Television Flicker

[Adam Hiner]

Hello,

 

I was wondering how one might be able to recreate a flicker from a television without the use of a flicker box. Waving hands and various gobos don't seem to work out for me. Is there anything cleaner and cheaper to get a better representation.

 

Thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

Hello,

 

I was wondering how one might be able to recreate a flicker from a television without the use of a flicker box. Waving hands and various gobos don't seem to work out for me. Is there anything cleaner and cheaper to get a better representation.

 

Thanks

 

Flicker boxes, dimmers, and hand-waving all work for me and I don't know what's cheaper than waving a hand in front of a soft light, so I'm fresh out of ideas...

 

All of these tricks depend on the skill of the person doing the waving, dimming, etc. to get the rhythm right.

 

It helps to have more than one light going through a single diffusion frame so as to blend different rates of flicker, dimming, or to have one steady light, etc. It's hard to do this with a single light and make it seem random enough. I usually start with two tweenies going through the same frame of diffusion, or two soft boxes end-to-end, etc. Then one can barely be pulsing while the other can be more erratic.

 

If you want to be more realistic, take your video source and use a video projector to project it onto the faces of the actors, throwing it out of focus and passing it through a thin frame of diffusion so it's more about shifting image brightnesses, etc.

[Adam Hiner]

Flicker boxes, dimmers, and hand-waving all work for me and I don't know what's cheaper than waving a hand in front of a soft light, so I'm fresh out of ideas...

 

All of these tricks depend on the skill of the person doing the waving, dimming, etc. to get the rhythm right.

 

It helps to have more than one light going through a single diffusion frame so as to blend different rates of flicker, dimming, or to have one steady light, etc. It's hard to do this with a single light and make it seem random enough. I usually start with two tweenies going through the same frame of diffusion, or two soft boxes end-to-end, etc. Then one can barely be pulsing while the other can be more erratic.

 

If you want to be more realistic, take your video source and use a video projector to project it onto the faces of the actors, throwing it out of focus and passing it through a thin frame of diffusion so it's more about shifting image brightnesses, etc.

 

Thanks for the advice David. I will keep it in mind next time. Best wishes.