Look under the rule

In this short piece, I will propose that ‘rules’ in cinematography can be thought of as a vertical ‘stacking’, in which every rule represents an easy way to follow the rule under it, and in which we move from the theoretical to the practical as we move up, but also forget about possible alternative ways of fulfilling the rules below. If this is a valid way of thinking about the topic, then it is important that we keep this ‘stack’ in mind instead of just following whatever rule tops it off. In a phrase, always look behind the rule – or rather, look UNDER the rule!

To demonstrate this idea, I’ll take one of the most common ‘rules’ you are taught when you start out as a DP: Avoid full frontal lighting – that is, don’t put the light right behind the camera.

Why do we normally avoid full frontal lighting? It gives no shape to the face. We want some contrast in there, some variation in brightness. But who’s to say the variation in brightness has to be across the face and not within the wider frame? Given that the audience sees the whole frame, what else can we do to give it some variation in brightness? We can introduce contrast - a brightness difference - between the face and the background as opposed to between the two sides of a face. How do we do that? By bringing the source close to the subject so it falls off rapidly. If we’re on a longer lens, by bringing the light down at a slight angle so it doesn’t hit the portion of background in shot. That can look beautiful. And what use is your ‘no frontal lighting’ rule now?

The ‘Avoid full frontal lighting’ rule arose because it introduces variation in brightness across the face, which is one of the easiest ways to introduce contrast into the frame. So we’ve taken a rule – ‘There must be some contrast in the frame’ – and created a rule above it that gives us an easy way to fulfil it. But in the following the rule above rather than the one below, we forget about other ways of fulfilling the rule below – for example, using full frontal lighting with fall-off to introduce an illuminance variation between the background and the subject. After all, in moving ‘up’ the stack, we’re going from the theoretical to the practical. It is easy to see why any practical solution is only one of a number of possible approaches to a theoretical problem.

Let’s dig deeper. If the rule behind ‘no frontal lighting’ is ‘There must be some contrast in the frame’, then what’s the rule behind that? Why must we have some contrast in the frame? At the basic level, no contrast difference, that is, the same foot-lambert level coming from every bit of the frame, would yield an image with no information. A real subject under completely even illumination will introduce foot-lambert level variation through the different reflectances provided by its texture, so although the same level of incident light strikes every part of the subject, every bit of the subject will reflect a slightly different amount towards the camera. So we have to have (and will inevitably have) some contrast variation. Why do we want a substantial amount of it? Because it guides the eye. It separates elements within the frame. 

So we’ve looked a level deeper, and we have: ‘We must separate elements within the frame’. But again, in going from that to ‘There must be some contrast in the frame’, we’ve forgotten about alternative ways to separate elements within the frame: depth, focus, colour contrast. You can compose wonderful frames lit flat but with colour contrast provided by the elements within the frame, or light them flat but compose them in depth, using geometry and/or focus, or have a colour contrast provided by the light rather than by the elements within the frame.

I’m going to stop here, but I invite you to look deeper. What’s the rule behind ‘We must separate elements within the frame’? Do we always want to separate elements, or is that rule just the easiest way to fulfil a deeper rule? Maybe we want the subject not to stand out. Maybe we don’t want to guide the eye. Maybe we should all aim to get to the point where we only use the full contrast range of the medium when it serves our purposes to do so (see Darius Khondji’s incredible night work in Amour).

I’m going to wager that most cinematographers are going to find this at the bottom of every rule stack: ‘Tell the story’. In a way, the ideal cinematographer holds the ‘rule stack’ in his semi-conscious mind at all times, so he is aware of the rules at the top but is always capable of starting from the bottom in order to produce imagery that serves the story rather than the rulebook.

L.

