Practical Plane Lighting

[Chris Broomfield]

I'm planning on lighting the set of half a plane practically with the classic moving ovals against the talent and background. I've got a few ideas as to how to create the ovals but then to have them move I'm struggling to think of a consistent method.

 

Any advice on how to light the outside of the plane to create an even blown out background, and foreground, including moving ovals would be greatly appreciated.

 

Chris

 

 

[David Mullen ASC]

If the row of windows is not too long, you probably can use one light for the sun. Could be a 5K sky pan if you want something sharp, or a 10K or 20K, just don't spot a light too close to the windows in those mock-ups because the plastic can melt. You can put the light on a high stand mounted to a doorway dolly on track to get the side to side drift but to do it right you probably should put the light on a long jib arm and raise it up and down maybe with a slight dolly side to side.

 

A big row of white boards can work for a background or something like a 12'x20' if you have the space. The harder part is the ambience coming in, a lot of it comes up from below especially in a plane flying above the cloud layer. A row of diffused cyc lights might work or Kinos if that will be enough exposure for you. You may need a high row for a cool top light on the windows if the sun effect disappears off of the windows, if not, the sun will overpower any skylight.

[Stuart Brereton]

When I've done this before, we didn't have enough room to use a large lamp backed off as a single source, so instead, I had 8 or 10 1k fresnels as hard sources through the windows, and then other tungsten units bounced into 4x4 beadboards which did dual duty providing ambience and also blowing out the view. From the other side of the plane, we used 4x4 kinos salt and peppered to provide a cooler fill. If we needed a light source to move in shot it was generally only visible through 1 or 2 windows, so it was easy to do. For some shots we also had to paper individual windows with 250 or 251.

 

Make sure the internal lights in the plane are working and balanced the way you want them, or it will get very contrasty in there.