If you have questions about lighting, equipment, safety on set or any of the other 317.000 things a good cinematographer needs to consider, chances are Shane Hurlbut knows the answer. His credits include Terminator: Salvation, Act of Valor, Need For Speed, Fathers & Daughters, We Are Marshall and many more, but in this context our focus will be on his passion for sharing what he’s learned in his years on the job. His website, hurlbutvisuals.com, is a treasure trove of articles, How-To’s, product tests, and glimpses from behind the scenes of major Hollywood productions. If you want to dive even further, you’ll find Shane’s Inner Circle, which is a member’s only section of his website that offers premium content for a modest fee.

We highly recommend you spend some time getting to know Shane Hurlbut, whether you are an aspiring cinematographer or simply curious about how the pros work.

A few of our favorite posts are linked below. Get to it.

The Power of Shaping Hard Light

Turning Your GoPro Into A Cinematic Movie Making Machine

The Importance of Being Mobile

Photo credit: Shane Hurlbut

The best thing about GoPro – from an indie filmmakers perspective – is that these tiny cameras can be mounted/submerged/thrown/abused in ways you would never dare with a, say, RED or ARRI camera, for incredible action shots that low budget filmmakers previously were only allowed to dream of. The not so great thing is that more often than not the GoPro footage looks, well, like GoPro footage. That’s fine if you’re an extreme athlete documenting your downhill snowboarding skills, but if you’re a visual storyteller you might be looking for a bit more finesse. Which is why you want to use your GoPro sparingly and integrate the footage with your more standard, cinematic shots.

With the (even more) lightweight Hero4 Session, I suspect a lot of indie filmmakers will start saving up to add a drone to their gadget arsenal. I know I am. And I wanted to find out how to make the GoPro drone footage look like it wasn’t shot on a GoPro. This is what I found, as told by people much smarter than myself (specifically Robbi Serrini and Johnathan Paul, with help from Shane Hurlbut and Toby Oliver)

#1 Be picky about your GoPro camera settings

Turn off your wireless – you don’t need it and it drains the battery. Use the ProTune setting where the flatpass color space will make your highlights and shadows much better and easier to work with when color grading. Next – and this is something you need to play around with – shoot in 1080p at 60fps, then over crank (slow-mo) to 23.976fps in post, for that smooth, gliding GoPro drone footage. Never use the ‘automatic’ settings – set your own white balance, use the flat setting instead of GoPro Color, limit your ISO to 400 (in daylight) and set sharpness to low, so you avoid that home-video look. And most importantly, chose the right lens option: stay away from SuperView and UltraWide settings. Opt for the more modest Medium or Narrow settings, so you have more options for framing it in post. If you’re feeling it, go for the Wide – you’ll still be able to mix it with your cinematic footage via some magic in post.

#2 Upgrade

Since you’re already pouring money into GoPros and drone and what-not, do yourself a favor and get your hands on a high quality ND Filter or Polarizer.

#3 Know your drone

Having all the right settings won’t save you, if you don’t know how to fly the little gizmo. Be sure you know the angle of the sun where you’ll be shooting, so you don’t capture any drone shadows (shot = ruined), and factor in things like wind as well. Is the wind in your back? Great, you can get more speed. Will you be flying from a no-wind zone to a windy one, such as when passing a moving car or flying through a window? You have to compensate for that to avoid a shaky shot.

#4 Use your GoPro for coverage

Don’t rely on your GoPro for the bulk of the footage, unless that’s the look you’re going for (see the amazing Leviathan trailer below). Instead, get your important shots on your regular rig, then get plenty of daring coverage with your GoPro – either with the drone or simply mounted in the most exciting places you can think of. Cutting to these exciting angles and non-traditional shots will add flavor to your scenes and can be a very powerful storytelling tool.

#5 Be patient in post

The GoPro footage might look great as-is, but it won’t mesh with your cinematic footage without a lot of work in post. First, transcode your footage to ProRes 422 and make sure it plays in 23.976fps. It’ll be a lot easier to work with than the H264 that comes out of the GoPro. Next, compensate for any fisheye effect in the image. This is crucial. Skip this step and your GoPro footage will look like, well, GoPro footage. Optic Compensation in After Effects is a good place to start. Once you’ve come as far as you can with Optic Compensation, frame and letterbox your image to fit the rest of your footage. Next, color grade until your eyes bleed. The Film Convert plugin will make it less painful. And finally, clean up the footage with noise and film grain reduction/addition, as needed. This where you’ll truly be able to match your GoPro footage with the more filmic look of the rest of your footage. Dark Energy (plugin for AE on Windows) or RE:Vision Effect’s DE:Noise seem to be popular choices.

