Posts Tagged ‘hdr’

Lessons on Lighting for HDR Photography

Posted: 6th January 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Digital Production, Photography
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On the discoveries of how to light for HDR photography, and how the standard choices for film and theater create a lot of work for the post-production workflow.

As Syndicate moves towards its conclusion next week, I hope you’re enjoying not only the story but the soft beauty of the photography we present here. Photography is kind of our thing, our schtick if you will, but you’d be surprised how much we’re still discovering about how to do it well. Most of our team comes from theater and film backgrounds, where the rules and results of stage picture, presentation, and lighting are completely different. Theater light focuses on hitting the actors where they are and toning down everything else, counting on the audience’s eyes to adjust according to the changing overall light levels; film light focuses on contrast and multiple sources, each of varying brightness to make the actors “pop” on camera.

When lighting for HDR, the biggest factors are not how bright or dark the scene is overall (gamma), but how wide of a range there is between the brightest part (white point) and darkest part (black point), how many different measurements of brightness are between them (levels), how these levels are distributed (luminosity), and how smoothly or dramatically the levels transition between one another (contrast). Earlier I lamented shooting in and near direct sunlight for exactly this reason, but for shoots like Syndicate we’re in the opposite situation and it’s simply stunning.
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The Curse of the Sunny Day

Posted: 25th November 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Ally", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, On Location, Photography
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On the shoot day for the ‘Ally’ vignette, and why direct sunlight is the worst type of weather for Night Zero’s HDR style.

The shoot day for ‘Ally’ was a unique production for us, and an all-around great experience and achievement for the team. We were back at the abandoned Fisher Flour Mill, our fourth day (of five) this year shooting at that location. Just the previous day we were there with one of our biggest Episode Six productions: thirteen characters, three scratchers, eleven extras, and ten crew members, for an all-day gun battle and scratcher fight. For ‘Ally’, it would be one of our smallest shoots: two characters, two scratchers, and five crew. The major difference, though, was that the Episode Six shoot was on Sunday, meaning the mill property was closed and our gaffer was on set. Ally was shot on a Monday, meaning that the entire property was abuzz with trailer trucks, backhoes, and moving trains, and for lighting we were at the mercy of the weather and a handheld diffusion/reflector disc.

We started with our usual 10:00am crew call, first checking in with the freight supply company whose trucks and trains we’d be evading all day (and grabbing some reflective safety vests from their dock manager). Then it was to base camp, which was conveniently in the same location as it had been the previous day (which itself had been the central location of a different Episode Six shoot a month earlier). Snacks were munched and coffees poured while the cast made their way into costume and makeup, with Kyle finishing first to go shoot his opening walking sequence while Sara’s more elaborate costume, props, and makeup were put together. After a few minutes of test shooting to determine the best camera settings for the morning light, we got to work just after 11:00 and moved swiftly onward. With the opening walk finished, we returned to base camp to fetch Sara and begin the two-character scenes out in the sunlight.

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Sorority Production: Day One

Posted: 2nd September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, On Location, Photography
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On the first shoot day for the ‘Sorority’ vignette, covering the two sisters’ drama and the hallway escape sequence.

The first act of Sorority (Lucy and Dee) and the interstitial segment (the hallway chase) were shot together on our first day (of two) for the vignette. Based on some of our multi-day and multi-segment shoots in the past, we decided to shoot the days’ work out of chronological order and instead approach from most-difficult to least-difficult work. For the morning, when everybody was fresh and ready to go, we’d take care of the complex and extensive hallway action scene, and in the afternoon, when the cast and crew would be tired from the morning’s work, we’d shoot the relatively sedate and stationary sisters’ scene.
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Pre-Production of the Post-Protest

Posted: 19th November 2010 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Episode 5 - "Reversals", On Location, Photography
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On the pre-production, location scouting, and new photography techniques in the “Death of Dariya” sequences

The shoot of Dariya’s death brings together some of our earliest cast members from the Night Zero project, while incorporating all the advances we’ve made over the last three years of production. Yevgeniy, Nadia, and Dariya date back to our first office shoot at the end of episode one in June of 2008—before dedicated costume design, before multi-point lighting, before shot cards and camera-optimized shoot schedules. That all three of these cast members have stuck around so long is something for which I am incredibly grateful; that in such time our production quality has grown exponentially is something of which I am incredibly proud.

Pre-production for the shoot was in some ways simple and in some ways challenging. For the simple side, we already had the full cast and costumes from previous episodes, so the only challenge was scheduling everybody at the same time. When dealing with some pretty prolific theater and film actors, that’s hardly an easy task, and must be done many months in advance. The downside to scheduling like this, though, is that once the cast is locked down for a date, whatever location we want to shoot at has to be available as well; if not, we are faced with having to either scout and secure a new location, or try and reschedule the entire cast and crew.
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From a Single Shot

Posted: 29th January 2010 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Special Delivery", On Location, Photography
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On shooting the “Special Delivery” vignette freehand, without the definitive ‘Night Zero’ HDR method

For the last two years, nothing has been more “Night Zero” than triple-exposure HDR, the very foundation that allows us to produce the surreal images that give Night Zero its unique look. With single-exposure shots, the low dynamic range lacks the information to calculate rendering such a look, and in the few instances where we’ve attempted to mix a single-exposure action shot with a page of multi-exposure HDR shots, the process is terribly time consuming and the result always muddy at best. High dynamic range means that the number of shades between the darkest black and the lightest light exceeds that which is physically visible at a single time, while low dynamic range has only a few shades between. From the same setup and procedure, a single exposure (after much fanangling) may be able to passably emulate part of the range of the HDR image, but the shadows will clip to black sooner and the highlights will blowout to white sooner, and the final image will be less colorful and more contrasting that its “true HDR” sibling. However, matching one single-exposure to dozens of HDR shots is different than shooting an entire story in single exposure.
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Delivering a New Kind of Night Zero

Posted: 22nd January 2010 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Special Delivery", Concepts & Development, Photography
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On the artistic and logistic factors that together created a unique approach for the “Special Delivery” vignette

Like “Jezebel”, this vignette is based on a very simple premise (ten words or less) and designed to be shot bare and plain. At the same time, while “Jezebel” was built around heavy dialogue and a confined space, “Special Delivery” was built around no dialogue and a very open space.

“Special Delivery” was, more than anything else, an experiment in which our hard-developed production techniques were upended: our tried-and-true methods were abandoned in the pursuit of something new, and there were two major factors (one logistic and one artistic) that prompted this decision.
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