she is only illuminated by the natural ambient sunlight coming through the windows.

Because the camera is set to 3,200K and the light source is about 5,600K the image will have a cool colour tint to it. So, even though we haven’t set up any film lights yet, we already have a nice monochromatic blue that we can use - compliments of the sun.

In order to get a natural looking skin tone I want to set up our light to have the same colour temperature as the colour balance on the camera - so 3,200K. To soften the light quality of the 500C I’m going to attach a softbox to the front of it, then to make those shadows even more gentle and pretty I’m going to shine the light through a second layer of silk diffusion which I’ve rigged to a stand.

The issue now is that, although the key light on the subject looks nice and soft and natural, our film light is also hitting the wall in the background of our shot. If you’re going for more of a high key look then this may work, but since I want to create a bit more colour contrast it’s an issue, since the 3,200K film light overpowers the natural 5,600K sunlight in the background.

I’d also like for the background to feel a little bit darker to create more of a light and dark contrast between the subject and background.

I’m going to use a trick called flagging the light. All this means is that I want to stop the light from hitting the back wall, yet still have the light hit the subject. To do this I’ve very simply rigged some blackout on the one side - so that it blocks the light from hitting the background.

So there we have it, a simple interview shot with the camera set to 3,200K, the key light also set to 3,200K and letting the 5,600K natural ambience from the sun fill in the background.

DAYLIGHT INTERVIEW SETUP

I’m going to shoot our second interview setup at night, using the same idea of colour contrast, but just flipping things around a bit. Here, I’ve set the colour balance on the camera to 5,600K.

Technically I’m actually going to use more than one light here, but these lights are not film lights. They are what we call practicals - lights built into the set which can be seen in the shot. For example a lamp and an incandescent ceiling house light.

To my eye these pracs actually look to be a bit warmer than 3,200K, but they’re somewhere around that ballpark. Since the camera is set to 5,600K and these are around 3,200K they will read much warmer than neutral light.

Then, like I did in the previous setup, I want the key light to be the same as the camera’s colour balance - 5,600K - with our practicals in the background somewhere around 3,200K. 

Another reason for placing a secondary light source, like a practical or natural sunlight, in the background of the shot, behind the subject, besides creating a colour contrast, is because it gives a subtle back light to the subject, which will help to create a bit more separation and depth in the frame.

As I did last time I’ve also flagged the key light off the back wall to make the background a bit darker and better emphasise the colour contrast.

There we go. Two different, simple setups that both use one film lamp and play with the idea of colour temperature to create frames with a bit more depth and contrast.

The Art Of The Long Take

INTRODUCTION

If each cut in a movie can be compared to taking a breath, then doing a long take is like closing your mouth, pinching your nose and seeing how long you can go on one lungful of air. 

On average, editors and directors will cut to a new shot around every 3 seconds. However, sometimes filmmakers prolong this by shooting and holding on a single shot for 3 minutes, 5 minutes or even an unbelievable 87 minutes at a time.

In this video let’s take a look at what makes long takes effective, why filming these shots can be challenging, and identify the various ways and pieces of equipment which can be used to pull them off.

If you’ve been on a film set you’ll know that sometimes even the simplest looking shots on paper, can be incredibly challenging to pull off. So, what are some reasons why filmmakers make their lives more difficult by even bothering to try ambitious long takes? 

IMMERSION

The longer a shot plays out in real time, the more of an immersive experience it provides. This allows audiences to engage with sequences with a sense of real-time continuity. This can feel a bit more realistically representative and true to how we experience time in real life, rather than movies which chop up actions into loads of tiny little pieces and fragments of time.

Like this famous 4 minute long take from Children Of Men, which plays out some lighthearted, human moments, before gradually ramping up the action into a tense, immersive chase sequence - which all takes place in real-time in a single shot. 

“Part of the reason we chose to tell Children Of Men in very fluid, long takes was to take advantage of the element of real time.” - Alfonso Cuarón, Director, Children Of Men

For this reason, long takes are sometimes used in action or even dialogue sequences to make audiences feel engaged and like they are watching things unfold more viscerally in real-time. 

At the beginning I compared editing to breathing - which can either be done with slow, deep, relaxed breaths which are spaced apart, with short, choppy, panicked gasps for air, or, in the case of long takes, by holding a breath for an extended period of time.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT

How filmmakers space out cuts has an unconscious emotional impact on audiences. Prolonging cutting - or withholding the audience from taking a breath - can be a great tool for building a feeling of tension, anticipation and intensifying emotional moments.

