Ari Schaeffer

Hey guys, need a best boy electric for monday sept 19th, in manhattan. I need a best who is comfortable with tie ins and distro. You'll be tying into a hotel, more then likely it'll just be 2 100a runs from a passthrough since everything is kino and 120.. The rate is 200/12 If interested send me an email @ arischaeffer@gmail.com Thanks!

Seems like it's just cross keyed to me. The edge lighting on the lamp from both sources (left and right) gives that away. You can also see the blinds are slanted, except for the middle pane. There's not much of an eyelight coming off that in the closeup, but that could be misleading. I'm going with they just softened that key and reduced the size of the vertical lines of the blind until they lost the effect. Interesting choice given usually you'd let that play. I'd love to know if they needed to fill from in the room at all, or if the fill we're seeing is just ambient naturally bouncing from those 2 sources.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking with some of this, but here goes: 1) http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/Generators/ I'm in the US/East Coast, so I'm not sure what rental procedures are like in the UK or if something else is standard on set, but yes, they are reliable (if you operate them correctly) and fairly inexpensive. 75 USD average on the 2k putt putts seems about right. 2) It's hard to say what the "best way" to light something is since the factors like the look of the location, the story, the time of day the scene is, etc will kind of dictate and motivate your lighting. For something like a horror, usually it's low key, contrasty, so I'd wager you'd pump some hard keys in through windows as some stark moonlight, fill in the rest of the room with some bounced light to bring it up as needed. you coulod still sidelight the body parts to give them a much creepier vibe, and then fill it in from the other side of the object with a diffused small unit or bounce as needed..orrrr you could just frontally fill them from behind camera, dead on, super diffused if you want 0 shadowing, but that might seem stranger having the room contrasty but these body parts perfectly flatly evenly exposed in the foreground... 3) I always go with a fresnel unit because of the versatility of spot/flood control, and the ability to bounce, diffuse it with gel/frames, or fabrics (chimeras, etc) to soften it. I'm of the mindset of, if I'm stuck with no money, I'd rather choose quantity of options over quality of options. It's also easier to make a cheap DIY soft source then a focusable source.

Same here, I thought this was kind of the standard term, but I learned something new I guess. Though I had heard the short boy thing before referring to the 2' units. I always thought that was more confusing because it doesn't take single bank units into account at all...unless you start asking for the emaciated boy or something.

Can you send us pictures if you do end up having a grip run around hollywooding a 4x4 kino while chasing after your actors? Has to be a spectacle to behold. Why not get a more portable fixture? Battery powered LED? Sun gun with gel/diff? Also, count me in on the never having heard kino units being called "men" before thing. What do you call a wall'o'lite? "wall o' men"? "really tall guy"?

