Posts Tagged ‘Cinematography’

Copyright Adam Forslund

As a cinematographer it can be difficult to get ready for a shoot. I read the script then re-read it. Make notes and go over those with the director. Everything has to go from a grey fog to a very solid vision in a matter of days, weeks and months. The metamorphosis of words to pictures can be difficult. What appears in my head may not ever exist in the real world or may be beyond the reach and means of the budget.

Which brings forth this analogy.

Making a film is not unlike building a house.

You can think of the Writer/Director as the architect. The Director of Photography as the general contractor. The Director will sit with the client to determine their desires. Is the house red? Should the living room face south? Bedrooms north? Once all those elements are worked out the DP comes in and start to work.

As a DP it is my job to get the crew to take those ideas and put foot to ground and make it happen. Do we need a 10k to make that scene? Should some light spill across that bed? What will happen if that medium shot falls flat?

The Director and Director of Photography working together making compromises where needed and not sacrificing others to build the best film possible.

As in building a house the difficult part is breaking ground. Once that has happened things just kind of happen and everyone moves to complete it. When you wrap a film and see the end credits for the first time it is like handing over the keys. And, when you think back about it you know all the little secrets that are behind that front door.

Despite the fact that I think of my self as a young guy I can remember “Mikey” tv ads, VHS rental when the store also rented players, Laserdisc, DVD and Divx wars, the wide acceptance of HD TV. More over the migration from film toward digital imaging.

By no means does this mean that I am a Luddite and want to keep my head deep in the sand as the world passes me by. It’s more that the progression of the world doesn’t seem so progressive. You go from grabbing a roll of film and knowing its look and feel, making a choice in seconds–Now, a picture is made but it’s not ready for until someone spends hours in front of a screen just to get it look like right. Then more time to get it to look good on paper.

There was darkroom time in the bygone days but it seems that to take a photo from light to paper takes longer in the era of 1’s and 0’s.

Many will say that the darkroom has simply been replaced by the screen. But, I don’t see it that way. The darkroom was an effiencent place where you would print a test strip and go. Or, at least for me. But, I would also try to work with the same film and paper and developed an understanding of what results I would get in all matter of conditions.

Retouching seems to take hours to do something as simple as building the overall look and feel of the image. What could be made in the time it takes to load a camera to get the contrast, grain, hue, saturation, vibrance now is done in hours in a chair. What was built in by Fuji, Ilford, Kodak is now in the eyes of the viewer at the desk or coffee shop.

But, as Pathé said “The March of Time!”

As I wrote about in an earlier post I had the chance to shoot some dance recently. The project was for Susie Lee and was a real blast. It was the first time working with artists that controlled the light in such a way as to make the light itself a character in the dance. Visual Artist Keeara Rhoades played the part of the light through a set of LCD projectors and some pretty cool software that allowed her to move the light in real time with Ying Zhou the dancer.

As for the cinematography. There was little time for me to shoot before during rehearsal due to logistics. Which meant most of the shooting was done the day before and right after the final performance. The time we spent shooting during the dress rehearsal meant that lighting cues were still being worked out as well as light intensity and colors. We would start to shoot Ying and midway through a shot the light would go from blue to orange. Or, it would drop in intensity all of a sudden. This meant that as I would watch the footage it was all a jumble of mixed light.

Since B&W is immune to color temperature changes…Voila! Make it B&W! Another thing about dropping the color was the editor Ian Louthan was able to boost the contrast and bring some solidity back to the moving light. On a down note going B&W did lead to some noise in a couple shots which is never fun.

In the end it all came together to make a film that is something that captures the essence of the piece and became a whole new stand alone piece too. Everyone was great to work with and I really hope to work with everyone that was part of this project again soon.

Over the last few weeks I have been spending more time thinking about how to break some inertia and get back to work on a documentary.  In 2009 I went to K2 in order to shoot a documentary about Vittorio Sella and his trip there in 1909 with the Duke of Abruzzi.

Over the last couple of years there were hurdles both personal and financial that needed to be jumped in order for me to even see the footage I shot.

I shot over a mile of Super 16mm film on the trip and was able to finally get it all developed and transferred within the last year.  Now, that I have the footage I’m able to see what is there and move forward on a project.  It still hasn’t fully shown itself to me yet but with every day it gets closer to coalescing in to a real film.

As of now it seems to be moving toward a short film that deals with the Balti people of the Karakoram.  You can read more about the trip in my past entries “Pakistan 2009-People” and a “Ethics in Documentary”.

Stay tuned for updates.

I had the chance to work with Seattle based artist Susie Lee on her latest project called Swimming The List. It was a really fun project for a few reasons. 1) I have always wanted to shoot dance and never had the chance to. 2) The concept of the dance was right up my alley. 3) The light was really cool in a few ways.

For a long time I have wanted to shoot dancers. It started when I was in college and attempting to capture ballet. There is something really powerful about the body moving so quickly and fluidly that has been stuck in my mind. I don’t think of ballet in terms of a bunch of small steps on tip-toes across a stage as a fairy. I think of long strides with legs that act as catapults to jump like a Jaguar. It has been this type of dance that has most intrigued me.

Susie Lee’s Swimming The List while isn’t filled with big movements it is very dynamic the dancer moves according to tasks that fill her daily life. What is most interesting about the piece though is the dancer’s vocal parts. As she speaks she talks about the trials and tribulations of being an artist. Struggling with who she is in relation to who she would like to be. This strikes a cord as it is something I too struggle with almost daily.

As a cinematographer the piece had some elements that were very interesting. The light used in Swimming The List isn’t light cast from a Leko or Fresnel. Rather, the key light came from two projectors that allow an artist to paint onto the X and Y axes in real time. This gives the dancer the ability to interact with the light in a way that isn’t possible with standard stage lighting.

When watching this interaction your mind makes connections to and with the light that gives it the appearance of having tangible mass. The light is ‘picked’ up, moves and plays with the dancer so that it becomes another player in story. It was really challenging to capture this light in a way that will make it translate to the screen. While easy to do when the light stays on a plane it is very difficult to truly convey the way it looks when it is moving across and through planes.

It all made for a really fun project. Stay tuned for links and clips from the final project.