Akeelah and the Bee

[David Mullen ASC]

We're filming for three days in the auditorium of Venice High School for another spelling bee. This was the first day in there. The ceiling was fairly smooth with nothing to rig from except for some very wide decorative beams of some historical value, so I decided to try lighting balloons, which I've never used before. This is one of four spelling bees in the film and this one is supposed to be fairly evenly lit, high-key, so I couldn't just let the audience be in the dark.

 

We had two balloons, each 12K total in tungsten globes, so 24K total for the two balloons. I was getting a little over an f/4 under the two of them at 320 ASA. These are the largest ones from the company (whose name I don't remember) and have HMI globes inside as well.

 

The stage was lit with a bunch of 2K Zips pointed down, plus some PARCAN's pointed at the mic and as backlights. The stage was at an f/5.6 (so one stop brighter than the audience) and the person at the mic was at an f/8.

 

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

David, thanks again for your wonderfully valuable posts.

 

So was the negative exposed at f/4.0 for the audience?

 

-felipe.

Edited February 27, 2005 by felipe

[David Mullen ASC]

For an early scene where the main character walks down the aisle through the audience it was, but once the bee begins, I exposed at f/5.6, one stop under for the audience. This allowed me to use the Primo anamorphic zoom on B-camera (which only opens to f/4.5) to grab various reaction shots of audience members. These are the sorts of scenes where you have to compromise a little to get all the shots; for example, sometimes on A-camera I'm using the Steadicam with a C-Series 60mm and on B-camera I'm on a Primo zoom wide-open much of the time, and I can't do much to fix the lighting on faces other than quickly move a 10K with a big Chimera around, but I'm limited by the permanent seats that are in the way.

 

Hopefully I'll get to tweak a little more as we do tighter shots over the next two days, but we really have a LOT of shots to get in the can so I'm going to have to let the overhead lighting do a lot of the work.

 

This sort of generally-lit look is making me more determined to light the final spelling bee next week in a totally different style, with a lot of hot backlights and shadows and lens flares.

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

Mr. Mullen,

 

thanks for the response... on another note, how long does it take (roughly) to set up the ballons, it seems like they could potentially be pretty fast, but looks can be very deceiving... filling them up might be very time consuming...

 

thx.

 

-felipe.

[David Mullen ASC]

The guys had a 2-hour precall to get the balloons up but the owner of the building showed up an hour late so they were behind when I arrived. The had to feed the power cables through a hole in the ceiling so that they didn't hang down in my shots. Then they had to assemble the balloon and connect the fixtures inside (I think there are twelve 1K tungsten fixtures inside in groups of three.) Filling the balloons only seemed to take about five minutes and moving them around was fast too.

[Matt Pacini]

Thanks for posting stuff like this David, really interesting.

 

How are they hanging these things?

12 1K's has gotta be pretty heavy.

 

Matt Pacini

[pkbissen]

David

 

Thanks for posting your experiences shooting the film. Your posts have been an invaluable resource me and everyone else here on the forum. I think a personal website with articles would be a great idea. Is the book you co-wrote out yet?

 

Pat.

[Jonathan Spear]

"This sort of generally-lit look is making me more determined to light the final spelling bee next week in a totally different style, with a lot of hot backlights and shadows and lens flares."

 

Cool idea.

 

B)

[David Mullen ASC]

As for the weight of twelve 1K bulbs, I don't think it is that much, but anyway, the large helium-filled balloon obviously floats with them inside...

 

The new edition of "Cinematography" by Malkiewicz and Mullen will be out by the Fall.

[David Mullen ASC]

Week Four is over. We shot the last two days at a house in Northridge. This was part of our "warm and sunny" section of the movie, but while yesterday was sunny, today we got rain. We ran inside and started lighting a day interior scene I was saving for when it got dark, then the rain let up and we shot outside, then it rained, etc. It sucked. And I ended up shooting the interior in the day but finishing the exterior porch scene at night -- and in the rain, trying to make it look sunny and not raining. I put a 20'x20' Griflon over the action, bounced light into it, and added a strong backlight from a second floor balconey. This was the reverse angle of a shot done in daytime so I hope it cuts OK. What a nightmare -- I'm getting soaked trying to coordinate lighting this backyard deck area in the rain for day, at night, while also tenting the actors as much as I can, plus the cameras, and the AD tells me that in six minutes, we will lose the kid actor! Well, we got the shot at least...

 

Next week we are shooting the finale for four days straight at the Hollywood Palladium, faking for the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt in Washington D.C. This whole sequence has to be planned with military precision because of the number of extras allotted for each day, nearly 200 of them being school kids on stage. I've got to get all of my widest shots on the first day when I have the entire audience and the entire stageful of kids there. Then I believe the next day I have no kids but all my audience, then the next day half the kids and a quarter the audience, and then the final day, only the principle actors and a few extras. I have to have a video "C" camera running around shooting angles to be played on TV sets in scenes as ESPN coverage, plus we have to shoot some shots with an HDCAM camera so it can be cut into a montage sequence partially shot on HD already. Plus there's a camera crane that plays all four days both to get crane shots and also as a prop since the real National Bee has a remote crane. I'm also using two 24-light Dino lights as props too, not really to light that much but because I want them in the background as cool-looking fixtures flaring into the lens.

 

The thing I've learned about shooting these bees is to light for 360 degrees as much as possible and only tweak a little for tight shots rather than relight everything. It's the only way to get a lot of coverage quickly.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Sorry... Just thinking... Don't you have a weather day insurance on this feature ?

[David Mullen ASC]

Insurance companies don't like to pay so you'd have to prove that the day was unshootable due to the weather and that you had used up your cover sets. You'd get questions like "why didn't you move the scene indoors? Why didn't you shoot some other scenes? etc." Then IF the day was declared a disaster and the insurance company paid for a reshoot, you'd have to give up all the negative shot that day because IF you used any of it, you'd be saying that the day WAS shootable after all. So insurance claims are a LAST resort.

[Laurent Andrieux]

OK... Thanks for the reply, David