Danny Cohen is a very recognized cinematographer, specially after his Oscar nomination for his work on The King's Speech.

Danny Cohen, member of the BSC (British Society of Cinematographers), shoots most of his commercial work on digital cameras. But The King’s Speech cinematographer considers it fortunate that all of his features to date, including the Emmy Award-winning HBO series John Adams-also directed by Tom Hooper-were shot on film.

The people from Studio Daily caught up with Cohen, nominated for an Academy, BAFTA and ASC award for his principal photography, to find out how under

Hooper’s direction he captured the project’s nuanced and equally celebrated performances and how 35mm, the right lenses and a few well-chosen rigs and locations helped him do it.

 See more at: http://www.studiodaily.com/2011/02/cinematographer-danny-cohen-on-the-kings-speech/#sthash.93Dbo4mw.dpuf

I also IMDb him to see some of his work and after filtering it, I came up with his TOP 5 work as a cinematographer.

After his nomination for an Oscar, the BBC had an interview with him about his role as a cinematographer, the importance of the role and some if his experiences in the King's Speech shooting. Here are some of the most relevant questions and answers that I found very useful for mi shooting and as experience for being a cinematographer:

What does a cinematographer do? 

My job is to help the director realise what's in his head.

The cinematographer creates a consistent look for the film and makes images that help tell the story. It's what's in the frame, the lighting, getting the mood right - getting images that push the story along and keeps the audience inside, not outside, the film.

What's the relationship with the director?

There's a dialogue that constantly goes on between the director and the cinematographer [also known as the director of photography, or DP]. You've both got to be there for every single shot. A lot of other work - like production design, costume and hair - has to be nailed before you start filming. 

Once you get the trust of a director, they know they can rely on you to do something very interesting. It's a very complicated relationship.

What were the challenges of working on The King's Speech?

We shot the film in November - January. If you make a film in the UK in winter, one of the biggest things you confront is that it gets dark at 4.30pm. 

So it's about being able to control the light: Lionel Logue's consulting room was a biggish room with a skylight, so we put a lighting rig outside the skylight and a blackout tent above the lighting rig. So whether it was day or night, we could light the scene however we wanted.

How did you get started in cinematography?

There's no right or wrong way. You can go to film school, but everybody's different. My first degree was a social science and nothing to do with film. I'd always done a lot of stills photography. I ended up as a photographic technician at Middlesex Poly and then became a camera assistant on small documentaries and pop promos and commercials.

It's all about chance meetings. I ended up as a camera assistant and clapper loader for eight years working with lots of cameramen with different styles, so that was my film school.

I worked with the French cameraman who shot Betty Blue. Going to work was like going to a master-class every day.

What difference does an Oscar nomination make?

It's recognition, it shows people think you vaguely know what you're doing. 

The phone hasn't stopped ringing, I've been doing a lot of interviews for American magazines. People, bizarrely, find it really interesting.

This are some of the most important and relevant parts of the interview that helped me a lot. One of them was understanding that you don't necessary have to study to be a cinematographer in order to actually be one as the industry is very uncertain. The other very important element was understanding the importance of a good communication and relationship between the cinematographer and the director, because although the director is the one with the ideas and the one that sets the mood to the film, the cinematographer is the expert and is the one that will put in a frame what the director has on his mind. We as cinematographers have the job to make sure that what is on the frame is relevant to the story and to what we want to transmit, any unnecessary elements are very likely to be removed form the frame. Another important element that I found that actually matches our production is shooting in the UK during Winter. What Danny Cohen mentions it that the biggest problem is that it gets dark by 4:30PM which shortens the day a lot for all the daily scenes, specially for all the ones that are outdoors. About 1/3 of our script has outdoor scenes, but the majority of them are in houses, which makes the lighting more controllable. 

Titles sequences play a very important role in any production. They are not only one of the first things the audience sees when watching a film or a tv show, but it contains some elements that can establish what is about to come next. When you think of title sequences, the right thing to associate them with is the audience, which is the primary reason for any studio to create one. Taking this into account, I decided to look into what are the type of things audience expects to see in a title sequence:

- The Film Title
- Appropriate music or sound
- Conceptual cinematography
- Names of main cast and crew
- The main characters to be introduced
- To have clarified genre

This information is based on the research from Eleanor Monk on her presentation of "Different types of Title sequences and their conventions." https://prezi.com/o4tpkbnwzdo5/title-sequence-research/

NOT all of these elements are REQUIRED to be included, but they do help setting the mood and gives away some information to the audience that can be analyzed at their own judgement. 

