Matthew Moore

Mafers, C-Clamps and Magic Arms all work well, but you can basically use anything that one would normally use to hang lights from a grid. I recently used the large size poles, which, at full extension, are nearly 15' long--but at that length, they bow in the middle and are not particularly secure. In my experience, they work best when used in narrower spaces, where you can really get them wedged in nice and tight. And as was also mentioned, they can be (and actually, I think they were originally conceived for) configured vertically and are fairly easy to hide...

Thank you all for your very generous advice. No matter what approach I ultimately go with, it is tremendously helpful to to see how different DP's approach the same challenge and it has given me much to think about. Cheers. MM

Thank you for the suggestion, Adam. I was indeed thinking of offsetting the top light (if I go that route), because I think that it would read as 'light through a window' (wherever that window might be) much more than having the whole bed uniformly/evenly lit by some dim 'mystery' light, while the rest of the room is relatively dark...

When I was in film school, one of my film studies teachers screened "The Conversation" and noted the following definition of a "caul": A part of the amnion, one of the membranes enveloping the fetus, which sometimes is round the head of a child at its birth. Not sure if that is pushing it a bit for what Coppola's intentions may have been, but given the story he tells during the film's dream sequence about having been a sickly child, it seems like the name + jacket couldn't have been a coincidence

Michael: Your understanding of the shot is correct and I know...what is the point of shooting on location if we can't make use of the location's natural attributes? I wasn't given specific direction that it needs to be moonlight; I considered simply creating a certain level of ambient 'nighttime' light, either from above, since the actors will be laying in bed, or from elsewhere in the room, but the way the script is structured (a series of flashbacks), we keep returning to this shot/scene (which is present day) throughout the short and I wanted to make sure that I strike the right balance between a believable nighttime effect and being able to see the actors well enough...so that is why I thought of a moonlight effect, to sort of 'motivate' their faces and portions of the bed, or even adjacent wall, being lit a bit more. But, as Bob mentioned, if I do go for that effect, I want to be careful about it looking too contrasty. MM

And speaking of polecats, I was considering trying to use them in this scene, but the room is about 14' wide and the max. size polecat/matth pole is just over 14' in size. Even if I am hanging only one or two very lightweight instruments from it, am I asking for trouble? Would it be more sensible to opt for a pole spreader..?

David, Thank you for your input. The funny (or not so funny) thing is that we selected this room precisely because it would be so easy to light from outside...unfortunately, however, we are having to schedule everything around the lead actor, who can't accomodate shooting the scene at night, because of some scheduling conflicts. Most of the first floor rooms are very large, so it might be difficult to try to convert them, but I can certainly look into that. Assuming that we are going to go with the second floor room, the windows will definitely be off-camera; the other side of the bed will be in the shot at a certain point, so the "moonlight" will have to come from the blacked-out window side. MM

I am in the middle of pre-production for a short that I will be shooting at the beginning of next month and I am getting caught up on how to approach the lighting for one scene in particular. The scene is set at night and involves two actors, laying in bed together. The shot will begin in a detail shot of one side of the room and will slowly pan around to pick up the bed and actors and will dolly-in, eventually settling on an overhead (the camera will be on a small jib) MCU on the actors. So a single take and no opportunity for me to alter lighting for close-ups... There will be no visible motivation for the lighting--meaning that there will be no windows visible, though the look is supposed to be 'moonlight'. In fact, there are two windows, positioned perfectly, through which I could direct any number of lights, in combination with some interior lights, to achieve a nice moonlight effect--the problem is that, based on our actor's schedules, we can only do this scene during the day. I have no experience with tenting windows, let alone for a room which is on the second floor of a house--and even if I were to tent the windows, wouldn't those lights be too close to the window to acheive the 'point-source' effect that one wants for moonlight? So I am looking at blacking out the windows and lighting the scene entirely from the inside One approach that I thought of was to use an overhead light or two (a small coffin light, skirted china balls, or something along those lines) on a dimmer, so that I could establish a very dim, general light level over the bed--and over the starting point for the shot, which is at the wall opposite the foot of the bed--at which point I would then try to rake some splinters of "moonlight" across the actors faces, from the window side of the bed, maybe using a few 1/4 CTB, or other-blue-color-gelled, dedolights... Of course, if I just rake "un-patterned" bluish light across the actors faces from the side, this basically means not having any effect that indicates moonlight through a window...no windowpane or tree branch patterns on the walls, etc. Even if I did want to acheive this effect, it seems to me that I wouldn't be able to get a cuke, branch or open frame with a 'window pane' pattern far enough from the light sources for it to be effective. And, to make things worse, the house we are shooting in was built in the 19th century, so the ceilings are just over 7' tall. Ouch. This is being shot on an XL1s, using the P+S Technick mini35 rig with Cooke primes. Any suggestions or related experience that anyone could offer here would be greatly appreciated. Cheers. MM

All: Please forgive me if I missed this, either in this thread, or in another post (I did some searches and did not find this information), but, what shutter angle setting are you are using when you meter in the video context, given that there is no shutter per se? Humbly, MM Brooklyn, NY