Ehhh, OK. I think when you do it it practically, you learn more, and learn better, and learn in such a way that it can be scaled up. I know Cuz I started lighting in the computer, and the jump from doing it there and doing it IRL was quite large. And finding actors and getting together a bunch of gear and such can get expensive for just practice, whereas you can put together a setup on a desk or table for a vast sum less and practice anytime of day, for free (minus the figures, cardboard sets and lights.) The time consuming part is building the control devices.... flags, scrims, cookies, diffusion, snoots, et al) once you're there, then it's fun.

It's been awhile since I posted anything of value. This popped up on one of my feeds this morning. It's a still frame from a pilot I shot a number of years back. It was a rush to get the shot, and had to be improvised as our producer's source for scoring us HMI's on the cheap, flaked. So I had to come up with something in a hurry.

Kudos to whoever can tell me the exact setup...(That's the easy part.)

+2 if you can tell me what I did wrong (and it still bugs me.)

VK shame on you. Besides, I saw plenty of her naked body. She's a playboy playmate; Nikki Leigh... so if you want to see 'em that bad, you probably can. No, something I fucked up with the image.

How easily you forget that I'm a cinematographer first... The color correction is fine... it's something else. A technique I teach, and couldn't apply because of the rush.

She’s lit with Tungsten hard light... maybe there is some gel on the light but not enough to balance the scene .

+2 to @CrazyPete.... that nose shadow bugs me to no end. It was a little 2ft circular foldable bounce "hollywooded" by a PA, and he couldn't keep it steady holding it up over his head, so he instead cocked his elbows in, held it in front of his face, and leaned back against the garage for support. Good eye. I make sure to always have larger rectangular mountable ones now - backed with styrofoam that just need to be steadied so they can be hung off a grip head in seconds, and steadied by said PA rather than hand held. All because this shot bugs me. Angles.... they matter.

@bannedindv nope it was a gold tinted reflector. The silver made her look too white next to the black car, and the shadows falling on the house. I balanced it out in grading, but the producer liked the warmer look better since it was a dream sequence, and I was forced to undo. The source being 2' bugs me a little. I like a bigger highlight in the eyes, and a bit more light wrap when shooting glamour shots.... so that bothers me a little but not as much as the angle.

The biggest challenge was: there was a wide shot that went with this. So keeping the PA hidden just around the corner of the garage while still getting enough bounce on her while still getting part of the bounce to wash the side of the car so it wouldn't get crushed down into the blacks was a pain. (Cameras were in the hero's driveway, she and the car were in the adjacent driveway next door. 35mm for the med wide and 85mm for the CU)

Lighting actors wearing glasses is my worst nightmare.

@shian I meant in terms of shadows rather than reflections.

Are you planning on getting any of these new mirrorless bodies? I'm liking what I'm seeing from the X-T3 a lot. I've been shooting ML raw exclusively for a few years, not sure I wanna go back to 10bit, so the P4K is another option.

I have a special talent for LUTs and such that would make the workflow nearly identical to the mirroless/Atomos setup I'm running now, but with vastly superior, and more organic results.

I have little warning - LUTs craze so not such anymore and soon will be replaced by simple tools and science. :-)

It is also much fun to read about making fixed LUTs for system involving different film stocks (that vary significantly even due to storage conditions and how you process them) + film scanner.

As soon as hurdles are removed it is ideas, communication skills and all else that come to play, not LUTs or outdated crap.

^^^ coming form the guy who's never shot a roll of film using video assist. (not you jam, VK)

it's just for viewing... cuz the assist looks nothing like the final product. It's just for exposure and color assist. It won't ever be "What you see is what you get" but it'll be close enough to make key decisions without guessing.

So a while back a friend drags me to go see a pretty lame Tom Cruise movie. I really didn't care to see it, so I ask why, he says... "You'll know why in the first 5 minutes." He was right. I was steamed coming out of that film.

He looks and me and asks, "Why are you upset? I thought you'd be thrilled. It was ColorGHear right?" I nodded. "I'm about 99.9% sure... yeah."

I wasn't upset that it was used on a big budget film, I always assumed it one one day would be. I was upset that it wasn't credited. No logo, no mention. No articles written that mention the use a great tool. But I couldn't prove it was CG, so it didn't matter anyway. I had never made it a requirement that people give me credit for the product, I just always figured when people saw what they could do with it, a tip of the hat gesture would come as a simple sign of respect.

Fast forward to tonight, I'm at a show in Hollywood, and I hear my name, So I turn around, and a guy introduces himself, says he's a colorist, and that he wouldn't have his job without my tutorials and what he learned using ColorGHear. I'm honored by this. He says, "I still use it all the time. Everyone I work with is using it now, too. Saves us all a ton of time."

I counter with, "Wow, that's wonderful. I'm glad you're all enjoying it.... So everyone there bought CG?"

He says, "No, the LUTs are on my server, so it's accessible across the network." I ask where he works. He drops major post house's name. My face drops..... "Everyone is using it." [I looked it up when I got home...They did post on said film]

I should be proud, I guess. Instead I'm feeling like the guys who sold QDOS to Microsoft for next to nothing.

If a major post house has purchased 0 or 1 licenses for your software and now they have dozens of people using it, you should contact them about licensing it or threaten to sue them for violations of your license agreement. They have the money for it, I'm sure, and this is the industry that makes constant PSA's about the harm caused by piracy.