Based on this same research the other thing I looked into was the different types of Title sequences that could be created. Each one of them serves a purpose, but more importantly is that it is filmed with a special and different purpose. There are mainly three different types of them the first one being:

Narrative

It is made with a series of connected events or a story line, which somehow relates to the films and helps draw in the audience. One of example of this if the movie "The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick. The opening titles for it, is all based on an aerial camera panning and following a car across a dee
p valley with nothing but a mysterious music and a very wide panorama. From the book Kubrick by Michel Ciment, he commented on that title sequence that: 

"It was important to establish an ominous mood during Jack’s first drive up to the hotel — the vast isolation and eerie splendour of high mountains, and the narrow, winding roads which would become impassable after heavy snow. In fact, the roads we filmed for the title sequence are closed throughout the winter and only negotiable by tracked vehicles."

Discrete/Informational

A discrete title sequence is one that gives a little bit of information, but not enough at the same time.

It serves a discrete clue, so that the audience can figure out what the show is about for themselves, one of the biggest and current example is The Walking Dead. Season 1 and 2 title sequence was created by the Graphic Designer Kyle Cooper. Kyle has created over 150 opening credits for both TV and Films, including Se7en, Spider-Man, The Mummy, The Walking Dead, Scream Queens, American Horror Story and many others. During an interview he gave for the SciFiNow magazine, he was asked about the design approach for horror credits, taking into account that the majority of film and shows he has worked on, are somehow related with a a bit of horror. His answer was:

"My philosophy, I think, is the same as for any opening credits. Try to have the idea be born out of the content and try to communicate something, try to involve the audience emotionally. If it’s a horror sequence, you try to get an emotional response whether it’s disturbing, suspenseful, mysterious or dramatic, these things kind of set the tone. I don’t know that I set out to do horror credits, but I always liked horror movies – I’m just more interested in those kind of themes. It seems sometimes the more mainstream or larger budget features, they’re trying to appeal to a broader audience – like comedies and romantic comedies – people get away with things that are less sophisticated in the typography from a design standpoint."

http://www.scifinow.co.uk/interviews/se7en-to-american-horror-story-kyle-cooper-on-horror-opening-credits/

Heavy Stylized Editing

As the name says it, this type is very much based on a lot of editing, including many VFX and computer animation. This particular style, captivates the attention of the audience very well, because it can pretty much create anything and make them visualize everything that is going on screen. Another very recent example of this style is Netflix original Marvel's Daredevil. The creative director of it, Patrick Clair, works for Elastic Production Studio, which have also created the Game of Thrones   Title Sequence. Patrick Clair along with his crew Illustrator/Designer YI-JEN LIU, CG Lead ANDREW ROMATZ and Fluids Lead MIGUEL A. SALEK, spoke in an interview to the Art of Title and among everything the most relevant bit of it was when he was asked about the elements he was most happy with. I think this kind of answers are really important because it show the passion of the creation and potentially some of the most relevant elements for the creation of it.

What elements of this sequence are you most happy with?

Patrick: Probably the colours. I love working in restricted colour spaces, and the red was awesome to explore and push to the limits.

Patrick: We did try a footage-based approach, hinting at a shadowy and ominous New York, full of reconstruction and a brooding danger — this was intriguing, but not as visually compelling. Ultimately, the city objects were rolled into the final execution and this really merged with the liquid concept. The liquid concept was always my favorite

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/marvels-daredevil/

Apart from all the types, I decided to look into series of favorite title sequences which is James Bond. The majority of their opening credits were created by Daniel Kleinman, a British director and title sequence designer. I looked into his most recent creation, Skyfall, because I wanted to cover one important area that I know the James Bond films deliver, which is the sync of the audio with title sequence itself. I found an interview as well from the Art of Title asking him about how he used Adele's song for the creation for it and I found very interesting the level secrecy that some of this things have and also how listening to a bit of the song can help set the mood and visualize more the ideas. This was the question:

Was the song by Adele already written when you started? How did the union of audio and visual happen?

I hadn’t heard the track when I first started having ideas. I went to Pinewood sometime after the film had commenced shooting and Sam had a rough demo of the track he played for me. The demo helped me lock down some of the images and sync them occasionally and loosely to the lyrics, but it took considerable time to get a final mix and even longer to get an edit of the track. It was cut down from five minutes to just below four minutes. The track was a tightly kept secret and I didn’t share it with anyone — not even my own team — so they were in the dark as to the tone, mood, and speed of it until quite late in the process. The final marriage of finished track and edit to the visuals happened only a couple of weeks before the sequence had to be finished.

Once my title sequence is done for the show, I will write a post including not only the final work, but also how this research has helped me in the creation of it.