Check out how Wolf Creek 2 cinematographer Toby Oliver used GoPro cameras for some intense coverage shots:

See how shooting a flat GoPro image, and then color grading the footage, can be beautifully integrated with cinematic shots in this short video:

Notice how the aerial shots have that dreamy, gliding feel – accomplished by shooting at 60fps and then over cranking it to 23.976fps in post:

And finally, see how interesting a GoPro-heavy film can look in this Leviathan trailer:

h/t to Cineclast and PremiumBeat

I recently stumbled upon DP Shane Hurlbut’s website, HurlbutVisuals.com, which has turned out to be a great source of know-how from working film professionals, including of course Shane himself. For those of you that don’t know, Shane Hurlbut is an accomplished cinematographer with credits like Need For Speed, Act of Valor, Terminator Salvation, We Are Marshall and Swing Vote to his name. One particular article of his that I’d like to highlight today is his breakdown of how to light day exterior shots.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, here’s a word of wisdom from Shane.

[Sometimes] you compromise the light to gain the big picture … You do not worry that the light is not exactly how you envisioned it. Making a film is about compromises. Period. If you don’t approach a movie this way, you are being a little naive. It is all about making those compromises and turning them into a positive, every time!

With that in mind, let’s get to it.

1. Use tools for finding the best time to shoot

Shane highlights a few different tools he has used to determine the best times to shoot. Helios is the Rolls Royce of the bunch. Sun Seeker is the runner-up. These are both apps for your smartphone that will tell you where the sun will be at specific times of the day in specific locations, how the shadows will fall and more. Lesson to be learned here? Don’t just wing it. Do your homework before grabbing your camera and your crew. If you anticipate certain lighting needs for a scene or if your director has a particular vision of how the scene should look, make sure you have the elements on your side.

2. Shape the natural light

There are many ways to shape, redirect and/or filter the natural light at your location. According to Shane, know that back light is your friend:

I would always try to look for a back light orientation for your scene. This enables you to shoot for a good amount of time without the light changing. As the light gains its height in the sky, I just slightly rotate my actors to match that rotation, always keeping them back lit. The reason for this is that frontal sunlight can be very harsh at times. It can make it very difficult for the actors to keep their eyes open without squinting. That never looks good unless you are Clint Eastwood and it works like a million bucks. You can bring a bounce in to fill or use as a key light, which is passive. This means using the sunlight, the same source that is back lighting the actor, not adding another light into the bounce. I love all types of bounces no matter what output I need from it.

With the back light working to your advantage, perfect the lighting with negative fill:

Just using a bounce can work great, but there are some times when you want more mood in your scene. That is when you use what is called Negative Fill. During the day, light is all around us. It is coming from the sky, from the horizon, from the ground, you name it. I use large solids, which are black in color, for wider shots and then 4 x 4 solids for close ups that I can work in as a ballet dance with the bounce. Usually I work the bounce. I have a grip doing the negative fill as the actors move if I am not operating.

When shooting a wide shot, I try to shoot them at the most perfect time. Let Mother Nature do the lighting and the contrast control for you. For the medium shots, I bring in 12 x 20 clay coats to reflect a key light source and a 12 x 20 and a 12 x 12 solid for negative fill.

This negative fill can sometimes be a frustrating process because of the daylight coming in from all over. Shaping this light to your liking can feel a little too stylized if you hit it with too much contrast, so beware. If you are in an alley or around tall buildings, then you can get away with steeper contrast. But if you are out in the open, I find that creating a contrast of about 2 to 2.5 stops down on the negative fill is good and plays nicely with almost any scene.

Working in the ability to block a scene where your actors land in a side light scenario is always very pleasing as well. This is done by orienting your actors in a way that they are lit with one side of their face keyed by the sun. Getting this just right is what I learned from Herb Ritts, that perfect angle of light which shapes the face in a way that is beautiful. If you are shooting this kind of light in the morning, then I would shoot the close ups first, while the sun is still in their eyes, before it goes skull eyes. I am sure that you have seen this before. It is when you shoot outside when the sun is too high and the actors look like skeletons because they have these deep shadows in their eyes when the light is too toppy.

3. Substitute natural light with Daylight Balanced Lights

If your scene calls for a more dramatic lighting that Mother Nature can provide, you do have the option of helping Her quite a bit. Enter daylight balanced lights. Shane uses his work on The Rat Pack as an example:

On the The Rat Pack, I lit almost every shot during the day with HMIs. These are daylight balanced lights that match daytime Kelvin color temp, which is around 5500 Kelvin. I would either bounce 18Ks off 12 x 20 Ultra Bounces or drive 18Ks through light grid or full grid diffusion frames. Then I would add a searing back light with a mirror board off the sun, or an 18K spotted in. Sometimes a 7K Xenon was needed. This was the look and feel of this movie. Rob Cohen, the director, wanted the character’s life to be a stage. So every time you saw them, they had the perfect key light, back light and fill level. Most of my other films have been more naturalistic. I don’t choose. I go with the director’s vision and the best way to tell the story.

About Shane Hurlbut:

Shane Hurlbut, A.S.C., is a world-renowned cinematographer who shoots multimillion dollar blockbuster films. Shane brings a level of unparalleled passion and excitement to everything he does. He is an innovative cinematic pioneer that deploys new techniques on every project to challenge him and enhance the quality of his work. He seamlessly blends different camera emulsions to enhance storytelling. One of his recent films, Act of Valor, was shot primarily using the Canon 5D Mark II camera and is the first HDSLR full-length feature released by a major studio.