London, 1 April 2013

Defining ISO for cinematographers

I realise that this may be unnecessarily technical, but frustrated by the lack of definitions of ISO useful to a cinematographer, I went and worked one out myself:

The ISO scale is calibrated so that at 25fps and T2.8, a luminance of 14 foot-lamberts (equivalent to a grey card under approximately 84 foot-candles) will be rendered by ISO 100 as Zone V, and ISO changes are arithmetic, so that a doubling of the number corresponds to an increase of one stop and a halving of the number corresponds to a decrease of one stop.

We all know what foot-candles and foot-lamberts are, and we have a box that can measure them by making use of photoresistance. Easy. But then that box tells us what ISO, T-stop and shutter speed to use. Whaaaat? Isn't it refreshing to try and make the jump that would otherwise be forever hidden in the depths of the black box?

So bust out your lightmeters and give me some feedback.

The myth of the uninflected camera

There is a certain school according to which there is something neutral, standard, uninflected that you can do with the camera. Something approaching objective. I don’t subscribe to this school and never have. I don’t think most people really believe in the logical conclusions of the theory, but they still bandy around phrases like ‘Sometimes it is important not to do anything with the camera’ – as if that was possible.

Camera movement or lack thereof, focal length, camera position; there is no neutral, standard, uninflected approach to any of these. There is no objective place, dear Bazin, to film a scene from; there is no objective focal length; there is no objective camera movement or lack thereof. Not even a lockoff. How is a lockoff ‘objective’? Do we stand still all the time and look at things? No.

“Camera movement should be motivated.” True but incomplete and therefore misleading. All camera behaviour should be motivated. The mapping is not a textbook mapping, it isn’t mathematical, it isn’t always intellectual. It can be instinctive. But let’s not misconstrue the above dictum and think that we should stick to a lockoff until we find enough ‘motivation’ to move the camera.

The search for a default, neutral, standard camera behaviour seems to me to be just a form of laziness, an attempt to establish a firm starting ground for every project, so you can say “The ‘standard’ style is a locked off 35mm at eye level, now let’s see if I can drum up the mental energy to decide whether to veer away from this today.” No. I reject this approach to our craft. We need to go back to square one for every film, every job, every project and ask what we need to do with the camera on this specific day to bring this specific material to life.

L.

London, 18th April 2012

Technicolor Cinestyle LUT curve

At the start of the year I shot a music video using Technicolor's Cinestyle loaded into a Canon 7D. I graded the video myself in Apple Color using the S-curve display LUT provided by Technicolor here. Instead of using the LUT as a display LUT, I rendered the grade with the LUT applied. The theory is that passing Cinestyle material through this LUT gives you a pretty standard DSLR-like image, but playing with the information in the image upstream of the LUT unlocks more shadow and highlight detail than you could gain access to without shooting Cinestyle. I did this by using the primary out curves.

It did slightly bug me not knowing what the LUT was doing exactly so I took the liberty of extracting the info from the LUT and plotting it myself. I hope it is of help to some.

PS By those alarmed by the 'DR theft' debate, it is unfounded, and you can read why here.

Lighting by candlelight on the Red MX

I recently shot the feature Nightmare Box for American director Jon Keeyes, and we had a long candlelight sequence round a table. When the subject of dollying 360º round the table was breached, I started worrying about how to light it all in a convincing fashion. Then I stumbled upon a camera test by David Fincher, filmed on the same camera as the one we would be using, the Red One Mysterium-X. The clip, which is shot at ISO 2000 and lensed with a Master Prime at T1.3, features Leonardo DiCaprio lighting a cigar with a match. The background is lit, but the key on DiCaprio’s face is provided exclusively by the match and cigar.

This clip brought home the total feasibility of using the Red MX with a T1.3 lens to light our scene exclusively with candlelight. After all, ISO 2000 / T1.3 corresponds to a 1.5 footcandle key. Production designer Eric Whitney sourced a large number of candles and very cleverly dug out the top and popped in tea lights, saving me hassle with changing light levels and saving himself hassle with candle height continuity.