One of the most important things I am working on during this term is the opening Title Sequence. I have worked a lot on title sequences for the past couple of years, but more importantly I am very very passionate about them. I watch a lot of soap operas in spanish, which have very passionate titles that show you though emotion and music what the show is about. I judge shows on title sequences, specially the ones that are longer that 30 seconds. I think a title sequence is a very important element of every production because is one of the first thing that the audience is going to watch and it could potentially be a catch for someone not to change the channel or stop watching. Usually when I see a title sequence with a very bad song or not very appealing visuals (not necessarily visual effects), I decide not to carry on watching or just go and find another show in the meantime. 

Titles sequences are such an important thing for me and if there is an opportunity for me to show that I can make one with all these years of judging so many of them, is right now with this project. I have looked into some intros that have elements that I would include in the one for our show and based on that, I have come to the conclusion that of the main ideas is to create an opening credits with real life action instead of being full of visual effects. This is a bit of a challenge for me as well as I haven't created one like that before, but I believe that part of being an editor and part of learning, is not only getting better at what you already do, but also expanding your knowledge and learning to some other things as well that will make you more useful in the industry. I looked at over 30 title sequences, from the ones I thought had nothing to do with the style like Hannah Montana, Lost, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Arrow, Seinfeld, Lizzie McGuire and others, to some of the ones that actually gave me some ideas or made me realize that they had something good in them but that it didn't work for me. Here are some of those examples.

-

Parks and Recreation

This is a series I haven't watched before at all, but I did love the introduction a lot. It is very simple, casual and comical, but more importantly it has the "windows" or "squares" element that can help a lot in our opening credits, because we want to show both the football and the social life aspect of our characters and with the help of something like these "windows," we could achieve that from the very beginning of each episode. 

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

WARNING: Due to restricted playback you won't be able to watch the video from this player, please press play and click on 'Watch on YouTube'.

Friends is another series I haven't watched as much, but that it has been very successful. The title sequence music was to successful as well. that it was on the radio the other day, we are talking 11 years after the last episode aired. It is a very unusual thing for a song from an opening to become famous for that long. but I guess F.R.I.E.N.D.S is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. 

I particularly liked this style of intro, because it showing me already without watching a single episode, that there is a bonding between this characters and also it stands very much to the name of the show, which is a bunch of friends having fun. Although the concept of a bunch of friends doing something together suits perfectly what our story is based on, the intro is not really what I am looking at, since we want to show more aspects of our characters lives. 

Dawson Creek

This one here from Dawson Creek, is very similar to F.R.I.E.N.D.S but it still doesn't suit what I have been looking for. It does show as well some friends having some fun and doing things together, but its still doesn't help me transmit to the audience all I want with the one for Sunday League. I particularly didn't like the shaky camera technique in this one, although I get that they trying to show that one of there characters is actually behind this handy cam, I still thought it was a little bit distracting, but then again that is only my opinion.

La Malquerida

La Malquerida is a Mexican soap opera with 102 episodes. I watched it completely and I did like this intro a lot. The majority of these mexican soaps have very similar characteristics for their intros, which are a lot of saturation, the use of green screen and the appearance of all the main characters from the show, which are accompanied by a very particular song that will remain as the main theme for the whole run. This type of intros I like a lot and are the ones I would like to create in a future as I love the drama, passion and class that a lot of them transmit. 

In comparison to what I am looking for for our show, sadly this type of intro doesn't work as much, because it more serious and dramatical, plus it doesn't really show that much from each character. I would like to maybe take this on board for a future project or an experiment at some point to see if I am able to create something similar but at the moment it will not work as much in our project as I would like to. 

Captain Tsubasa

Better known as 'Super Campeones' in Spanish, this is a Japanese anime that features a couple of friends that play professional football, which includes, teams like Barcelona and playing for the national team of Japan in the World Cup. Although it is an anime, Captain Tsubasa has a lot of similar elements in comparison to our project; football, friendship and the desire to win. Even though there are similarities, the show lacks something (that in my opinion doesn't need as it is very good), which is more development on the characters life outside the pitch, as pretty much every episode is a match and more and more football. 

The title sequence for this show is different because of course it has a lot of animated elements, but more important is that it still gives you an idea of some shots that can be used in case of adding football scenes to it. I don't think it is an amazing introduction, but then again it very football based.

X-Men

We all know X-Men and this was a TV fan made title sequence with footage from a movie, that to be honest was pretty nice made apart from the quality of the image. The concept of this is very simple but also quite smart looking. On one side you have a picture, art, profile or any other name you want to put it from a character and on the other you have some clips from the movie where the character appears. I like having some headshot and profiles from characters edited into some sort of art, but more importantly is something simple that can establish the name of the character and/or actor, plus some footage of them that could be relevant. This is an idea I have as a backup plan, but I thought it would be nice if I make it suit with what we need.


