Can someone breakdown this setup for me ? Isn't using a soft source easier than putting so many diffusions like this ?

[charles leo panadan]

[Albion Hockney]

Its hard to tell exactly whats going on from the angle of the photo.

I wonder if they are having some issues with direct sunlight coming through they are also trying to cut or soften....that would explain the 8x that is behind the m40 or m18. also a curious looking checkered silver lame rag.

There aren't many soft sources that have the power of HMI's so often you do use HMI's with heavy diffusion for daylight scenes.

That said multiple 4x frames of diffusion like that is NOT common and usually wouldn't be necessary. Sometimes you will use a "double break". putting a light through 2 diffusion frames. Often the first one is 4x frame to help spread the light across a bigger frame like a 8x or 12x

 

[Tristan Noelle]

Looks like grip department mission creep. Could be the sunlight was changing, initially being blocked by the large frame, but then the 4x’s were needed to block hotspots that cropped up.  Space or time would have made it difficult to set up a larger frame. Or they were using the diff frames as nets and flags, shading parts of the frame. All in all, hard to say. I doubt it was diagramed that way. 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Tristan Noelle

[charles leo panadan]

Found something similar again .  Why do they stack up so many diffusion frames ? 

[David Mullen ASC]

There’s more than one light there, looks like two next to each other. The 4x4 diffusion frames might be overlapping, more side-by-side, to get rid of any hard light leak from the two lights.