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Movie Theater light gag


Andrew Redd

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I have a 35mm commercial coming up that I am going to be shooting and it takes place in a movie theater. I was wondering if anyone has lit a similar setting and found a really good way to reproduce the look of light bouncing off the movie screen onto the audience members. I was thinking of shooting two 4k HMI's through some tough silk and back lighting with tungsten units or possibly just one source 4 as backlight for hero (shooting on Kodak 5218 500T, not positive yet). Let me know what you guys think.

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

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A lot of times, for that shot, guys will just put a 4k HMI in the projection both, and actually bounce it off the screen, it creates a large soft source that looks pretty authentic, you can take it one stip further and have a grip wave flags in front of the HMI in a random pattern to create the look of flicker. It works great and is fairly easy to set up.

 

CHeers,

 

Steve

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Hey,

I was a gaffer on a small DV project and we shot a scene in a movie theater. All we did is set up a 2ft kino bank, gelled 1/2 CTB, pointing at the audience (it was a relatively tight shot...maybe ten people were visible) and then i stood on a chair and twisted a broom in front of the light. To add some oomph to the scene. i placed a 650 arri fresnel backlighting our two main characters, and flagged it off the rest of the actors. took ten minutes to set up, and it created a very nice believable movie effect, as well as subltly focusing the attention on our main characters.

Steve

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I would try to get a source overhead or bounce a light off a griff or something like that with side skirts placed overhead. Use that as a general ambience with a subtle flicker, keep it dim. then use a seperate soft key on your subject from the screen angle but cheat it a little for the best looking light depending on your camera angle. Add back light and smoke to taste.

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I DP'ed a shoot in a theater once.

 

I made a DVD copy of the footage that was gonna play on the screen in that scene.

 

I played the DVD through a video projector about 40 feet from the talent, pointed it at them, and softened the focus on the projector.

 

It worked extremely well.

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