EDIT: Enjoy of part I following this link http://waterflu.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/pre-production-research-into-titles.html

The 6th of October we had a presentation for our project to see if we had a green light to produce it. I was in charge of creating this Powerpoint presentation that ended up being a success and helped us explain the others what our project was about.

I didn't want to create a boring Powerpoint presentation, which I hate, so I decided to include some various elements that could help with a nicer presentation, like an intro created in After Effects and the use of Fifa 16 Character Creation feature. 

Below you can find a video tutorial by me of how I created the intro for the presentation:

For the Fifa character effect, I created the characters on Fifa 16 and saved the video using the SHARE function from the PS4. I then put the videos into my computer and included them in the presentation, giving in a bit of live. 

Here you can find the presentation:

(ATTENTION: Some video elements are missing in the presentation as SlideShare doesn't support videos in presentations)

Greenlight presentation from Chris Sarmiento

In order to give to prepare properly for this project, I decided to create an agenda that would help me organize and know what I need to do and for when.

So far the main things that I believe need doing as for both my roles Cinematographer/Editor are:


A Teaser for the end of this term that would give the audience a bit of a sense of what we are creating. Different to a Trailer that will potentially create after filming in January, the teaser doesn't include footage from the film, it is created with various elements still TBC that will still give a gist of our project.

A Title Sequence for our Sunday League show. In this case the main ideas I have at the moment don't include many graphics, which is a bit of a change for me to make a live action package.

Some Test Shots that will help me and the director understand what is it we are going to film, the types of camera we are going to need, the amount of people and if there are any camera or visual effects, so that we can practice them before filming to see if they work or not.

A Logo for the shirt of the team in which the main characters play. The creation of this will involve research on logos and their meaning alongside with different options to chose from.

The Camera set up that will allow me to plan ahead better for the most complicated shots and also some of the simple ones. It is important that I know and understand where my cameras are going to be positioned and how I am going to deal with them.

A Shot list provided and discussed with the director who will give me his point of view on how he sees some the scenes form the script and then evaluated by myself seeing if I can offer a better option or if everything he wants can actually or not.

A Poster that will help us promote and give some life to our show at the final stages of its production.

Editing the whole package and making the best out of it.

This are some and the main things that I am going to be working on. There are or might be some others coming along the way, but these are the ones I will be putting most of my time on. This not only includes actually making them, but doing research on them and comparing them with other shows, types of editing, editors or even films.

The image below is also a sheet that my producer gave me as of some of the most important things to do and a deadline for each of them.

Before our second year finished, Helen, Danny and I (Tekkers TV), decided to work together again on the final major project. For this we decided to include Aimee Saunders as it would help us to fill some roles and tea some pressure of Helen. The idea was that we all had our individual roles and although we give our opinion and share some input with each other, that we had the chance to do mainly 1 job we could focus on. The team roles were going to be layout like this:

Helen - Scriptwriter 

Danny - Director

Aimee - Producer

Myself - Cinematographer/Editor

My job particularly was gonna be a bit different as I had 2 different roles which were associated with each other, but at the same time they allowed me to them then separately. I was going to mainly focus on the camera set ups and layout during the pre production and the production and then put all my focus on editing during the post production phase. More importantly I realized I still had to do quite some research during the pre production and at this stage was when I also decided to some editing work during this stage. 

Our idea was to do a TV Show based on football, in this case a Sunday League team. I wasn't sure what that was a the beginning as I wasn't familiar with the term, but after getting explained roughly, I assimilated it with how we call it in spanish and the I definitely knew what we were talking about. I started getting quite excited when we started discussing typical things that happen in a sunday league, like a mum bringing lunch to her son and maybe some friends, embarrassing him. Also that hot mum that everyone loves or the fat referee that can't even cope with the pace of the match. It was a good idea and I thought it would be fun to produce something like that. After a couple of talks we decided to start working during the summer to get some work done and be a little bit ahead from the other groups when we were to start our third year, because we also have to deal with our dissertation which is going to take some time from us. 

As for our style of working, we decided to be unique and different. According to the brief we are meant to be getting some people to help out and get a project together while each of us was to focus on a role, but in our case with Tekkers TV going on, we decided to work more as a team than individuals helping each other. We have always worked great like that and we thought why should we stop. I know that there is a lot of work that needs to be done, but it helps a lot to get some input form someone else when you are doing something, as they could give you some good ideas that could end up helping with the output of your work. We believe this is gonna be a good year with a great project coming ahead of us and I am very excited about it.