Hunger holds on a locked shot of a key dialogue scene between two characters for an incredible 17 minutes - intensifying the drama, giving the dialogue a real-time rhythm and locking the audience's focus in as the scene builds a powerful atmosphere.

“Once you cut away then you give the audience an excuse. It’s no longer real. It becomes a film at that point. But if the shot carries on then there is no escape. The audience, if they’re engaged with the story and engaged with the characters, are drawn deeper and deeper into that scene by not cutting. It actually heightens the emotional impact of the story, by giving you nothing else.” - Sean Bobbitt, Cinematographer, Hunger

BUILDING THE WORLD

 Another effect which long takes may have is to build the world of the story, the space it takes place in, and the characters which inhabit that world. By having the camera flow with characters through a space, it can both introduce the location itself to the audience as well as how different characters interact with each other, what their relationships are and the hierarchy or power dynamic that exists between them all without interruption.

SUBJECTIVE VS OBJECTIVE LONG TAKES

Filmmakers can also use long takes to tell the story in one of two styles: a more subjective style, where the camera is latched mainly onto one, or a couple, of characters, as they move through a space, like this 4 minute shot from Goodfellas, or in a more objective style like the opening shot of Boogie Nights, where the camera flows from an establishing shot, into showing various different members of the ensemble cast as the camera progressively roams around a nightclub. 

These two ways of shooting long takes are informed by the director’s overall perspective on the story. One contains voice over narration by and is mainly seen through the eyes of a single protagonist. The other alternates between various storylines and scenes between various characters and their relationships throughout the movie.

Now that we know some of the reasons filmmakers may have for wanting to shoot these extended shots, what are the different ways in which these shots can be pulled off?

STATIONARY CAMERA

The most technically simple long take technique is to film a shot from a stationary camera position which is either locked off, or operated based on the movements of characters.

These stationary shots will be filmed from a tripod head, which could be attached to various bases depending on the height of the shot required and the gear available. Most commonly this base support would either be tripod legs, a dolly which is locked into position, or a hi-hat for shots which need the camera to be positioned low to the ground.

CAMERA MOVEMENT

The second, and probably most common way of doing a long take is by employing camera movement. There are a wide variety of ways to do this and it’s very situational depending on the quality of the movement, the position of the camera and what gear will be most practical for the operator and technicians. 

The method that requires the least gear is to film the long take handheld - most commonly by balancing it on the shoulder for increased stability, while being supported from behind by a grip to make sure the operator doesn’t topple over, trip, or hit an object when they are moving backwards.

If filmmakers want the practical flexibility that comes from being able to move a handheld camera through various spaces at different angles but with movement that is more fluid, smooth and has a bit more stability, then a great option is either a Steadicam, a Trinity or a 3-Axis Gimbal.  

For overhead long takes, a camera mounted on a remote head to a crane, a technocrane, or a cable-suspended Spidercam could also be used. This allows a camera to move pretty much anywhere vertically and horizontally within a dedicated volume of space. However, a large crane arm or overhead cabling will sometimes be limited by objects like ceilings, which means, outside of a studio, it isn’t always the best tool for long takes that need to move through an environment.

Another method that offers maximum stability is to commit to only moving the camera along one straight line. This can be done with the camera mounted on top of a tripod head on top of a dolly, which is pushed along a series of straight track lengths which are connected and levelled by grips.

Although this movement is supremely smooth it does limit the motion to one straight axis, unlike shooting handheld, with a gimbal or a Steadicam where the operator can turn corners, loop around and easily change their directional line. 

An exception to this is if the long take is shot using a dolly in a soundstage or a location with a perfectly smooth, levelled floor where the dolly can be wheeled around without needing to use tracks to get it over uneven terrain. 

COMBINED CAMERA MOVEMENTS

Finally, some filmmakers who want to employ different kinds of movement within a single shot, such as starting with a jib which moves into stabilised movement on the ground, can be done by using combined camera movements.

A popular combined camera movement is called the crane step off. This is where a Steadicam operator starts by standing on a platform on a rideable crane to which they are harnessed. The crane is then jibed around or down to the ground. 

At this moment grips will simultaneously unharness the operator and secure the crane to ensure the change in weight doesn’t cause the unbalanced crane to shoot up. The Steadicam op will then step off the platform onto the ground and continue the rest of the required motion, such as tracking with a character.   

