On Practice: Wontons and Movies

A few weeks ago was the Chinese Mid-Autumn (aka Moon) Festival. A couple of friends came over and we made dumplings from scratch. A couple pounds of meet, a pound of cabbage and an assortment of traditional ingredients added up to a couple pounds of left over dumpling filling. We froze it, and I have finally worked through it all cranking out a couple hundred wontons along the way. The first few were awful: they were ugly and would come open and the skins split. But eventually I started to figure it out. Now, I happen to be a perfectionist. Most people wouldn't really care about the execution, my friends made a damn tasty filling, so even the ugly split ones tasted fantastic. But I was fairly unhappy about how they turned out until I had cracked out at least a hundred of them, maybe more. Then a funny thing happened; they started to turn out alright.

Even as my knuckles cramped while crimping the last of those little bastards, I was still getting better. Here is the thing: I had to make a bunch of really crappy wontons to get there. I wish I could have made that many movies that quickly.

The thing I think that is most exciting about the dramatically reduced barrier to entry is that you can crank out as many bad movies as you want, and you know, actually get better. At this point, there is really no reason not to make a ton of small projects and really learn the craft. This also gives you an excellent opportunity to hone your storytelling and visual style.

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The Masters: Philip Bloom, Part I

Philip Bloom has become an idol of mine—and a lot of other people too. He seems to have exploded onto the scene via the DSLR video phenomenon. My goal here is to see if I can deconstruct Mr. Bloom's meteoric rise to see what we can learn from him, not just as an artist, but as a new filmmaking icon. Here are my initial thoughts.

I have been following Philip Bloom's blog for almost a year now, coinciding with my rekindled interest in filmmaking. I have been following him on twitter for a few months, and on Vimeo for a couple of months as well. The guy is ridiculously prolific. I haven't seen him comment on the source of his productivity, but I think it has something to do with working non-stop. Perhaps at some point I will be lucky enough to ask him. But whether it is his films, his blog or his tweets, the guy is always posting.

I decided to go back to the beginning. I started with the first post in his archive. What I have learned is that from day 1—or at least day 1 of his blog—that:

• He knows his stuff (technical proficiency)
• He has a great eye and is a damn good filmmaker
• He is well-established (his first post mentions an upcoming project for the BBC)
• He is an engaging personality
• He is already looking for ways to shoot good looking images more efficiently and inexpensively

We will learn later what a brilliant self-marketer he is—and believe me this is not a negative; while that statement might make some cringe, self-marketing is important, especially for an artist looking to be self-sufficient.

I will continue with Part II after I do more research.

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Lucky

In a very unneeded turn of events, our place was robbed this weekend while we away. This leads to a lot of different emotions, most of which are probably better channeled in to screenplays than blog posts. However, there is one thing that I can't help but feel: Lucky. Sounds weird, but it is true. It happened while we were away—probably because we were away. There was a lot of valuable stuff that was not taken. The total value of things lost was not that high, in monetary terms—though my wife is pretty upset about the sentimental value of her lost jewelry. Other than my papers (passport, social security card, birth and marriage certificates) my only positions lifted were my old video camera and some peripheral A/V stuff: a couple of cheap lav mics, various audio cables and the like.

Personally, it could have been much worse. On a last minute whim, I packed up my new camera, tripod, 35mm lens adapter and lenses and hauled them a few hours away with only the slight hope of using them in a jam-packed weekend. Well, I did use them. I forced myself to break the rig out and spend some time capturing my daughter playing in the yard. It felt wonderful. And, it saved me a from a devastating loss.

Again, in the grand scheme of things, this would not have been a huge monetary loss. But buying that stuff represented a shift in my direction, my focus, my life. Using it this weekend, despite the inconvenience, took a dedication to this change. If I had lost that "stuff", it would have meant a lot more to me than the couple of thousand dollars that the renters insurance would have comped me for it. And for that, I can't help but feel lucky that I spent Sunday shooting instead of lamenting.
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Emmulating 35mm FOV with Letus Mini

I will continue the manual controls topic soon. In the meantime, I am going to go in a different direction. I spend my research and review time split between the philosophical micro-budget sphere and the technical geeky side of production. Over the last few days I have spent some time studying up on field of view—first prompted by Stu Maschwitz's tweet about Abel Cine's field of view "comparator", then reviewing a couple of Barry Green/DVXUser/DVInfo comments about the 35mm adapter field of view. Something that had not dawned on me is the angle/field of view difference between Super35 film and the full 35mm frame. Shape alone should have made it obvious, but it never dawned on me, mostly because I was focused on depth of field. But after review—and testing—it is true that the field of view is different and that my Letus Mini can be "calibrated" to either. I decided to test out my gear and write up the results. The following will be quick and dirty (again) because I discovered some cropping issues after I shot some test images. Also, I did not light for this, using only available indoor light and did not post on the images.

Calibration and Error

First, I set my up my camera and adapter by using Barry Green's math for a 35mm movie frame: at 2 feet with a 50mm lens, you should have a horizontal field of view of approximately 10.5 inches. I used a piece of paper with a mark drawn 10.5 inches from one edge, then lined this up in my viewfinder. Unfortunately, the still I took was wider:

Good to know that the viewfinder is cropped. At first I was disappointed, but if this frame is in anyway consistent with the HDV frame, I can deduce that the viewfinder by 10%, and should be able to reproduce and correct this test in the future by drawing my mark 9.5 inches from the edge instead. So, even though this test is not perfect, at least it provides a rough baseline. Keep this in mind as you review the rest of the images. I know I will keep in mind when i compose my images in the future (and when prioritizing an external HD monitor for my rig.)

