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.

Shooting Stress

For the last 8 days, we've had shoots that have lasted 8-12 hours almost every other day. We start around 5:00pm and go on till about 3 or 5:00am. And this has been taking a serious toll on my ability to attend my other classes.

For the shoots -- I signed up to handle the camera equipment, direct photography and direct lights. But I have also ended up adjusting lights for majority of the shots, and staging/posing the actors, and then help with moving furniture around in the mansion before and after the shoots - especially since only a small portion of the crew shows up everyday. My active involvement is needed in every single shot -- both in the preparation and execution of the shot, and I get very limited breaks in between takes.

The shoot on Sunday (03/25) was extremely stressful for me. We shot the outdoor car scenes from 12:00pm - 3:00pm. Then we had the most elaborate light setups for the evening shoot -- 2 out door setups, and 2 indoor setups, all requiring the lights to be moved all around the mansion (backyard, foyer, and bedroom). The shoot lasted from 5:00pm - 5:30am. My job became more difficult because the gaffer didn't show up that day. The portion of the crew that showed up tried to fill in for the gaffer, but it was still difficult to manage things. And I was constantly pressured to stay on schedule, which choked my creativity. I had to cut corners and in retrospect I was disappointed that I didn't get a chance to do certain things that I was planning to do for that shoot. The resulting footage looks good nonetheless and I dealt with the situation professionally, and the schedule wasn't affected severely.

But I honestly feel like I have invested more time and effort in the whole shooting process than what was initially assigned to me.

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.

Final Shoots

This week we'll be shooting the entire interstitials. I will be responsible for:

• Directing Photography - shot composition, and camera motion
• Cinematography - lighting decisions
• Camera Technique - Setting up and handling Glide cam (steady-cam rig) and dolly

We had the first shoot today that lasted from 7pm - 1am. We'll be shooting almost every night of this week and our shoot sessions will last 8-10 hours each.

Storyboarding

Jared, Cassie and I met up for 6 hours for three days this week and and storyboarded the entire piece. We went over each shot and decided what and how we'll be shooting it. I also made quick notes on how to handle each shot in terms of their technicality and lighting needs.

Mock Shoot

On Sunday we shot a rough animatic/test for the entire piece. I was responsible for camerawork. We also shot remaining parts of the commercial, for which I directed photography and did camera work.

Web Design

Here is the web design I made.

Auditions 1

On Saturday we had the first set of auditions. Two actors showed up and I was responsible for filming their auditions.

Commercial Shoot

On Friday, Jared, Cassie, Jacob, Potter and I shot the commercial at the Astin Manision. I was responsible for directing photography (lighting and camera) work. We got some more help from the enthusiastic German intern/exchange student Lorenz Meyer.

We shot the footage on Canon 5D, and I got a chance to work with the Glidecam from the lab. Although I was not able to get the footage as steady as I had planned for, it was much better and smoother than hand-held or on mono-pod.

Next I'll be working with Tyler to do the post-production work on the footage. Including motion tracking and stabilization, color correction and grading and CG text compositing.