1 The Director of Photography – an overview

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The laboratory
The laboratory contact
The laboratory contact person (always referred to as the ‘lab contact’)
is one of the more important people in a DP’s life. Every morning,
usually somewhere between 7.30 and 8.00, a member of the camera
crew will be detailed to phone the lab. This is to obtain the report on
yesterday’s rushes, or dailies as they are known in the USA.The report
will contain information as to how well the contact thought the overall
look of the rushes had been achieved, an accurate list of any hairs
or scratches with precise slate numbers and the all-important printer
lights. The printer lights are usually given in the order of red, green
and blue with, often, an average of all three colours for each scene or
roll. This is known as an overall light and is an expression of the overall
exposure.
The overall exposure figure will only be of use if you have been
working under normal lighting conditions. If you have been shifting
your colours using the grey scale or, for instance, shooting under fluorescent
lighting, you will need to interpret the RGB (Red, Green,
Blue) numbers.
Your laboratory contact will have been responsible for setting the
grading lights the night before and can therefore have a huge effect on
the look of the DP’s work. For this reason, it is always wise to talk to
the lab contact before starting a picture; this way they know what you
are trying to achieve. For the same reason, I always try and make that
early morning call myself, not just to get a feel for yesterday’s work
but to discuss what we are going to be shooting today, so the contact
has some idea of what I had in mind when they come to grade the negative
in the small hours of the morning.
If you are working on one set for several days, it is a good idea to
invite the lab contact on to the set. They spend so much of their life in
the dark they are usually only too grateful for the chance of a visit.
More importantly, it lets them see the real thing and this makes their
involvement in the production all the more real.