shooting horses?

Olivier Vanaschen · December 5, 2005

Hello everybody,

We're directing and shooting a small low budget music video involving a trained horse inside a equitation manege indoors. (don't know if you said it like this in english, sorry). The horse is basicaly "acting" with the singer who's trying to catch its attention and let him get back on him (in very very short).

We'd love to have some advices on how you to handle a horse on the set, lighting advices,... We want to treat it really well, don't know how much light we can use,...

It's a one day shoot, shooting format will be HDV with our homemade MINI35 adapter. We have a Nikon lens set (8-16-20-35-50-85-105). Unfortunately we don't have access to a longer lens, it wouldn't work on our system anyway (too heavy, too much vignetting). We have a fluid head tripod and a cobra crane. The camera is a bit heavy for the crane and we don't have a follow focus,... We'll use the crane as a support for some kind of nice assisted handheld shots and to do top shots. So yes it's guerilla style :-) We have 4000w of work lights, 4 homemade 4-Banks, 800w redhead, lowell omni and tota.

We thought of putting the 8 work lights in circle to get some backlight, flares,... and use the 4-banks for the shots with the singer. We'd maybe use the redhead for some additional hard light in medium-close shots.

Thanks very very much for any advices you could give us. We're shooting this friday, we'll post grabs and the video on our website.

Best regards,

Olivier & Olan

creative film, video & photography

www.theblacksheep.be

Edited December 5, 2005 by the black sheep

Olivier Vanaschen · December 5, 2005

I forgot to mention it will be in b/w (in-camera to minimize compression artifacts).

Olivier & Olan

boy yniguez · December 8, 2005

hi,

i believe your light set-up would be sufficient if you could keep your talents (singer and horse) in pretty much a small spot and the whole scene is in limbo. i have no idea how big an equitation manege is but if your horse is allowed to wander then you're in trouble. depending on what your director wants you'll need horse wranglers to coax the animal in place. also, if he wants to see the perimeter walls is there's enough outside light so you don't have to worry about that?

note: some horses freak out with lights in their eyes so you may have to raise them high enough not to bother the animal.

Olivier Vanaschen · December 30, 2005

Hello!

thanks for your advices, we just finished this project. If you are interested, we posted some infos and the link here. Thanks again for everything.

Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland

www.theblacksheep.be

Jeremy · December 30, 2005

I know you already shot the video, but as another note, some horses also really freak out if they're not trained for film and are around a camera. Especially if it's noisy at all!

olan · January 3, 2006

I know you already shot the video, but as another note, some horses also really freak out if they're not trained for film and are around a camera. Especially if it's noisy at all!

Hello Jeremy

Thank you for the advices. As you said horses can really freak out if they're not trained for film, that?s why all the lights were installed and we were ready to shoot before it came on the set. That way, when the horse came on the set, it has the time to ?make knowledge? with what was around and go where it wanted to go. All we needed to do was to turn around on our self to keep the horse in the frame. The most important was to keep calm and not make too much noise.

About the camera, we mainly used the 35,50 and 85mm. As the horse was at maximum 10 meters from us, we never needed a longer lens. For all the close up shots we used the same lenses, thanks to these small snacks biscuit we had on the set, the horse was calm and very cooperative, we only had to put some of them where we needed to have the horse and we did get what we wanted (for example: when the horse is almost ?kissing? the singer, it?s because it was eating the biscuits behind the singer?s head).

Anyway, it was a great experience and we learned a lot of thinks on this project?

We hope you like it?

Olivier Vanaschen &Olan Bowland

+------------------------------------------+

the black sheep

creative film video & photography

www.theblacksheep.be

+------------------------------------------+

January 4, 2006

I didn't read any of the above posts including the original starter because I'm too busy BUT I will say this- killing livestock be it Horses,cattle or dogsand cats is just plain WRONG AND ILLEGAL! Get some professional counseling.

Micah Fernandez · January 4, 2006

BUT I will say this- killing livestock be it Horses,cattle or dogsand cats is just plain WRONG AND ILLEGAL!

Hahahah.

If this was a joke, I laughed. :) If not, please, no matter how busy you are, take the time to actually read the post or don't reply at all.

To the thread starter, I hope you can get clips or screen grabs up ASAP. :) Sounds like it was a great shoot.

Olivier Vanaschen · January 4, 2006

The shoot went great, there were two horse trainers on set, we shot in a manege, the singer is used to horses, we got insurance,... We did everything we could with a 5k budget! What the hell is illegal with this? Maybe in the US, but here in Belgium, it's surely not!

We posted a lot of infos about the shoot on this forum, here's a link to it

Thanks again to everybody who did take the time to give us advices.

Olivier & Olan

www.theblacksheep.be

Edward Westerhuis · December 6, 2006

That's really funny...

I didn't read any of the above posts including the original starter because I'm too busy BUT I will say this- killing livestock be it Horses,cattle or dogsand cats is just plain WRONG AND ILLEGAL! Get some professional counseling.