Posts Tagged ‘photographic novel’

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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Adobe Workflow – 2011 Edition

Posted: 11th November 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Digital Production
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On the workflow and post-production processes that turn a few hundred photos into a photographic novel page.

A lot of people ask me, especially after seeing a Night Zero shoot firsthand, about how I manage to keep all the work organized and turn it into pages. On our bigger days, we’ll have two or even three cameras running simultaneously and shoot out of order all day long. After an eight-hour workday, we’ll walk away with over 1,600 photographs that will need to become a dozen or so pages of graphic novel. I’m frequently asked, especially by people interested in photography and digital design, just how the workflow is handled. Today, I’ll explain.

Warning: this is a very technical post about photography and Adobe Photoshop. I do my best to keep my explanations accessible and my lingo neutral, but the content itself may not appeal to all readers.

Immediately after a photoshoot wraps, the memory cards are dumped to a portable hard drive with card slots: with the touch of a button, the entire card is backed up to the disk. Eli takes the hard drive with him to copy to his computer, while I take the memory cards and copy them to my computer. For every year of Night Zero I’ve set up a 1TB RAID-1 array: two identical hard drives always in sync, so that if one hard drive explodes, all the data is still intact. At the end of the day, the photos exist in five separate locations: the memory cards, the portable drive, Eli’s computer, and twice on my computer. Redundancy is key, and thankfully we’ve never lost photos to technical malfunction.

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Ally, On the Road to the Finale

Posted: 21st October 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Ally", Concepts & Development, Digital Production, Episode 6, Photography
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On the continued production of Episode Six throughout the year, simultaneous to the production and online runs of the origin vignettes.

This week we begin a new vignette, ‘Ally’, which is our sixth vignette of the 2011 year and our twelfth vignette overall. Some of you may be asking why we’re spending so much time on vignettes this year, having already produced in nine months as many as we have in the previous three years combined… while the grand finale Episode Six remains nowhere to be seen. For today’s blog post, I’ll be talking about what our production is doing, why the vignettes are so important, and when you’ll be seeing the elusive final episode.

When the production of Episode Six concludes, when the final photo is taken and the last shoot wrapped, that will be the end of Night Zero as a photographic novel. There is no episode seven, and there will be no more vignettes. This has been our plan from the beginning, and one of the reasons we chose to do a six-episode-arc rather than only standalone stories. With that choice came an inevitable conclusion, which itself is directly responsible for the production schedule we’ve taken. Knowing that Episode Six would be our last, I laid down a production mantra for the year: “Go big and go outside”.
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To Reveal or Not to Reveal

Posted: 30th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development
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On the developmental question whether to include Jill in the ‘Sorority’ vignette, how much of her story to reveal, and what that meant for Jack.

As a writer and a consumer, I really like mysteries. I like the large unknowns with only hints and allusions, I like the unanswered “what happens next” more than a perfectly-wrapped package, and I don’t think it’s much of a secret that this type of storytelling is a big influence in Night Zero. Right in our first vignette ‘Jezebel‘ I went for the ending of ambiguous fates, rather than pegging down where Jezebel went, whether Tracey followed or stayed behind, and whether Clint died, turned, or survived. The entire backstory of ‘Special Delivery‘ remains a secret, as do Jezebel’s motivations in ‘Devon‘ and the fate of Tom and Sadie from ‘The Things You Take‘.

It was with this same desire for non-closure that I put together the ending of ‘Inertia‘, where Jill and Jack take their chances out in the world while Richard and Elisabeth remain in their room and await rescue or death. In a perfect fictional world, that would be the absolute end, but I already knew deep down that Jill would become one of the primary messengers in Episode Six, so it never was an air-tight ambiguity. That said, though, I thought leaving the time between ‘Inertia’ and Episode Six a mystery would be suitable, letting the reader wonder what happened to the two of them, how Jill ended up with the messengers, and whether Jack is still alive.
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Five Hundred

Posted: 16th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Concepts & Development, Serial Episodes
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On Night Zero’s accomplishment of five hundred published pages, a true milestone in photographic novel history.

Today represents a major milestone in Night Zero’s lifetime: our five-hundredth page. It’s only approximately our five-hundredth online update, between the occasional holiday non-update and the occasional two-page-spread double-update, but page 19 of Sorority is the five hundredth page in the Night Zero photographic novel collection, counting back through our vignettes, serials, and the pilot.

People sometimes asked why we didn’t maintain all our comics online, and honestly, it wasn’t a ploy to get you to buy our books (although if you do, we sure appreciate it). It was honestly because our early stuff just wasn’t as good, and we didn’t want new visitors to start at the beginning and give up based on the quality they saw. Our hope was that visitors would check out some of our best vignettes, see the high quality of our work, and be more forgiving when they bought the books and saw much different it was in the beginning. It was a strategic selection, showing only our best face, but not anymore.

That’s right: in celebration of this milestone, every single one of our five hundred pages is now available to read on nightzero.com, including the plotless pilot and the awkward first two episodes, with special forwards prepared for the occasion. If you haven’t read through some of our earlier works in a while, take a wander through the archives and revisit the past. You may be surprised by what you find there… I know I sure was.
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Post-Apocalyptic Thunderdome

Posted: 15th July 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Arena", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development
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On putting the pieces together for production of the “Arena” vignette.

With the premise of the skullhunter vignette laid out, the time came to start fleshing out the characters, setting, and logistics of the upcoming shoot. One area where we had no trouble was with the casting, thanks to Night Zero’s expansive network of talented and enthusiastic actors and improvisers. Of all the Night Zero world, skullhunters are the most fun to cast because of their quirky and eccentric nature, and we landed some amazing talent in no time.

A typical Night Zero shoot hosts a crew of 4-6 and a cast of about the same, but to build a crowd of skullhunters we were going to need two or three times that. Friends from work, friends from theaters, friends from death metal bands, all were called down to spend the day with us. Our usual collection of skullhunter gear and accessories was assembled, but the group was given the opportunity to bring items of their own and that worked very well.
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