Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC

PS. I dont come from a commercial background, infact i haven't done a commercial in a year. I come from using softlight designed not to look like commercial lighting but natural for narrative work.

Soft sources, like large book lights and smaller soft sources, but placed within the fall off the source so you can feel the diffusion reflecting off the skin, will give you a more commercial look. This is called blooming. Large book lights placed far back can still be very soft but give a different natural light look rather then commercial look. As well as since the eye is like a wide-angle lens sources placed far away appear a lot smaller in the reflection of the eye, hence avoiding that big reflection of diffusion in the eye, once again looking more natural. To soften even more for close ups you can use clear diffusion close to the character so that it doesn't cause that blooming. This works because clear diffusion, like hilite, won?t become the source. However, that?s what I would do to avoid the commercial look heh. To achieve the commercial look I would take a medium (4x4-6x6) sized sources placed close to the performer (If the diffusion is too large and close, it will start to coming in at a reflecting angle and act as a backlight aswell as a key light, so i use smaller booklights to aviod that) so that I would get a nice bright reflection in the skin as well as a bright and large eye light. For wide shots I would use a larger frame? but things are usually stay tight on TV.

damn thats nasty

Ugh. That video sucked.

For some coverage it doesn't need to travel far. But for one of the shots it needs to spark up the whole room to reveal another character in there. I'd like to have the character that?s lighting the lighter's silhouette (she?s on the floor) in the foreground and as it flashes it reveals another character in the background. But the only way I can see to achieve this, and I?m not sure it will work, is having a lamp op handheld a leko with a 19º barrel off screen but still in the back. Build a bottomer, siders, and toper with a small hole in the middle for him and have him pan his leko into the gold bounces that are placed next to the character on the floor, but hidden in front of her away from camera; and as the lamp op pans his leko in the hole, he wipes it back into the solid sider and repeats giving the sparking effect. But I see problems that I can comprehend right now.

I like it Micheal. What do you think if I made several 5" soft gold reflector bounces and had them contected to each other at different angles. then had the actor strike the flashlight and pan the flash light off the bounces?

I have a scene in an up coming shoot where the only indicated light source is a lighter that one of the characters is flicking it to light but it wont ignite. I was wondering if anyone knew of a good way to augment the spark effect of the light if the source (the lighter) is off screen or hidden behind the character within the frame?

Sweet. Got any other recomendations David?

I would find out where her skin town falls within a zone step grayscale. I usually use a DSC CamAlign Chart. You can do this by spot metering the zones and finding out which matches her tone, or closest too, under the same light. From that you can tell where her skin will fall. I used to do a lot of music videos for local Ugandan rappers and they are really dark skinned. There skin is so dark it?s around 3-4 steps/stops in reflectance under middle gray. The only successful way I found to light them was using reflective sources like bounces or diffused sources. Their skin has a sheen to it that catches reflective diffused sources well. You don?t even need high output sources; you just need to hit them from reflective angles, which is often easier because of the sheen to their skin. These reflective techniques were utilized very well in City of God. To answer your question, I would run this test and then you can tell precisely if there will be enough detail or not. Remember to account for contrast added in post.

Looks awesome man. You've go a reel talent!

Awesome. I've been waiting for this one for a while too. Im not huge into musicals but this one looks really cool.

Thanks Rich! Most the movie was funded by a canadian super model called Daria Werbowy. She came on set in whistler a few times last year and helped set extras and stuff. Really great girl, looks nothing like she does in her ad's, really down to earth hemp wearing hippy actually ;-). PS. I'm a fan of your stuff rich. Do you have another project on the go?

I like them both. THe only thing I would change is a eye light on the first frame.

dude. Your making me drool.

LOOKS SWEET MAN. Keep up the good work!

Looks awesome Kevin! Your genny's must of taken a beating. What kind of juice did you need for all those strobes? I see a flat of Redbull on one of the lighting cases. Was that your secret weapon? ;)

Has anyone had a chance to check it out at the Toronto film fest? I've been waiting for this film for over two years now. I saw this newer trailer recently and its one of the best trailers I?ve seen in a long time. http://movies.aol.com/movie/the-assassinat...ford/26180/main Roger Deakins has 3 movies coming out in the next three months (No Country for Old Men, and In the Valley of Elah). Judging from the past, Roger rarely does a film with bad story. I'm not one for predictions, but I think he's due for an Oscar.

Thanks! I actually prefer softer stuff. I shot the whole project with various promists and I felt the softening by the pro35 was a benefit to the look I was going for. The biggest draw back to softness is if we were doing a film out in which those to factors speak to the look of the film, but the resolution of the Varicam isn't good enough, in my opinion, for film outs. I would have preferred to shoot the whole thing 1920x1080 direct to disk but there was so much slow motion in the film, varicam was really our only option within our budget.

Congrads Eric! I can't wait to see it in theaters!

Thats a real slap in the face.

The clips are broken up into week 1 and week 2 of shooting. We shot on a Varicam with Pro35. We tested a direct to disk system during the shoot using a MacPro tower, a RAID tower, and a blackmagic capture card. We did some uncompressed to disk (4:2:2 1280x720) but we also rolled to tape during the whole shoot. After seeing the same shot uncompressed direct to disk capture and DVCPRO HD tape footage, I compared the two side by side; I?m convinced going direct to disk is the only way to shoot HD. However none of the following footage is from the uncompressed footage. Week 1 http://www.chayseirvin.com/video/clip1.mov Week 2 http://www.chayseirvin.com/video/clip2.mov

Looks good to me man!

The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Lubezki's best.

http://www.chayseirvin.com/video/littlechildren.mov Nothing wrong with a little zoom if your looking for some profound disorientation. ;) I think a zoom would look great if the setting were right and it was revealing something "profound" or as a way to move the narrative.

I disagree. I used one not to long ago on a car interior scene for a little frontal fill. It worked great. I agree, the highlight blooming effect on his skin comes from a much softer quality of light then just a ring light. I think it is as you say, soft sources from 4 sides or at least one from above and below the lens.