Kiarash Sadigh

Check out Lowell Rifa...they're great soft boxes when you're in a hurry... http://www.lowel.com/kits_rifa.html

Sure, although the incident measuring technique will still be valid if you want to retain some details/colours in the sky...good luck.

Shoot them around the sunset time, if the story allows. I would get my wide from behind the actors, throwing the drama of all those colours in sky in the back ground...besides you get a nice backlit look when the sun hits their hair and shoulders....some people like the flare from the sun some people don't... but you can always throw the long lens and move back to control your lensflare a bit more. I would also shoot the tights first and then, when the right time comes, move to the wide to capture the scenic. For your wide shot you can expose for back ground and throw your actors about 2 1/2 to 3 stop under to get a nice sliouette...to do this you can put the lumi disc on and meassure the incident light facing the camera (camera is facing west so your light meter should face east at this point) also make sure that your lumi disc or sphere is not being hit but the direct sun, then iris down for about 2 1/2 to 3 stops from what you read...hope it helps.

I shot this short film a few years ago. It was a night exterior by the beach...there was a smaller body of water branching off from lake Ontario that was playing in the bg...this smaller pond had a very still water surface (which is not good for reflection purposes)...I threw a 1.2 HMI par to the opposite side of the camera, so that the reflection was carefully placed in the sweet spot of the shot...at this point I can see my light's reflection in the water so well that I can tell how many pegs are holding the opal on the barn door!!.... So I asked buch of people on the set to paddle the water , ...it was tricky though as the water would settle down really quick and the take was long...now when I look back at it I wish I had used a bigger and softer source for this... love to know what other people have to say about this.

I learned this leason doing bunch of interview set ups where I had only the interviewee on camera, naturally i wouldn't go about lighting the interviewer as he/she wasn't on camera...but after a while I noticed that having the interviewer sitting in the dark will cause the on-camera person to squint....the key is to light your camera area a little more and diminish your contrast in the studio or on the set...in such situations your model's natural reaction is to iris down ...the other advantage of this? the tighter the iris the more you see the true colours of their eyes as oppose to seeing a black hole in the middle... good luck!

If you can narrow your angle of view by moving the camera far back and use a longer lens, then you can manage your flares a lot better.

It's tricky, I would use hard back lights instead and not go with the reflector idea...I would also try to get a rather hot spot somewhere on a back wall or illuminating just a small group of people sitting in a corner...your hard back light helps you with the seperation and will also creat some ambience...perhaps just enough for you to tweak to your liking when you move to your close-ups

Always carry a bounce with you

I like this topic...I'm sure there are a lot of us out there who have lots to say.... I've always found making eye-lights to be challenging to some extent...especially when your modelling can not be disturbed...I've tried the 2bank short close to camera's axis, a far-away pepper etc. and have recently been bouncing a 600w off of the silver side of my Wescott 6in1...I keep this set up about 5 feet away and it gives me a descent eyelight...I have to say that I'm still interested in knowing what other techniques are good for this...

You may want to consider plating....I'm assuming that in a wide shot facing the sun you'll be dealling with some serious lens flare...with a simple plating technique you can both solve the lens flare and do whatever with your sky/sun later....I did a musical film a few years ago and plated an ultra wide shot, later we removed the top of the frame and replaced it with some fantastic moving clouds....in that very same shot I had back lit the entire group of dancers with 2 x 1.2 fresnel HMIs, which would've been in the shot.... then I rigged a small piece of cardbord on a c-stand and placed it about a few inches above and in front of the lens carefully covering the area of the lock-off shot that I wanted to later remove...the cardboard was in fact in the shot but was replaced with the fantastic clouds I told you about later.... Good luck, and have fun...

For your frontal shot try to rig a light on your dolly...this is very simple and grips can do it in 10 minutes...anything from a 2k Tung to 5k through a chimmera would do...I would personally go for the 5k, so by the time you diffuse and colour correct it, you still have enough punch... now, if you want to be more stylistic (depending on the width of your tunnel) you can have two other lighting units (either on foot or on two other dollies) walking or rolling on either side of your artist to side light them...picture a triangle of lights: one comes from the camera dolly and the other two come from the sides... For your top shot...(not sure if you're travelling with them though) you can always stay a few feet behind the group so your shadow always misses the bottom of the frame one other really cool effect (if you have the means for it) is to put your group of people on a low-boy trailer (http://www.trailboss.com/lowboy.html) then rig your lights on the front or sides of the trailer so when you move your lights stay perfectly constant and your motion will stay seamless... good luck, Kiarash Sadigh DP Toronto

This is ablolutely correct, however there is always the option of closing down your shutter down to 90 degrees (which will bring your 320 iso down to 160) depending on the type of camera you're using of course.

Depending on the size of your space you can take to sky-high stands and run a grid pipe between them and hand your lights on it. I would normally use this set up with a 20 feet pipe, then I hang my Kinos from it...no screws or nails involved and the stands are on wheels so you can move them around for tweaking.... Also consider a 2K lighting boom pole for smaller spaces....

