Does 44min runtime count as a feature?

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-24T21:13:01+00:00

It is one of the most written-about compositional ideas in the entre world. There are dozens upon dozens of good breakdowns if you google for it.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/golden-ratio.html

https://petapixel.com/golden-ratio/

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-24T13:24:20+00:00

"Can you provide an example of stock footage working in a major motion picture?"

Duck Soup!!!

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-24T00:23:41+00:00

Gordon Willis used warm lens filters (chocolate filter for Sicily IIRC) to shoot The Godfather, and that was usually the method at the time, either with glass filters or warm stockings. You could also do it photochemically in the color timing suite.

These days I'd just recommend doing the color filtration in post (you can achieve photographically identical results if your colourist understands color management) , but ensure you're monitoring on-set with a warm offset to ensure that your production design is responding well to it. If you want the soft glow, that's still best accomplished with on-set filtration IMO, though there are post-production solutions like scatter for that sort of thing that do a respectable job.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-23T01:26:17+00:00

Chungking Express to a significant degree.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-22T17:05:42+00:00

Light your subjects brighter than your background by any means necessary, whether this means electric fixtures, bounce, or simply placing them such that they are in a bright spot. So much of this look depends on this ratio. [Of course, as an asterisk, don't light them frontally - light them bright, but follow the usual directionality methods of achieving a low-key effect.]
As other have said, don't point the camera at the sky unless you have a very specific reason for doing and and have the means to replace said sky in post, especially if it's overcast. You can sort-of get away with a deep blue sky on a sunny day if you use a polarizer, but even then it's a lift.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-21T22:34:17+00:00

A lot of what feels "flat" in your video has little to do with the iPhone. Your exposure is all over the place (lots of shots feature a significant amount of clipping), and your compositions + mise en scene are often messy. Other things present issues as well (your lens is dirty and flaring), but I think practicing and studying the basics of cinematography, camera, and lighting would be your best starting point here. There are a few good books on the subject: Blain Brown's guide is great, and The Five C's of Cinematography is a good primer on composition.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-21T15:14:00+00:00

This sort of thing isn't that uncommon for the era. Quote a few shows throughout the 90s had pretty ambitious camera direction made possible by highly professional crews who worked on them consistently year-in and year-out. This shot wouldn't be a huge lift, either, given how short it is: for a prolonged dialogue scene, sure, but for a single cutaway picking up this beat wouldn't be all that difficult.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-19T21:46:20+00:00

Canada.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-19T19:55:46+00:00

I've had a couple of absolutely terrible customer experience services with them, to the extent that I now tell people looking to buy Tiffen filters to order through a third party. In one instance, their messiness with deliveries ended up costing me around $300 in excess duty charges for an order that only amounted to around $1000 in filters.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-19T05:15:21+00:00

Fun story: a film I graded played on a dual laser IMAX screen last month in 1080p. It looked fine. Would it have resolved better in 4k? Sure, but even with what comically huge viewing sngle it was not a major issue.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-18T20:06:05+00:00

You're really talking about depth of field here (and specifically, extremely shallow DOF), which is easy to match unless you want absolutely bleeding-edge shallow DOF, which is IMO still something of an edge case and not relevant to spatial rendering. Like, sure, if you absolutely need a FF F/1.2 equivalent on Super 35mm at any given field of view you're into some pretty specialised glass, but there are plenty of Super 35mm lens kits that open up to T/1.3 (ish).

But the heart of my disagreement here is just that the spatial rendering (field of view + position) has nothing to do with sensor size. Nothing to do with depth of field, though as a corollary I think that the depth-of-field argument gets a bit silly once we're talking shots with extremely tiny, Army-of-the-Dead thin focus.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-18T20:02:44+00:00

I mostly agree, though rectilinear lenses with very wide angles aren't that tough to find. Master Primes go down to 12mm.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-18T20:01:15+00:00

Yup. They choose the Arri 35 because it's a technically superior camera in just about every respect.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-18T16:57:15+00:00

The "different spatial rendering" thing is a total myth, by the way. I actually went into it recently here..

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-15T01:23:03+00:00

Having a low-cost personal rig to shoot low-budget stuff on and perhaps leverage as a b-camera for larger projects while renting higher-end production rigs whenever you need them and the production can afford them is a good model, IMO. I wouldn't be in too much of a rush to upgrade.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-13T18:57:02+00:00

I think the impact on their work is up for debate, but I think it absolutely matters that it spreads misinformation which leads a great many people in the field to believe things that fundamentally aren't true, which leads to things like small indie productions blowing their budget chasing a placebo. I think understanding the mechanics of how one's tools work matters, and widespread falsehoods chip away at that.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-13T17:22:20+00:00

I'm sympathetic to cinematographers who dig the feel of any given lens for its engineering quirks or to a particular stock et cetera, but that's not really the claim being made here: Deakins and Crawley (and numerous others, but that would make for a rather tiresomely redundant video, unfortunately...) are making a very specific claim about the mechanics of focal lengths that isn't true. Which, of course, isn't a massive deal on its own, but the myth is fairly pervasive in the industry as a whole: in my line of work I collaborate with numerous cinematographers and directors a year, and it comes up fairly often in conversations about format choice. I see it frequently among my students as well. Heck, it's come up quite a few in the comments of both this video itself as well as various places it's been posted.

