Why Overcomplicate?

Whilst listening to a podcast with Christopher Nolan discussing the amazing work he and his team did on Oppenheimer. One of the interviewers asked him about a line in the film and how it relates to filmmaking - “Theory can only take you so far” - this stopped him in his tracks. Nolan went on to say he had never considered this in relation to the craft of filmmaking and it does in fact lead to a good point that, you can study and dissect stuff as much as you want but really the best learning is by putting those techniques to use.

I agree, from the things I have learnt, discovering my own way to apply and mild certain techniques to my style and inversely, discovering what doesn’t work for me and my process is equally informative.

BUT! as a fairly methodical person when it comes to craft, I would be remiss to have you believe that I don’t rely very hard on my research and theory. Without it I would be babbling around in a field with a camera wasting money and precious time.

So…this concept got me thinking about the catch 22 that is Day exteriors.

What you want to do is shoot a beautiful scene and shape the sun, maybe run a few HMIs into a bounce to wrap the light and some 20x20 fly swatters to cut the light and then put down black washing over the grass so you avoid the bounce and then boom! You nailed the shot! Now you move to the next set up….that’s a 30 minute relight because you have to flip everything and you know that sim is setting quicker and quicker and you maybe have to drop a shot at the end of the day or your last shot just looks wrong and you pray that you can maybe save jr in the grade but you will always watch that scene in the theatre and go….we could have got that if I had lit it a different way and been quicker.

Strap in Alice, this is where I fell down the rabbit hole.

There are a few DPs that I love how they embrace natural light, they are phenomenal shapers and absolute masters of lighting but when you look at how they embrace the simplicity of natural light for day exteriors - you can really see why directors want to work with them. Just giving the director more time for performance and less time between set ups so the actors can stay in the zone is just so valuable and attractive to a director when approaching a cinematographer about a project.

I find this really interesting as a simple and quick way of doing day exteriors. Most standard stuff, especially in the mid to close up range these days has some form of large diffusion over the direct sun light, and some form to fsoftbox or bounce to wrap that light around into the face and then neg on the opposite side in order to find a nice contrast and, although this is a B&W stock, avoid green spill from the grass.

Now i am saying all this with the knowledge that the Hoytema and Nolan teamed up with Kodak to make an Eastman Double-X Black and White film in 65mm was specifically created for use with the IMAX and Panavision System 65mm film cameras.

Now, I don’t have the facts of the 65mm version but standard 35mm Eastman Double-X Black and White 5222 is a 250 ASA Daylight (5500k) stock.

I started diving into Double-X film because I wanted to reverse engineer this kind of lighting. I know Hoytema has lit things a plethora of different ways, using multiple traditional and non-traditional techniques BUT my curiousity lay that in testing he must have a reason to light this way. So going down the rabbit whole i found the following, again remember this is all about standard 35mm Double-X, I have no reason to believe these facts would change in a sizing difference between formats but you never know:

• Double-X doesn’t have the same exposure latitude that Tri-X400 or HP5 Plus has, is seems as though it is a fairly unforgiving stock requiring accuracy with your exposure.

• Not from my own tests but from multiple accounts, apparently the stock doesn’t handle overexposure or backlighting well (this is very interesting). Overexposure can yield blown highlights, blown midtones and washed out shadows.

• Underexposure can become muddy and leave the highlights a bit lacking but can still wield something usable.

• Overall this stock does seem to be a higher contrast stock.

Double-X Exposure Chart

DIRECT SUN V DIFFUSED SUN - DAY EXT

This is what i find interesting, look at the below two images. Both lit with sun but the one on the right has the actors face diffused and the one of the right, direct.

Now, here is my deduction and a potential reason for the use and embracement of direct sun…

…BACKGROUND…

On a more standardised colour stock used on Revolutionary road, with a lovely wide dynamic range you can afford to have your background overexposed. That isn’t the creative goal but you can afford to diffuse the direct sun on your actor, ultimately removing anywhere from - “Full Grid seems to cut exposure by about 2.5 stops. Light Grid (1/2 Grid) is about a 2 stop loss and I think Quarter Grid is actually the same as, if not a little less than, the stop loss of Silk, 1.5 stops.” (Cinematography.com Forum) - and still maintain a well balanced image because the exposure latitude of the stock can hold those highlights in the background without blowing out.

As you can see below, the IRE of Leo’s face is around 50-60 where as the BG is more in that 70-80 range. This is ok, again, as the DR of the stock can hold this on standrdised colour negatives.

Inversely, on Oppenheimer - with a stock as tempremental and wielding a lower DR as well as need to hit that perfect sweet spot, there absolutely is a need to make sure that key light is either equal to or of a higher exposure value than the background and with a half grid cloth shouldering a 2 stop loss, that sunlight (that is also lighting your background) cannot afford to be diffused.

Looking at Downey, you can see he is the sole highlight zone between 70-80 IRE as really they just can’t afford to diffuse his key, overexpose the background and risk having the image have background be overexposure.

SO…what do they do, they have a really harsh sun hittign their actor on a high contrast tempremental stock?

Fill and controll their contrast.

All the EXT bts i have found has the fill side being controlled and allowing the sun to just be the sun. What a brilliant way to work, find what you can’t control and contorl what you can. Don’t worry about the big lights and moving things around, just let the beauty of a large format image and the natural colours come out.

Look, i am sure they had big lights for contingencies but in my mind I want to believe this is the perfect method of big budget indie cinema :)

Hand is tired now and gotta got to a meeting, so hope this was helpful.