I bought a Riffa 66 about a year ago and have to say I quite like it...it's a great light for interview set ups and one-man-band type of shootings...but they are a bit finicky...the rods can break very easliy and the brass hold-rings on four corners of the diffusion material will come off sooner than you think...but it's the fastest soft light set up out there and should work for a long time if its handled with care... About the bulb...I remember reading on this forum a while ago that someone's Riffa bulb did actually exploded and there was a big embarasment....since I read that I always put my diffusion material on, turn the lamp away, flick it on and then start tweaking.... Try to get the egg crate with it, it's a bit expensive but worths the price... also, I always add a pieace of grid cloth on top of the existing diffusion material to soften it up even more....

I'm surprised that there is not a single recommendation for Sven Nykvist's magnificient body of B&W work... does Persona ring a bell?? for other B&W works of master Nykvist chekout: -The Virgin Srping -Hour of the Wolf -Shame -Winterlight

There are a lot more information and books in the still photography field...hook yourself up with a bunch of still photogrpahy lighting how-to books...you might be able to borrow them from a public library...in my experience they're the best books in terms of showing the lighting plan against the final frame.

I agree with Jonathan. You can also encourage one of your employees to volunteer on a film set as a PA to learn and see what electricians do with those lights.

Hanging a chinese lantern at the end of a boom is a good way of detaching the on board weight from your shoulder...I've made a small rig with an 18 inch china ball and hung a triple light bulb socket inside...you can hang daylight energy saving bulbs in there....in fact, this adaptor is only good for energy saving bulbs other wise the heat from three regular tungs maybe too much for the paper to handle....hope it helps

A very usefull tool in lighting more than one person is to have an eggcrate over your soft box...you can find them for your Riffas...or anything else like this: http://www.chimeralighting.com/dspProduct.asp?productid=15 it works like a half scrim...meaning that the person who is farthest from the soft box ( this is the person your soft box should be pointed to) receives more light and the person who is sitting closest to your light receives the least...this way you're lighting them all evenly despite their distances to your source.

I would use the 12k dino as "moonlight" ambient light. It certainly gives you more freedom when it comes to pan/tilting your source comparing to a bunch of small lights going through a big diffusion material. To get more of an evenly-lit night look you may want to try shooting your lights up at a 20by silver on a scafold/crane....this is achived by building a black box around your source on the ground using solid floppies (to kill the spil) and pointing your lights up at your bounce material. Film noir style is however a bit different from this imho. Toland would've gone with harder look to invite more contrast into the shot. Your 7218 can handle a lot of information in the blacks, good luck.

If taking your lights far back and flooding them won't get rid of the spots on the paper then you want to perhaps bouce it off of a big ( I'd say two six by's on each side) piece of silver or white foam core...this needs less labour than building an entire second hallway around your original one and gives you more control as in where to point your bounce....it'll also make all those small sources appear as one big one. You also don't need to smoke too much to bring your overall brighness up a bit...I think a single smoke machine will do....just remmeber to have at least one person dedicated to wafting...they can use a solid flag or whatever to control the smoke....you gotta run the smoke machine...waft it a little then roll camera and you sort of have to rely on your digital stills of each set up ( continuty person?) to be able to repeat the same density of smoke...remember that the longer the focal length the less smoke you need....also the drection of your lights will vary that too: if your smoke is back-lit then you see a lot of it...but there is nothing super tricky about it...

Take a couple of cooler boxes for storing batteries and some tar-paper to protect lights in case of freezing rains...you can also take toe-warmer pads, activate them and drop them in the cooler to keep batteries warm, just make sure they don't touch batteries. A car-battery-to-AC adaptor is always good to keep batteries charging on the road. good luck.

What's your application for this? Does it involve a lot of travelling? if you're setting it up in the corner of your studio and leave it there then it might be fine, but if you want repeated set ups then you definatley want something sturdy that you can rely on. Even Riffas are kind of fussy...you have to be careful with them. Let us know if by any chance you end up buying them.

Your main hallway paper material should be good enough for diffusion, and even better if you take your lights as far back as possible, I don't think you need to bounce those lights before sending them through the main paper. I would say that you need more lamp heads though, if there are no more at your school or no budget to rent a good few Blondes then I would go to Home Depot and buy 500w work lights and then you can return them after you''re done...that's what we did at film school ;) Another way of bringing up your overall brightness is to use a smoke machine inside the studio...when light hits the particles in the air, each particle turns into a reflecting material...very effective. hope it helps.

A good way of lighting china is to get your diffusion material ( a combination of full and quarter silk about a foot apart would be good) as close as possible to the piece and your light as far as possible...this'll creat a very soft effect on the body of the plate and leaves you with the option of selectively slashing with Dedos or other controllable spot lights.