The Insider Cinematography
The Insider Cinematography- special effects and filmmaking
Hello all,
If you have seen the Insider, that you will agree with me that that film is a Cinemetographic masterpiece. but what i was wondering was, how can i get great Focus Fadein/out shots, and also, how can i make the effect that everything in the shot is in the shade of blue, like the scene in The Insider where Wigand is golfing, and he turns, and you can see the profile of his face, and the whole scene id in a bluish tint?
matt
I haven't seen the movie, but I think I know what you're asking.
When you say "focus fadein/out shot" what you are probably refering to is "racking" the focus. That is manually changing the focus from one object in the foreground to one in the background, or vice-versa. It helps to have a very small depth-of-field to do this and you need an adjustable focus too.
As for the blue tint...I'm not sure since I have not seen the movie, but I'ts probably a print timing issue, or a developing process (like bleach-bypassing or something)I don't know if you're using film or video, but either way you could get a similar effect with experimentation. If using video, you could play around with blue filters or do it in post. If using film, look into printing or devleoping techniques, or go the poor man's route, as I stated above.
If none of this makes sense write back. Hope I could help.
Perhaps they were using Tungsten balanced film in daylight?
I thought about that Gamecat and I almost included it in my original post. Sure, it is possible that they did that, I don't know, but something tells me they didn't. It would be an easy way to get an overall blue tint, but usually it looks like crap. Who knows?
Hi there
first about the color, if you are shooting video, there are too many ways of producing a similar result using layers and filters in After Effects or similar software, Just make sure not to make the image monochrome, because this really flattens the image out.
On the topic of racking focus, when shooting video (since this Is the low-budget stuff...) this is often hard to do. Because of the small CCD (image receptor chip) sizes used, there is great depth of field, which makes most of the image sharp, regardless of iris adjustments.
You would want a camera with as large a videochip as you can get (this rules out any of the vx1000 calibre) and with a mechanical iris. The larger the iris opening (the smaller the f-number) the smaller the depth of field, which will give you a small area of focus to play with.
HTH
Barend
I tested shooting the tungsten in daylight trick for my present film, and it looked okay. The problem is (from my standpoint) that once you do it, you can't take it back. For an independent or student filmmaker (me) who is going to transfer to tape anyway, it makes more sense to shoot it normally, maybe gel the lights, and then have them pump up the blues in a supervised transfer. Or use a filter on the camera. This instance is one of those where a color temperature meter is very handy. Unfortunately, the ones I've seen and borrowed are like a $1000.
Oh, and Barend, I appreciate your input about the rack focus issue. I've always wondered why it was so hard to do this with video.
[This message has been edited by Pheral (edited 02-27-2001).]
Yeah, I know.
The more expensive video camera's have 2/3 inch chips, and this will give you more room to play. It's still no 35 mm though... And as I said it's important to have a mechanical iris, instead of an electronical iris, but this you will find on the more expensive lenses.
I find this one of the silliest phenomena in the design of digital Camcorders... I mean, I'm not even asking for resulution (which would be nice) but just for a bigger chip, without neccesarily having more pixels...
Barend
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