Pro edition
Look Book.
The demo shows one finished scene. This is the document that exists before it — the 6 things a director and a DP agree in prep, written down, so the argument happens in a room in week two instead of on a hillside in week six.
Six things, decided in prep
- Aspect ratio
- One number, decided
- Blocking, headroom and how many people fit a frame all follow from it. Deciding it in the edit means reframing every shot.
- Reference
- 6–10 stills, no more
- Twenty references is not a look, it is a mood board. Six that agree with each other is a look.
- The one rule
- A sentence a grip can repeat
- "The camera never moves unless she does." Whatever it is, it has to survive being told to somebody on day four who was not in prep.
- Motivated by
- Per location, in the room
- Where the light in the story is coming from. Get this wrong and every setup fights the last one.
- Camera package
- Body, lenses, filtration
- Lens set does more to the look than the body does, and costs less to change. Decide it early enough to test.
- Delivery spec
- Codec, resolution, colour
- Usually written by somebody who will never be on set, and it constrains what you can shoot. Read it in prep, not in the grade.
Five builds, specified
Source, fill, stop. Written so a gaffer who was not in prep can rig from it.
- 01 Night exterior, practical-motivated 1×18K through full grid, 40 ft, 30° above T2.8 · 800 ISO Fill — Bounce off a 12×12 ultrabounce, camera left The 18K is standing in for moonlight, which means it must be hard-ish, cool, and a long way away. Bringing it closer to save power is the single most common way a night exterior stops reading as night.
- 02 Interior day, window-motivated Existing window, negative fill opposite T4 · 400 ISO Fill — None — the negative IS the decision Nothing added. Taking light away shapes a face more than adding it does, and it costs a black flag rather than a generator.
- 03 Single, hard backlight through haze 1×5K bare, directly behind subject T2.0 · 1600 ISO Fill — A hint of bounce, or none The simplest build on any schedule and the one people ask about most. Haze is the whole trick and it needs the room sealed and twenty minutes to settle.
- 04 Insert, table top 1×300W fresnel, 45°, honeycomb T5.6 · 400 ISO Fill — White card, hand-held, moved per take Forty minutes for six seconds of screen time. Budget the time in prep or accept that inserts get cut on the day.
- 05 Blue hour wide Nothing. The sky. T1.8, opening through the take · 1250 ISO Fill — Nothing. Twenty-five usable minutes and no way to extend them. Schedule this shot first, light nothing, and have the actors ready before the sun goes.
What the ratio costs you
| Ratio | Blocking | Headroom | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.39:1 | Two people can share a frame at a normal distance apart. | Headroom nearly disappears; eyes sit in the top third. | Vertical space for a standing figure. A hat can cost you the shot. |
| 1.85:1 | Comfortable for everything, exceptional at nothing. | Conventional. Nobody notices it, which is the point. | It is a default, so make sure it was chosen and not inherited. |
| 16:9 | Same as 1.85 in practice. | Same as 1.85. | The only ratio a client site will not letterbox. Frequently the real reason. |
| 4:3 | A two-shot becomes a compromise; the single becomes strong. | Generous. Rooms feel taller than they are. | Wide landscape shots stop working. Plan the coverage around that. |
The package
- Body
- Large-format sensor, internal ProRes or raw
- Decided last and mattering least, whatever the rental catalogue implies.
- Prime set
- 25 / 32 / 40 / 65 / 100mm
- Five focal lengths is a language. Fifteen is a shop.
- Zoom
- One, for the days that run out of time
- Not for the look. For hour ten, when a setup has to happen in six minutes.
- Filtration
- Black diffusion 1/4 and 1/2, ND set
- Diffusion in front of the lens is the cheapest look change available and it cannot be undone in the grade, which is the argument for and against it.
- Support
- Head and sticks, one dolly and track
- The dolly is the line most often cut and the one that most changes what the movement can be.
- Monitoring
- Director monitor with the show LUT loaded
- If the director is watching a flat log image, every conversation about the look is a translation exercise.
6 things that go wrong without one
- Aspect ratio decided by the delivery spec after blocking is locked, so half the coverage is reframed and the two-shots stop working.
- A reference folder of forty images, which means the director and the DP are each looking at a different six.
- No LUT on the director monitor, so every note about the look is a note about a flat image nobody intends to deliver.
- The dolly cut from the budget in week three and the movement written into the script in week one.
- Inserts left unscheduled, cut on the day for time, and then requested by the edit six weeks later at full crew cost.
- A lighting plan that says "moody". Nobody can rig a mood.
Figures assume a crewed narrative or commercial job. A two-person documentary unit needs a look book just as much and will execute about a third of it, which is worth agreeing in advance rather than discovering.