Another combined camera movement is a gimbal pass off. Depending on the situation the gimbal or stabilised head can be rigged onto a bar and attached to some kind of tracking rig, such as a Technocrane which does a telescoping motion or a cable rig that the camera slides along. Once the gimbal comes to ground, it can be unhooked from the first rig by an operator, who can then grab the gimbal off the bar and begin a smooth motion along the ground.

Some high budget filmmakers wanting a long take with movement in unusual spaces, can enter the world of custom grip builds, such as this 2-axis dolly rig from Children of Men which was built onto the roof of the car. 

This rig could move an underslung remote head along a track both forwards and backwards and left and right. This was mounted onto the car’s cut off roof. While an operator, stationed on top of a space rigged onto the car’s roof, could also pan the camera around 360 degrees on a Sparrow Head inside the car’s interior.

The car was placed on a low loader platform that could be driven forwards and backwards by two low mounted professional drivers at the front and rear of the car, who sat out of sight of the camera.

Something interesting happens right at the end of the long take. The camera swings around, somehow exits the car door, operated with a handheld motion, and pans over without seeing any of the rigging gear or drivers.

How is this possible? The camera is hard mounted onto a remote head inside the car and cannot be easily detached? 

INVISIBLE CUT

I’d argue it was done with a technique called an invisible cut. 

This is quite a widely used trick when it comes to long takes. The idea is to actually break these sequences down into a number of different shorter shots, which are more manageable to shoot, then stitch them together in the edit. These transitions are hidden by using invisible cuts, which, if done seamlessly, will mask that there was an editing point at all. 

The easiest method of performing an invisible cut is by ending a shot on a block of solid, dark colour, cutting, then resume filming a new shot which starts on that same block of colour.

Some invisible cuts, like the ones in Rope, are quite easy to identify as they almost always involve tracking into a dark close up of an object. 

However, when this technique is combined with a wipe it can hide the cut quite effectively. A wipe is where, unlike a regular cut, the second shot gradually moves across the screen, usually from side to side, until it takes up the whole frame. 

If shot one ends with the camera tracking or panning quickly from side to side, and shot two begins with the same quick motion, and a wipe is then applied to this, sometimes with some added CGI work, this is called an invisible wipe. 

This technique has been used in movies such as Birdman, or 1917, to break up the longer takes into more manageable and easily filmable smaller shots, while maintaining the illusion that it was shot as a ‘one-er’.

RUNNING TIME

Another reason that these invisible cuts were used to stitch together shots in movies from the past, was due to the running time of 35mm film cameras. Although it depends on the film gauge and magazine size, shooting on 35mm with a 1,000ft mag, gave around 11 minutes of run time at 24 frames per second.

So the longest that a single shot could be when shooting on film was 11 minutes, unless a special magazine was used, which can accommodate more than 1,000ft of film.

Nowadays digital cameras, which record onto large capacity cards or hard drives, offer a much longer running time than physical film did and have largely made this issue irrelevant.  

WIRELESS TRANSMISSION

However, there are still plenty of technical challenges which come with shooting long takes. One of those is wireless transmission. This is required both to transmit a video signal to a monitor for the director to review the take as it unfolds, as well as for the 1st AC to evaluate focus, and to then transmit a signal from the wireless follow focus to the camera to pull said focus. 

In ordinary setups this isn’t a problem, however if the camera needs to move a great distance during a take away from where the monitor and focus puller is set up, then either a stronger transmitter will be required that transmits a further distance, or the focus puller and director will need to be close to the camera at all times during the take. 

LIGHTING

Another technical challenge is light. The more spaces a camera moves through, the more continuous lighting fixtures will need to be set up, to illuminate and balance the exposure levels, so that no area is too dark or too bright and so that the levels of natural light do not shift too much during shooting.

One way to aid with balancing exposure is to do an iris pull, where a motor on a lens’ aperture ring can be shifted during a take to either open up and make the image brighter, or stop down to darken it. If this is done slowly and subtly this effect will likely not be picked up by audiences.

It’s especially necessary when shooting exterior long takes, where the sun may go behind a cloud and darken, or come out and brighten half way through a shot. 

Another consideration with lighting is to plan the lighting and camera moves so that there is never a light source between the camera and the subject, to avoid casting a camera shadow. This is why long takes through interiors will often rely on rigging light from a higher position on the ceiling, so that shadows will be cast straight down.

Once all of these technical challenges have been figured out the real biggest challenge is actually shooting the shot: by getting both the performance and blocking of the actors, as well as the motion of the camera operator to happen, simultaneously, in perfect harmony.