We spent the sum total of a full shooting day dollying 360º around this table seating four characters with 10-14 candles (I forget the exact number) as the only light source*. We were able to get hold of MkII superspeeds thanks to Lightning Media in London. This was my first time using their superspeed set and I was astounded by the optical performance wide open – much more solid than other superspeed sets I’ve seen.

Below is an H.264-compressed HD quicktime of our camera test using a crew member as stand-in. Red MX @ ISO 2000 / 24fps 180º / 4500K / Superspeed T1.4**

A slight contrast curve is applied to the above file. For anyone interested, here is a .zip file containing the raw camera file for your scrutiny, as well as full-res TIFFs.

Check out the film when it comes out to see the full sequence!

* At the very end of the sequence a character stands, and I had to carry her with a dedo for that segment, but the rest of the sequence is lit purely by the candlelight.

** Although this test is 24 @ 180º, the actual scene was shot with a 225º shutter, i.e. 1/40^th @ 25fps. We went to 25fps one day into the shoot for flicker reasons, and I opened the shutter on this scene to help the exposure out.

Imaginary response of a famous cinematographer to a real question

Q: Everyone now expects greatness from you!

A: Look, it’s not… it doesn’t… get any easier. It doesn’t flow from your fingertips. Certain things get easier. Technical things get easier. Your eye gets refined. But it’s not like you get to a point where you can do it without thinking. To come up with meaningful visuals - visuals absolutely dedicated to the material - always takes time, thought, and hard work. You might, over your career, build up so much experience and such an expansive mental database of creative and technical solutions that their application is effortless, but the intellectual force behind that application will never work effortlessly. So it’s perfectly possible for me to point a lens at something and get garbage. What stands between that and the metaphorical mountain peak? Nothing but the net of hard work and thought you never finish knitting. What is the mountain built of? Luck, more hard work and thought, and maybe some talent, whatever that may be other than the sum of the aforementioned.

L.

Rome, 22^nd December 2011

The intersection of preparation and spontaneity

Of course you want spontaneity in the creative process. Of course you want to be able to respond to situations as they evolve rather than be tied to a strict plan that doesn’t allow you to react organically to beautiful accidents, serendipitous visuals and unexpected chemistry. But the truth of the battlefield is that a film set has to run to the clock, decisions have to taken quickly, and we have to make the day.

So however romantically you envision this organic response to unexpected elements, how it’s really going to go when something, for better or for worse, doesn’t go to plan, is you and the other key creative players are going to have to make quick impulsive decisions. And the question is, when you make these decisions, are you going to be able to make them in a way that is in harmony with the director’s vision and intent, and with the essence of the material?

You might have to change a camera angle in light of a last minute blocking amendment. This might be quite simple to do in harmony with the essence of the film. But when it starts pouring down and you have to move your epic field scene into a barn, you’ve now got less time for the scene than scheduled but it still has to fulfil a precise function in the narrative, and best of all, you - along with the director and other HODs - have a matter of minutes to decide how to do it, it gets a tad more challenging to stay true to the material.

Whether changing the camera angle for the blocking or moving a field scene into a barn at the last minute, we are dipping into our personal accumulated instincts of the craft. Impressive though your impulse solution may be, it is more than likely to be wrong for this specific situation, and this specific film.

The only solution is to build up, in pre-production, with the director and other HODs, a baseline of collectively accumulated visual and stylistic patois for this specific film. Call it a visual language, call it an approach, it’s the thing that will allow your gut instinct to save your ass. For when things don’t go to plan, you will be stripped of your specific preparation and have to start from the bottom. If you have managed to build up a general preparation, this bottom will not be zero but a baseline visual language, particular to this film and true to its essence and intent as discussed with the director.

L.

Rome, 18^th December 2011

PS. This is my first blog post. I don’t know what this blog will become, but there is a good chance it will develop into a blend of technical and lightly philosophical (nothing dogmatic – it could lose me work!) musings on cinematography.