TV lighting Gag

[Eric T Collins]

Ok, so I'm having a bit of a time incorporating a tevevision into my set and having it look both believable and good. I've got a 650 on a flicker; and a 1k with blue on a variac. I'm thinking the blue will mimic the cuts of a show and the 650 can be the individual lights from the imitated tv show. Any ideas or tips on how to make this better, or if this is a decent start to a better gag? Thanks for any and all help.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Hell, i did it with a 650 mixed with 1/2 CTO and some 216 diffusion on a 1K dimmer moving by hand. IT worked well enough for me. Depends a lot on the scene and what else is there for illumination etc.

As they say: TEST!

[David Mullen ASC]

Sounds good. I'd put both lights through a frame of diffusion, maybe opal or 216, to blend and soften them.

[Jess Haas]

Sounds like you are on the right track. I usually do it with 2 lights, a bit of blue, some diffusion and dimmers or flicker boxes. When it comes to the flicker most people seem to have a tendency to do much more than you would actually get from a TV when not watching music videos. Try watching various TV shows in the dark and you will get a feel for what is realistic, then decide if you want to go for realism or a more stylized effect.

 

~Jess

[Chris Keth]

I've done it before like this. I had a 1k through a chimera. There was a spark that would cover or uncover different parts of the chimera face at random intervals. He wasn't always moving like to do firelight. The idea was to mimic an editing pattern so he would do something like "one hannd in the middle for 7 seconds, a hand in each bottom corner for 9 seconds..." Obviously the pattern wasn't that rigid, he just winged what felt about right.

[Jess Haas]

That reminds me of a film I was doing where we didn't have dimmers to do fire light so it was a person with hands in front of each light. Worked great, just required lots of people :-)

 

~Jess

[Hal Smith]

Maybe add a third light ungelled to mimic those annoying fade to white flash cuts? It wouldn't need a dimmer, an on-off switch would work just fine.

[Joe Lotuaco]

Maybe try a two bank kino with one 32 and one 55 lamp. Then as long as you have a ballast with individual select swithes you can have someone flick the lamps on and off in a desireable pattern.

[Andrew Rawson]

Not a big fan of the "TV Gag". For me, never during a day scene and only if it's very motivated at night. That being said, my latest tool is either 2 Parabeams or 2 Divas.(Kinos with built in dimmers). And as the previous poster stated I usually use daylight tubes in one and 2900 tubes in the other and then gel accordingly. Then it's simply up to the operator as to how subtle (or not) to make it. I always put them both through a 4x or 3x diffusion frame as well.

Andy