Kaminski's blown-out style possible for digital shooting

[Gohanto]

For an upcoming short I'm both director and DP on, and I was just curious if you have any suggestions on how I could get Kaminski's slightly blown-out romantic style similar to the scenes in Catch Me You Can.

I'm using a Cannon HV20, china lanterns, a 650W and a 250 fresnel, a few silks, a few practicles, basic gels, and blackwrap.

I'm aware most people hate it whenever DV blows out, however for some reason this doesn't really bother me too much. Enough people believe otherwise for me to avoid it where possible, but is there any "safe" way to blow out areas of the frame? The only time I ever notice it particularily ugly is when part of an actors face blows out, but other than watching for that any other suggesitons?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Blowing out -- i.e. clipping -- is mostly a problem when it's happening over too large an area of the frame, or where your eye is going to (which tends to be the brightest area in the frame unfortunately.)

The glow or halation from the bright areas is the result of diffusion filters of some sort, which interact with the overexposure.

I would allow small areas of overexposure in the frame, just make sure they don't take up a lot of area when you move in tighter. Intense backlighting tends to work OK because a clipped halo around the head is not as distracting as clipped frontal light.

I've shot in HD before where I've allowed some clipping to create hot white areas, but I was careful not to overdo it, except in dream sequences.

For any large areas, it would be better to place the overexposure just below the clip point so you still record some texture.

Also try to dress actors and sets with darkened whites ("teched down") especially for T-shirts, if you can't avoid using whites in the first place. White clothing clips unnaturally fast, even in normal exposures sometimes.

 

[CinemaGadgets]

hv20

hv20

Good luck doing lighting with that HV20. Its exposure settings are horrible... one thing I deal with every friday! I'm sure you read about the exposure lock settings and stuff??
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