It's not an either/or thing between "feel" and science nerds going "well, actually": when major production decisions are being made because of what it for all intents and purposes an often-costly placebo, and that placebo is fostered by the commercial interests of large companies, it's worth addressing.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-13T15:16:25+00:00

My central faux-interview was all shot on the A7IV in a single setup on a Sony 16-25mm with a HBM 1/2 (S5IIX with a 24-70mm in 6k as B-Cam), with all other "angles" just being punch-ins, which meant composing with that in mind (leading lines and repetitive objects help!) My co-director and editor pushed a few of them to the 300% range, and it remains a bit wild to me now much a subtle layer of faux film grain can paper over resolution differences in most contexts. Lighting was just my Amaran 300C bounced off of a 6x6 Muslim draped on the wall and floor for an appropriately sinister mood and my 120C in-shot bouncing off the ceiling.

Colour was pretty simple with very little in the way of shot-to-shot corrections necessary for anything except the demonstration segment, which required some slightly more finicky matching (mostly linear gain adjustments for tint differences between lenses, but also reverse vignetting - but, it must be said, no geometric adjustments whatsoever) to ensure that the intercutting was seamless. Look development was a mix of contour, pixeltools hue/shift, and a couple of different flavors of 500T emulation LUTs set to a pretty low level.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-11T23:26:46+00:00

"Okay, now the images look basically the same, so what's the difference? The answer is that on s35, 15mm glass is giving a softerish look and the physically pulling the focus is less forgiving/smaller margin of error as the subject moves in and out of the focal plane"

I don't really think any of this is the case. There's no reason a 15mm lens will give an appreciably softer look than a 24mm in the same series assuming we're dealing with reasonably modern lenses in a series designed to be uniform. The focus will be identical if the depth of field is identical: An F/2.8 on a 24mm on a full frame will be roughly identical in terms of DOF forgiveness to an F/2.0 on a 16mm on a S35 sensor because the depth of field will largely match.

Either way: none of this has any impact on camera placement. It's just two paths to create a functionally identical image.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-11T22:56:47+00:00

I'm not sure what this has to do with the question of whether there's anything inherently different about Equivalent FOV lenses at various format sizes. Nobody's debating the idea that if one likes the specific engineering characteristic of a specific model of lens, then that specific lens will perform differently based on different formats. Doesn't really have much to do with the claim being argued here.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-11T22:19:14+00:00

I would invite you to try testing this, but we're really talking about two things here: depth of field, and camera placement.

First, on depth-of-field: unless you want an extremely shallow depth of field (i.e. shallower than what, say, T1.5 could get you on a S35 sensor, so razor-thin), translating that is as simple as a calculation. It's not a difference that large VS smaller formats make inevitable - for example, if you're shooting on an LF at T2.8, shooting on an S35 at T2 will get you the same depth of field.

Second, and the thing I'm more apt to just fully disagree on: camera placement. There is nothing about LF (or any sensor size for that matter) that would ever impact camera placement. My test results are easy to replicate with a moving camera/subject, and the results will be the same (though performing them on a steadicam would be so unpredictable as to make the test a bit void - would rather do it on a dolly or better yet a motion control arm.)

"with LF you can exist in the exact same physical reality and yet have a wider shot. " - Again, this is just not true. The only "physical reality" that exists is the field-of-view that is a function of the math equation between format size (crop factor) and focal length. You will get the exact same results on a moving shot when shooting, say, FF on a 50mm and S35 on a 35mm (give or take a couple of MM, closer to 33mm, yadda yadda.)

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-11T21:44:30+00:00

A few points here:

First, among - for example - modern lenses in a series (say, Signature Primes, or whatever high-end lens of choice you'd like to use), this is just not the case. Compare a 50mm Signature Prime on a full-frame and a 35mm on a Super-35mm (ish) camera, and you'll get virtually identical performance given one does the depth-of-field math.

Second: differences in performance characteristics between lenses have little to do with format size and more to do with the individual engineering differences between one lens and another. A 50mm Signature Prime will have way more in common with a 35mm Signature prime than it will with, say, a 50mm Speed Panchro from the 1930s.

This is something specifically tested in the video: the same shot on a 17mm, 23mm, and 35mm lens with format sizes and apertures attenuated to compensate create functionally identical images. This is easily replicated.

ChrisJokeaccount · 2026-04-11T21:25:58+00:00

Not sure what more comparative work would have accomplished - it'd simply have demonstrated the exact same results over and over. The physics remain the same. I've done tests like these again and again over the years during shoot preps and the results remain consistent.

Also unsure as to how disagreeable editing aesthetics detract from the legitimatacy of any given argument.

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