project on sony pd 170 with lotus extreme & zeiss go

pascal Boyer · July 2, 2008

Hello from beautiful France,

i'm shooting a short in september and i have a problem with a location ; the light is not beautiful

there and the actor will be moving a lot in front of these windows. Also all the walls are white and

there's going to be no decoration because the house is supposed to be empty ! I've added some pics on photobucket. The location is in a building at the 4 th floor and is kind of small. For the white walls mayby the neutral grad soft would help me also ,i was thinking using a scissor lift with a 1,5 HMI par on it and kinos or a black jack inside. Should i use contrasts filters in

order to have better results when filming the window ? We are going for a drama kind of look and i want to get a stylisized image. I will have classic softs , and tropic blue for more dramatic moments. There going to be some flashbacks where the image should be more like warm memories(shooting exteriors and interiors), i was thinking tobacco but i heard they are strong,so mayby coral filters. I forgot to mention we have a smoke machine and there's going to be a video to film transfert , should i overexpose a bit ? I attached a paint document representing the location :

-the blue square is the HMI par on the scissor lift

-the black square is the Blackjack

-the "x" are the talent positions

the circles represent the windows . Here are the links : http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/Pas...rt/IMG_0006.jpg , http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/Pas...rt/DSC02210.jpg

Thank you for your help :)

Tim Terner · July 2, 2008

We are going for a drama kind of look ........

Thats evident from your post. BTW, most of us here are not shortsighted

Steve McBride · July 5, 2008

Yeah, you need to get some wider shots of the location to really help.

As for the color, I wouldn't go for using filters, if you get it wrong, there is really no way to go back and shoot unless you want to reshoot but that is more time and money. I would just light everything the same and get it exactly how you want it to look minus the hue and just touch that up in post. It will be a lot easier and it will save a lot of time, money and frustrations :) .

Jamie Metzger · July 6, 2008

I dont know of a scissor lift that goes to 4 stories!

You need a bucket lift, or some close variants...bear in mind you need someone certified to rent and operate these!

BTW, I don't think you will get stylized drama looks with an all white room, using daylight.

pascal Boyer · July 7, 2008

I dont know of a scissor lift that goes to 4 stories!

You need a bucket lift, or some close variants...bear in mind you need someone certified to rent and operate these!

BTW, I don't think you will get stylized drama looks with an all white room, using daylight.

Hi,

what did you had in mind ? I will have a blackjack, 4 bank kinoflo, 1,5 par , fresnels and a couple of redheads , also some mirrors and chimera's gobos. We will use another lift, i 've attached a pic.

cheers

pascal Boyer · July 7, 2008

Yeah, you need to get some wider shots of the location to really help.

As for the color, I wouldn't go for using filters, if you get it wrong, there is really no way to go back and shoot unless you want to reshoot but that is more time and money. I would just light everything the same and get it exactly how you want it to look minus the hue and just touch that up in post. It will be a lot easier and it will save a lot of time, money and frustrations :) .

Hi ,

i want to use coral filters are they gonna cause problems ? I heard that they are good for the skintones

Steve McBride · July 7, 2008

I would say just to ditch filters all together. With the advanced technology in post for cheaper today, you can get more desired effects and tweak it to get the most detail possible easier. The only filters that should just about always be used are ND.

If you do want to go with filters though, with the coral filters you're going to loose your blues, so if you're shooting in a white room, you may want to steer clear of coral. If you want to bring out skin tones, you're right in wanting a warming filter, but coral may be too much, but don't take my word for it, I haven't had a lot of experience with filters so you may want to wait for one of the pros and see what they say :P .

pascal Boyer · July 8, 2008

"Yeah, you need to get some wider shots of the location to really help"

unfortunately ,i don't have ,here's another one : http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/Pas...rt/IMG_0007.jpg

the wider one is the pic taken at night

pascal Boyer · July 12, 2008

what do the pro's have to say ? ;)

pascal Boyer · July 13, 2008

Here is a wider shot : http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/Pas...rt/IMG_0021.jpg

Adrian Sierkowski · July 13, 2008

I think a lot of this will depend on the whys.

The room is empty and barren; why? Can this be used as a metaphor for the character?

The windows are there, why not let them blow?

and if the location isn't working, don't try to force it, figure something at a differant location that might work is possible.

David Regan · July 13, 2008

I think we've all been in this situation at some point, white room, no art direction because it should look 'empty,' I always get headaches when I see situations like this coming up. And SD with windows doesn't necessarily help either.

But to work with what you have there are certain things that in my opinion can help. Firstly if it's supposed to be an empty room, establish that. I think a good wide shot of the room showing it's blandness will help and establish it's not just a bunch of medium shots without art direction.

As far as lighting, again white walls don't make it easy, but one thing you can do is line the walls behind camera and out of frame with duve/black cloth to reduce the amount of ambient light bouncing around. As far as the windows go, Adrian made a good point, you can just let them blow out, or you can expose for your exterior and throw your character's into maybe even sillouhette for the wide. Then come into the CU/MS with your lights and edge them a bit, so they are still dark but defined.

If you can with your HMI you could try and create some shafts of light on the walls, that could look nice out of focus in your close ups.

As Adrian said, it's all a matter of whys, figure out what works best in service of the story and do your best to go from there.

Good Luck!

pascal Boyer · July 13, 2008

Thank you for these advices ! I appreciate.

pascal Boyer · October 5, 2008

Hello ,

I finished the shoot and it all went well here is a picture , i'll add more very soon , we ended shooting with a cooke S4 serie, i love these lenses ..