Night River Cherry Blossoms, and a Movie Shoot
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Cherry Blossoms over the Shirakawa River Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 0.4 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image datanearby photos
Cherry Blossoms over the Shirakawa River
Kyoto, Japan

Considering the wild, freaky presentations I've been posting recently, I thought I'd lead off today with something quiet and simple.

I had stepped out earlier this evening to check out a movie shoot going on near my place, and snapped the shot above on the spur of the moment. It was well after sunset, so the sky was a deep, rich blue, and the main gate of the Heian Shrine a deep, rich orange, and the reflections in the water a mix of rich colors (blue from the sky, green from the street lights). All and all it was “rich”, but seeing as I've posted that kind of shot before (both from around this same location and from the nearby canal), I thought I'd give this one a try as black & white.

It's not too bad for a half-second exposure at 70mm, hand-held, freestanding.

Evening Movie Shoot -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image datanearby photos
Evening Movie Shoot

They were shooting scenes from a movie to be called マザーウォーター (“Mother Water”, whatever that means). It's the same group that did the slightly eccentric comedy 『かもめ食堂』 (“Kamome Diner”), which we liked.

I didn't want to be in the way, so went off some distance to grab a shot of the scene (the shot you see above, with a guy in the middle of the river holding a big microphone, and the camera at the edge of the water on the left). It was dark so I couldn't really see what was going on, but in looking at the shot now, I see that the camera is pointed right at me, along with the gaze of everyone, with smiles on their faces.

This explains why moments after taking the shot, someone came up to me and asked very politely whether I might stand a bit off to the side for a minute or two while they filmed a shot... doh! During that time the same guy stopped a few random passers by, also requesting very politely that they pause for just a minute. (Judging by when they did/didn't do this, they seemed to have filmed for only about two minutes during the half hour I was there... a lot of effort by 40 people for so little!).

( it was really quite dark; this shot is highly overexposed ) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 0.3 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image datanearby photos
( it was really quite dark; this shot is highly overexposed )

They were actually shooting on real film, not digital, but they did have some kind of digital recording going as well, so they could check out framing and such in real time. In the shot above, they're sitting in front of a local shrine that was decommissioned a few years ago, checking out framing on a monitor for their next shot.

I chatted with one of the staff members for a while (the tall blur in the shot above) who said that they use film for its wider dynamic range. He did say that they also do shoot stuff with Red digital movie cameras, though I don't know whether he was referring to this project specifically. (This group was friendlier and more conscientious than the previous movie shoot in this area... I guess it comes with being more professional.)

While standing around, I snapped another shot of the river as it passed by some old buildings I posted last fall. This is looking in the opposite direction, from a bit further downstream, as the lead shot in this post....

Ripply -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/50 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image datanearby photos
Ripply

All 3 comments so far, oldest first...

You saw “Kamome Shokudo” too? We really liked that one. Low key, no fuss, but just…nice.

— comment by Zak on March 30th, 2010 at 10:37pm JST (14 years ago) comment permalink

Do you mean that they were going to put the decommissioned shrine in the shot?

No, they just happened to be sitting there… the camera is facing the other direction, but I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to refer to a previous post. I did tell the guy I chatted with that it was decommissioned (apparently an extreme rarity), but he said it was not going to be in the shot. —Jeffrey

— comment by Zak on March 30th, 2010 at 11:44pm JST (14 years ago) comment permalink

Very interesting photo of the evening movie shoot. Thanks for posting it. A question: Did you process the image? – Tom (California)

There are two shots of the movie shoot, so I’m not sure which you find interesting, but the first was cropped a bit, and had a touch of extra brightness added (’cause it was really dark, but the floodlights kept the exposure short). The second one was lacking contrast, so I bumped up the black level just a bit to make it look less foggy. —Jeffrey

— comment by Tom on March 31st, 2010 at 11:46pm JST (14 years ago) comment permalink
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