Perfect Woman

Stuart Brereton · June 5, 2006

I've just wrapped on an HD feature, shot just outside of Bristol, UK. It was called 'The Perfect Woman', and was a 'teen horror' sort of thing. What made it unusual for me was the fact that it was shot in 1 week, by three different camera units. One unit handled exteriors, while the other two shot interiors, except for a big set piece mid week, where all three units were outdoors.

My unit shot almost exclusively on a operating theatre set, supposedly deep in the bowels of an English castle. We had two main characters to film on this set, the surgeon and his nurse. One by one, all the other characters in the film arrive, or are brought to the theatre to be operated on....

I had no prep time whatsoever. I was hired friday evening to start shooting saturday morning. In fact, the first time I saw the set was when I arrived for work!

The art department had placed a few practicals, mostly striplights. In addition to this there were some fluorescent tubes with peacock blue gel on them, and a 200w practical over the gurney where the operations took place.

My lighting package consisted of some 4' & 2' kinos, 2 dedo kits, and a bunch of 650w & 300w fresnels.

I decided on first day to make the practical over the bed the main source of light. We were shooting with Canon HD zooms, wide open at t2.1. The practical had a hotspot in its' centre which I let go to about t3.5, which meant that actors standing under the lamp, but outside the centre of its' beam would be exposed at stop or thereabouts. If they leant in, they were sometimes 2 or 3 stops over.

I started off using some of the 300w mounted high up the walls to backlight the actors, but wasn't happy with the hardness of the light, so on day 2 managed to get hold of some gel to approximate the color of the practicals in the background, and used it on 2' kinos for back light, usually 2 stops underexposed.

When the action took place away from the gurney, I tried to suggest that it was still the major bounce source in the room, and used 2' kinos or 300ws bounced off polyboards (foamcore) to provide a low angle key.

It was difficult to decide sometimes how slavishly to follow the logic that I had created, as we had a number of female actors who needed to look good, and a low angle key is not always the most flattering....

there's more here

I think I got the balance about right...I hope

I have a few stills which show more of the room and the lighting setups. I'll post them as soon as I can get them off my camera.

All in all, it was a fun week, despite the enormous scheduling issues, and the constant script revisions .

Landis Tanaka · June 6, 2006

what in the hell is goin on in those pics. is that one chick gonna show some boob? eeeh?

Stuart Brereton · June 6, 2006

what in the hell is goin on in those pics. is that one chick gonna show some boob? eeeh?

WTF?

freddie bonfanti · June 6, 2006

good job as usual, stuart...

one question: in the last picture it looks like you had just 2 lights, a top light and asomething else on the far right side as fill...am i right? i love how dark it looks.

is it gonna be released here in the uk soon?

Stuart Brereton · June 6, 2006

Here's a few stills that show the room more:

one question: in the last picture it looks like you had just 2 lights, a top light and asomething else on the far right side as fill...am i right? i love how dark it looks.

As you can see in the last photo above, the practical above the bed is doing most of the work. He has a 4ft kino up above the shelving unit behind him, that backlights him and is a subtle edge on her. She also has a 2ft kino with full plus green & 1/2ctb on it as a kicker.

I didn't really light the rest of the set, just let the practicals do the work, unless there was action being staged in a particular area.

btw. i just got some screengrabs from another HD feature, Shadows HERE