Cinematography - Fight Scene

For the final fight scene between butler and Schmidt, I came up with the idea of doing the whole fight scene in a single continuous dolly shot. The actors will fight along the front entrance of the mansion and will move sideways as they fight. For the shot, I also did some choreography on Sunday for this and we did some trial runs with the actors. We plan to shoot this next week. For the shot I have the dolly along the front entrance of the mansion. And the butler and Schmidt will both be fighting with Katanas. I setup the shot so that they look like they are fighting and their swords are clashing when in reality they are far apart and their swords are far away from one another. The way I do this is to use a long lens and shoot near telephoto, so on camera it looks like their swords are clashing. Then in post we can add sound effects that exaggerates this effect.

Cinematography - Foyer

For the foyer, I decided to create a film noir look and feel, although I feel it didn't entirely work out since I didn't have a bright enough light to compete against the three 500 W downstairs. I felt that it would suit the scene better, as there was a death involved in this scene -- Rosemary's dead body. For this I made a cookie with black card stock paper, and put it in front of a single coil tungsten. For this I bought a 200 W single coil tungsten and rigged up a light bulb holder using a 20' extension cable and a light socket. For the shoots, since we could not place light stands on the stairs, I got either Cassie or Jacob to become a human light stand and hold the light + cookie in place.

Cinematography - Lightning

I came up with an idea to make the lightning seem realistic. My initial idea was to do it entirely in post, but I quickly realized that it wouldn't look real, and I wanted something that looked professional and cinematic, although I'm starting to realize that not many people in the crew really care for cinematics ;)

So my fool proof idea was to actually flicker the lights. The way that I did this is to use my 105 W CFL as the lightning. I keep this light constantly lit from the direction of the windows. Then I flicker all other lights (2 V Lights and 1 Rifa). Then in post, in the frames where the key lights are off I will bump up the exposure to make it look very bright. Since these frames are only lit by the blue CFL from the side of the windows, they will look like realistic lightning.

Cinematography - Host's Fireplace

This is perhaps my favorite shot. For this shot, I decided to create a fire in the fireplace without using real fire. I bought a 200 W tungsten bulb, and got Chris to wiggle it around in the fire place. I framed the shot so that the bulb was not seen. Then I placed another 100 W bulb in the fire place to constantly light the fireplace. These two lights simulated the fire, and cast shaodws that look like tehre was real fire in the fireplace. I also setup a cold light in front of Tim and wiggled a paper flag in front of it to create more shadows. I used my 105W CFL to setup a rim on Tim's hair to simulate moon light coming in from the windows. I set up the camera to be white balanced at 5000K, so the tungstens in the fireplace looked more orangish (more like fire). Then in post, I comped in a stock footage of fire within the fireplace to make it convincing.

Cinematography - Dining Room

The dining room which is first place where the actual story begins. It is warm, welcoming and cosy. The lighting for this scene was inspired by tv show Downton Abbey and the movie King's Speech.

Cinematography - Car Scene (intro)

For the car scene, I decided to do day-for-night. So we shot it in the afternoon under Sun light. We shot at a curvy road around CS and then went to the Bryan Cemetery to get a entrance gate-like shot. For these shots, I will do post production to make them look like they were shot in the night. This process involves color adjusting and applying filters. Then I will add fake head lights and light reflections, fog and shadows to create a convincing looking night scene.

For the gate scene I will also add fake gates and a mansion board reading "Loftin Manor" to the gates to make it look like the car is entering the mansion.

Cinematography - Mansion Gateway

This space is blue and foggy outside. Knight enters the mansion from the darkness. We enter the mansion along with Knight, and experience what he's feeling -- wondering where we are, why we're here. I feel like the butler is the dominant person in this scene, and he'll be lit in a way to make him look menacing and powerful. Once knight enters the mansion we look at Knight's face from up close, we become Knight as he's led through the door.

For the outdoor car scene I lit the scene with a total of 4 lights. I used fog to create a dense layer behind the car and the subject (Knight) to make a spooky feel. Since the fog machine we had wasn't powerful enough, I will create fog in post production. My lighting plot for this scene is below.

Cinematography

As a cinematographer/DoP, my role is to come up with lighting ideas (keys) for each shot, frame/stage the actors, and compose the shots in a way to tell the story better. I tell the crew (Cassie - gaffer; Jacob, Chris, Brian, Tyler - assistants) where to place which lights and how to position them. I also constantly come up with quick solutions for technical problems on the set (such as positioning dolly rig, alternative ideas to place furniture to better compose the shot, guiding actors what to do in order to better compose the shots). In brief my role is to actually capture the final frames of the film and to make them look beautiful.

I work within the limitations of having to use < 2500 watts of total energy (as allowed by the mansion) and work with limited lights (2 v lights, 2 rifas, 1 Cold light and 1 CFL). I also decide and tell the crew to hold diffusers, reflectors and flags etc. in order to control shadows, highlights and light bleeds.

The way I implemented lighting plots was to go back and watch the animatic repeatedly to decide and come up with lighting and mood concept for each shot.

On a side note -- for this shoot I invested in a 105W CFL light kit, which gives out a nice 5000K (cold bluish) light. I'm using it all over the shoot to create deep blue moon light atmosphere.

There will be three main places within the mansion where most of the story occurs, and in the following days I'll post brief descriptions of the reasoning behind the look and feel of the scenes and the lighting plots for each scene.

Lighting Reference: King's Speech

This movie has overall very soft light, and soft shadows. The color correction is more natural and not overly saturated or warm. We can achieve such soft lights and shadows with paper lanterns.

More lighting references

Mad Men has excellent lighting and layout. Notice the lighting template - soft and bright key, hard high-angle rim and very little fill. Even on moderately high-key environments they pull off to make the characters look mysterious by letting generous amounts of shadows creep on the side of the faces, all while maintaining good detail and definition in the shadow regions and the eyes.

Another important thing to consider is luminance. The interstitials will be surrounded by bright and saturated student animations, so we need to have high contrast and brightness in the interstitial videos. This will help the viewers eye gets a clean read of the set and characters within the limited amount of time available for establishing shots. Good examples of this are movie trailers, where the contrast is slightly bumped up to make them gel better with the brighter titles in between.

Lighting & Set design References

Sherlock Holmes - Lighting, Mood & Color Correction

Notice warm tones created by color correction, no pure whites or colors. Moderately low-key lighting used to create vintage photography mood. Low key setup will work for us better than high-key considering we have access to only a few portable lights at the lab. However, for low-key video we might have to rent out or borrow a better camera than the Lab's T2i (perhaps the 5D if Glen permits)

The Prestige - Lighting, Mood & Color

Similar looking to sherlock holmes, but notice how the lights used in this movie are themselves very warm and not just applied in post processing. Fairly low-key, plenty of atmosphere and volumetric with fog, warm tones to simulate vintage photographs; earthy colored sets; high-contrast and saturation character outfits make them stick out of the background. Generous use of 180 degree dolly shots.

3rd Rock From The Sun - Dial M for Dick

Set design of the mansion. Earthy colored walls and floors, plush furniture, low-hanging large chandeliers. Classic sitcom character silliness and acting.

The Community - Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps

Tasteful silliness in character-setup and acting.