Emulated Super35 Frame

This handsome fellow is me being disgruntled about being the subject of the most uninteresting image of all time. Next time I may put some thought into composition, lighting, etc. This time I just locked the camera, chair and focus at 5 feet. I did this for two reasons: to create a lazy but repeatable setup (I didn't have to move my tripod, just pan from the calibration wall 2' away from the focal plane and my happy subject 5' away) and because I wanted to test my lens focus barrel settings—I adjusted the back-focus on my FD mount a couple weeks back; it was obviously better, but I wanted a more accurate test. More on that in a later post.

You can see here that I have a decent medium shot with my normal lens. White balance is set to incandescent for my living room ceiling lights; the daylight coming through the shades is very blue. Also, hello vignetting. More on that later too.

Emulating "Full-frame" 35mm Framing

Next I used some online calculators to setup my full-frame calibration (no image.) The result:
Lo, it is wider! Yeah, this should be expected. Also, hello worse vignetting. Again, not surprising. Finally:

Frame While Attempting to Mitigate Vignetting

Here I zoomed all the way in on the adapter trying to frame out the vignetting:

Well, less, vignetting—note that it is not NO vignetting. Also, notice how the subject is more disgruntled as he is now in a closeup that emphasizes the uninterestingness and poor lighting of this composition—or perhaps due to the extreme deviation from the wonderful normal feel of the "real" normal framings.

Bonus: No Adapter 50mm Approximation

Here I removed the adapter and guesstimated the full-frame equivalent of a 50mm normal lens:

Not bad for mental math + eyeballing the zoom readout, though not great either. It is certainly wider. However, look at that infinite depth of field! Damn 1/3 inch sensor! And I still had the focus locked at about 3 inches for the adapter's ground glass! Gasp you should! This is of course, the real reason I opted for the adapter in the first place: Bokeh.

In this case the vignetting is caused by leaving the adapter's threaded attachment on the camera; this is the inside of the attachment's barrel. Also, please note HOW MUCH BRIGHTER this shot is than the others. I have avoided this subject on purpose, but it is obvious how bad this rig is in low-light. Not all the blame falls to my f/1.8 lens and half-stop eating Letus: this camera is not good in low-light, and my apartment is dark as hell. This further emphasizes the need to consider lighting when shooting. That brings me to:

VIGNETTING!!!

Some people—Philip Bloom, I am looking at you—love vignetting. I will admit, it can be nice. However, I will let you in on a secret: the best vignetting is added in post, and then, only when it feels right. I am already wondering if I can create a post workflow for brightening my corners with gradient masks. On the other hand, I am not freaking out at the moment. I have only really shot in awfully dark conditions, which makes the vignetting worse, I think. And I did nothing to help with the exposure, in fact, the opposite, since I was taking stills using the video settings. Hopefully I can actually test this outdoors again soon and see if I can minimize the vignetting with bright lighting. Actually, I kind of already did this:

Mike is Cinematic from Mitch McLachlan on Vimeo.

However, this was my very first try with this rig, so I have no idea how far I zoomed into the ground glass, but I would like to think it was close to the Super35 frame, likely zoomed in a little further to fight the vignetting. But, I also used two lenses that are a full 2 stops slower than today's test lens. Either way, that isn't nearly as bad as saw in my tests.

Wrap Up

You may be wondering why I care about this at all. To be honest, I had never even considered this until very recently—I opted for this setup for 35mm bokeh and nothing else. But I think that Barry Green (and Stu Maschwitz) have a point. Taking advantage of the traditional Hollywood frame further enhances the production value of the shot. If a cine 50mm lens equates to a still 50mm lens on my rig, then I am really happy. I may be cropping my still lens a bit—making my 50mm lens a still 72.5mm equivalent, my 28mm a 40mm equivalent and my 135mm a 200mm equivalent—but that is okay if I am able to get one step closer to the big budget feel.

For now I will opt for emulating Barry's Super35 frame while keeping a close eye on the vignetting. But This has inspired me and I will be doing some more testing and shooting soon.
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Manual Camera Control, Part I

Author's Note: This will be a short post that will hopefully lead to lot more text down the line. Blogger keeps crashing, so I have resorted to IE; everything is holding together for the moment. Also, I am a little scatter-brained at the moment, making a long post difficult, but I promised myself I would work through it anyway.

I follow a lot of micro-budget film geeks. Each has their own shtick. Kent Nichols demands control of creative direction and distribution. Frugal Filmmaker wants to spend no money. Philip Bloom, a very visual artist, loves using HDDSLRs to imitate much more expensive cameras. Stu Maschwitz is probably my closest philosophical cohort; his aim is to create a cheap production environment that sets the stage for Hollywood-style post. I am on board with all of these points of view, but have my own flavor of shtick as well.

One of the things about micro-budget production that drives me crazy is a lack of manual camera control. Manufactures are really helping us out with the HD handicam spec arms race—1080p60 (for true in-camera slo-mo) is even available for under a grand. However, one thing that separates the consumer and prosumer cameras from those used for cable TV production (or indie movies, etc) is the availability and ease of manual controls: gain, audio, white balance, aperture, shutter, gamma. Sometimes a few of these options can be set in a priority mode that means the rest are dictated by the camera's brain. This is not ideal.

One of the reasons that I opted for the Canon HV40 was "the cellphone trick". Essentially, this procedure puts a repeatable light source in front of the camera to consistantly calibrate the cameras AE lock and exposure adjust function. I have undertaken the procedure, but have an additional variable—my Letus mini 35mm lens adapter. The adapter and various lenses eat light, thus making the procedure more difficult. Additionally, setting up the adapter—attaching it to the camera, etc, is a bit of a process on its own, so I needed to find a repeatable way to calibrate the AE lock + adjustment for shooting with and without the adapter.

I will cover exactly how I achieved this in my next post in this series.

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