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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Now What?

So here I am, settled in to a new domicile. I have a new camera rig, something I have wanted for a very long time. I lost my edit machine, but after a painful hiatus, I have a wee little laptop that allows me to write and manipulate images (and hopefully, at some point proxy edit some video.) I am standing at the precipice of a major life change. Now what?

To be honest, I don't really know. I know sort of vaguely, that it is time. It is time to take the bull by the horns and take charge of my creative output. I do not entirely know what that will look like, and that is scary. Overcoming the hump and getting off your creative ass is scary, but not nearly as scary as the sudden realization that you are careening towards a lifetime of phoning it in. I have read this phrased a number of ways over the last couple of months, each a reflection of the voice conveying it—all I can do is it put it in my own words—if you don't get off your ass and live your life now, one day you will wake up and realize everything that you have thrown away for the sake of the empty safety that comes from never having put yourself out there. Now that is a petrifying thought.

Today I woke up at 5am and finished a stupid little photoshop job. I haven't felt so good at 7am in over a year. I am exhausted at 8pm, but I am writing the first text over a couple hundred words in weeks. I will get up at 5am again tomorrow and work some more. I am going to be punching the clock, putting in the time. To what ends? I am not sure yet, but I am not going to wait long to figure it out. I don't know what the output will look like in 12 months, or even in 12 hours. But I do know that just taking the first steps, pushing pixels and increasing word counts, is the best therapy I have had in a very long time. I can't guarantee it will be the only therapy I need, but is the one I need most right now.

There is a little voice in the back of my head screaming right now. It demands that now is the time for some profound statement, an elegant turn to tie these ramblings together. But that little bastard is the reason I am in this position in the first place. Sorry, nothing profound right now. Now, it is time to grind it out.

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Observations: HV40, Letus Mini and Canon FD Lenses

At some point I hope to run through the equipment I just bought and explain why I chose the route that I did. At the moment I am too busy to do much beyond traveling for work and moving. But I do have some quick observations from the 20 minutes of footage I have been able to shoot on the Canon HV40 and some playing with the Letus Mini 35mm lens adapter and Canon FD lenses.

1. Canon HV40: It is tiny, which in general, is bad. It is cheap in a lot of ways, some bad (manual controls), some good (got it for a third off). It has a slightly bigger chip than I am used to (1/2.7 vs 1/3). I don’t love that it is CMOS rather than CCD, but so I am not too worried about the rolling shutter at the moment.
   
   The biggest issues are going to be squeezing out manual control of the image and getting enough light on the sensor. There are options and hacks for tricking the camera into giving you some control: lock exposure on something friendly, then adjust up or down until you arrive at amicable shutter, aperture, and gain settings; at this point you have to hope that you still have a decent exposure. I am willing to play this game for a $650 camera.
   
   I had a really tough time lighting a setup with practicals. Granted, my adapter and lenses ate some light, but the camera struggled without the extra glass in my living room at night. I will have a new living room in a week and a half, so I will try again. However, like the manual control issues, this is a limitation I was prepared to deal with before I purchased the camera. The point of buying equipment was to make real movies, which means real planning and real lighting. Cheap home depot worklights and Ikea china lamps are in my future.
   
   There are a couple of things that I am happy about: native 24p HD shooting and a cine gamma setting. I haven’t actually edited or corrected any footage yet, but have been able to capture 24p footage. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the HV “Cinema” setting does. It looks like it prevents the in-camera consumer image processing (over-saturating, over-detailing and killing your dynamic range.) There appears to be some concern that recoverable detail in this neutral image is destroyed by the HDV compression. I can believe this, but I am not convinced that this will be an issue. I think that if a scene is properly lit, and properly exposed (that means using and preserving the 100-110% exposure range) that everything will be okay, but I plan on testing this soon.
   
   For me, I will use this camera for one of two things, which will determine its use. First, I will make movies with it; this means carefully constructing and shooting the mise-en-scene for the most post-production latitude. I would like to think that all my footage would be treated with care and color-corrected, but that probably isn’t going to happen. This leads me to the second use for this camera: capturing little moments of my family. This means I am going to need to be as flexible as possible to record my hyperactive three-year-old. At that point, there will probably be as little post as possible.



2. Letus Mini: Got a like-new buddle at about a 50% discount. It is heavy and I am glad that there are rails. I haven’t gotten a chance to shoot much proper test footage, so the jury is still out, but what little I have done is really exciting. I can’t wait to play more. Again, using this things is going to remove a lot of flexibility, but I knew that going in AND it is totally worth it.


3. Canon FD Lenses: My Letus came with an EOS mount, which I assumed would be the norm. I was dismayed to realize that EOS lenses have electronic aperture only, so I would not be able to control the iris. However, Canon’s old FD lenses have manual aperture AND the lenses are “antiques” or “collectibles” since the lenses only work with film SLRs (at least without an adapter). I was able to pick up 50mm f/1.8, 28mm f/2.8 and 135mm f/2.8 lenses for about $100 shipped. I still need to pick up a couple of rear caps, but the lenses seem to be in good shape and fast enough.

Overall, I am really excited for this setup. I am hoping to have some downtime while I am in San Francisco for work to shoot some footage with a couple of friends.
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I Bought a Rig

There are a million things I want to write about at the moment. However, I just bought a rig and I am busy setting it up and learning. I hope to get a lot of material to write about.
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