Picking Stock

Since director John Schultz's new film, Like Mike, deals with a basketball team that wears red, white, and blue uniforms, Schultz and DP Shaun Maurer wanted to make sure they used film stock that highlighted bright colors. Maurer says they went with Fuji products “mainly because we found them more saturated for the primary colors that pop. John is a fan of bright colors.”

Among the four Fuji stocks used on the movie, one had never been used for a feature film before — Fuji's new RealA 500D, which hit the market in January. Maurer used 500D for a two-minute, night exterior sequence. Fuji is marketing 500D as a highly sensitive daylight-type film, useful for mixed lighting environments, particularly where there is heavy use of HMIs. Maurer says he decided to use it for the night exterior scene mainly to reduce blue tones at night.

“I don't like highly blue night exteriors, and I normally try to bring those sequences back to the Tungsten look, usually through color-timing,” he says. “In this case, though, I thought using 500D might bring me a step closer to not having to worry about that in post. The stock gave the negative more oranges and reds, limiting blues. It also let me liberally use HMIs and have them photograph as neutral rather than blue. That also meant I did not have to gel them or use extensive filters. Effectively, it gave me maximum stop without having to correct lights or camera.”

Maurer adds that he does wish the new stock was more saturated, like Fuji's F-500T stock, which he used extensively for other scenes. “For this scene, that wasn't critical, but I would prefer the saturation match the 500T look,” he says.