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HOW-TO, Techniques, & Best Practices Channel
Manipulate Mood with Filter Effects
By Staff
posted Jul 30, 2009, 14:38 |
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Click here to get a copy of the September 2008 Edition, so you can read and enjoy all of the excellent articles inside. Check out this article in the September 2008 print edition of StudentFilmmakers magazine, page 6 .
How to Evoke Ethereal Solitude
with Double Fog Filters
by Ira Tiffen
No Filter Double Fog 1/4
Peace. Quiet. Solitude. And a sense
of the ethereal. Today, we are in a
cemetery (pictorially speaking) and
seeking to convey the sense of actually
being there through our imagery.
Standing upright in the fading
sunlight, the markers appear starkly
white against the surrounding darkness.
Without a filter, the scene is much as it
would appear to the actual visitor, but
without the otherworldly veil that being
there drapes over the mind.
In telling our story, we want to
involve our viewer emotionally as well
as intellectually. In this grave situation,
we must visually impart that sense of
the earth below and its connection
to heaven above. In our unfiltered
scene, we clearly see the stones, the
fence, the trees and the building in the
background. This is both too much and
too little. We want to emphasize the
stones and the surrounding fence, the
latter as a sort of boundary between
two worlds. And we want to diminish
the rest.
How to do this? Well, we can use
what is known as a Double Fog filter.
These were originally developed to
simulate the appearance of a natural fog, since in their stronger grades
they combine both a strong reduction
of contrast with a modest amount of
highlight flare, much like an actual fog.
In today�s case, though, we don�t want
fog, just the suggestion of it, so we turn
to one of the milder grades, the Double
Fog �.
With the filter in place, the image
goes through some not-quite-subtle
changes. The centers of our attention,
the stones and the fence, visually come
to center stage, their faint glow and
paler tones further separating them from
their more mundane surroundings. The
contrast is softer, rendering reality a bit
less real. The result is the infusion of a
sense of the otherworldly, the solemn,
yet hopeful contemplation of what is to
come for us all.
Or at least as far as our story is
concerned!
This article may not be reprinted in print or internet publications without express permission of StudentFilmmakers.com.
In over 30 years of making optical
filters, Ira Tiffen created the Pro-Mist,
Soft/FX, Ultra Contrast, GlimmerGlass,
and others, netting him both a Technical
Achievement Award from the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and
a Prime-Time Emmy Award. Elected a
Fellow of the SMPTE in 2002, he is also
an Associate member of the ASC, and
the author of the filter section of the
American Cinematographer Manual.
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