hey guys. so i've finally got some stills from the video so you can see what the setup looked like in camera. to recap so far, was called for a gig, but no scout. was told i had virtually no budget for grip/electric, but they were looking for a high key look, and also to be able to rack focus (but fairly normal length primes, so that meant wide open or almost wide open apps). the visual reference i was told was actually robert palmer's "addicted to love" which if you remember is dead on, and super high key (though with some slight shadowing being projected behind them) i was told they'd be shooting dead on, one wall, possibly panning slightly left and right, maybe a low angle. i asked what the widest shot was like, and was given the dimensions of 12 ft wide, 9 ft back, and a very tight cell phone picture of a curtain and a drum kit. i came up with this game plan: then went to my local g/e house. i was able to get this package the arri 650 and 300 fixtures were brought by the AD which I was able to add to total fixture count (though no scrim sets, props stands or replacement globes with those obviously) when i walked into the location the space was huge. i mean, warehouse huge. the stage was 35-40 feet wide, and at least 15-20 feet deep. we're talking at least 30-40 ft ceilings as well. i was anticipating a room not much larger then the 12x9 figure i was given, so i had a bit of a small heart attack at first. to give you an idea, when i later talked to one of the folks working there, he informed me that they had another crew shooting an Alicia keys video in the space a few weeks back with a 25ft jib.. there were some advantages to this however... to start, being a music venue they had some par cans up on in ceiling rafters. the bad news being they were all in a fixed position unless I somehow could magically pull a scissor lift out of my pocket. luckily they were all on separate switches and at least one was properly hitting the curtain behind them in the background. this meant i wouldn't need to lose one of my 650s and a stand/arm to just do that job, or try and compromise one of the 650s and split the beam into hitting as a backlight and a background light at once. the space also meant i had the ability to position & separate with blocking (since they couldn't afford any flags for separating light) and i also had plentiful 30A circuits everywhere, which was a rare treat and meant I wasn't hunting or running cable as often as I normally do. i set up the 8x frame with the half silk, but quickly saw that camera would be shooting pretty much in the same space as my original position for that setup. true, it'd be angled to be more side keyed but if they started traveling handheld for some movement, it'd be a problem. this meant my 2k + diff frame had to live off stage, further from the subjects then I had planned for. thankfully we weren't married to an ISO, they simply told me not to introduce noise if possible. being on a 5d, we had a decent sensor, so I was able to dial in until I hit a 2.8/4, closer to 4 split on my main subject from that soft key. there were three "planes" of subjects in the frame..the singer in the foreground, a keyboard player and guitarist in the middle ground, and then a drummer in the back. the key gave me a nice falloff until it was gone completely by the time it would reach the back curtain, which meant i didn't see any bleeding into the background. this was also great as the main subject at the front was a darker skin tone... here you can see the 650 backlight doing it's thing on the keyboardist, throwing some nice contrast on the otherwise dark floor, and also giving the main singer a nice edge as well. here you can see the 650 improperly focused, so it's not hitting the singer at all, and how the lack of any edge or fill from the left leaves that side in shadow. a closeup. to maintain the intensity + specular highlights I was getting I wasn't able to fully fill the 8x silk, hence I created a sort of circular hotspot (i was banking 2 1k sources as a single 2k source). you can really see this in the eyelight reflection as you'd normally have a more square eyelight from a frame. remember we're only at 3 sources at this point (the par on the curtain, the 2k/silk key, and the 650 backlight). this left the keyboardist and the guitar player a bit underexposed on the face for the directors liking. i could have walked the entire frame/2k unit back to drop the intensity on the front most subject, letting them open up a little bit more from the 2.8, thus bringing up the girls. however, they were very happy with the specular highlights and shadow strength they were getting from that key, so I instead put up my inkie on the right of frame with some diffusion (250), and then my 300 watt on the left of the frame, again with diff on the fixtures. the smaller unit went to the girl camera right, where the key was stronger, the larger unit to the girl on the left. the angle was more or less frontal to reduce introducing any new contrast/shadows on their faces and to match the angle/wrap of the 2k soft key. they ended up bringing in 2 more subjects for the middleground, so this turned out to be the right choice anyway. in retrospect i would have put up an edge/backlight on the subjects frame right, to match the the one frame left, but this was down to not enough stingers/stands left. i would have also maybe gone with a different choice of diffusion. i went with the china silk since i knew it'd only take 1 stop of light, and it still has this nice quality of giving you specular highlights while still being a diffused source. while that was indeed true, and nice with his skin tone/leather jacket/shiny makeup, i personally find the shape of the specular reflectance really off-putting..i just don't feel like it works with his facial structure..if i could do it over, i'd go with maybe a thicker material, or if i had the money, bounce/booklight from a larger source instead... hopefully seeing the process of this job from start to finish helps some people out there...you can watch the entire video here:

CFL bulbs vary wildly. A lower CRI rating will mean that it will spike green for sure and you'll need -G correction (magenta)...sometimes the CRI is high but the actual glass is slightly tinted green so you'll still get a green cast.....It's crazy how long CFLs have been around now and yet there's still such variance. I would just look at them at 5600k in camera if you don't have a color meter.

You didn't actually attach anything, sooo, hard to go off, but I'd say just light them like people. Use considerations for whatever material and color the statues are obviously. Lighter toned material will glow/bounce, while darker material will suck up light, but still give you specular highlights (ala car lighting). Just remember side lighting will give you more texture of the object. If they are to scale to people I don't see why you couldn't light them as such (key frontal, over head, or sidey..some fill to lessen contrast, maybe some highlights/edges/rims/kickers for depth... I don't really think there's one magic approach to this, not to mention a ton of variables (size of subjects, fov, size of the space you see, what else you see in frame, etc etc etc etc). If you need something dramatic as hell, try and think of the mood your conveying with the statues and then go from there...if I wanted to creep people out big time, I might use some underlighting to key it, or maybe snoot my key so It's only showing me a sinister looking portion of the face...that's where the creativity lies and you should have fun with it!

It went well, I'll write up an entire post mortem in here once i get some stills of the footage so people can see the results visually. Hopefully within the next few days. Space was much, much, much, bigger then I was told, but I worked my ninja skills.

That's mighty generous of you Ed. Sadly I'm in NYC, where it's a lovely 28 F. No worries, I honestly think I should be alright with this setup. They want high key, they'll get high key. The rental house did graciously toss in a tweenie, and I learned I have 30A circuits at this place (crazy i know), so I'm looking at 5 units, plus my bag o practical tricks. They've asked to shoot a 2.8-open so they can rack a gazillion times everywhere (no comment), so I'm trying a new lazy lighting method on this one. I'll place my key where I want it, meter, and dial up/down the iso until I've got the 2.8 or lower reading they want, then whatever ISO I'm at, that gets set in camera. It's an incredibly ass backwards way over the traditional method, but this way I can get my main source (which is key + fill in this instance) up and set quickly, and easily focus in +1 or +2 highlights with the other hard non diffused units I've got... I personally would want to shape the light more then what they'll be getting and I'm sure be thrilled with, but I'm already bending over backwards for what they've offered to spend on g/e. Meanwhile, I'm hearing the makeup/costume budget is x4-x5...which makes me think, how exactly were you planning on seeing this art design in the dark? Gotta love no money gigs.

figured i'd share a gaff job i have in a day or so. very last minute, i was given a budget of 100.00. it's a performance, in a studio space, with a stage. no tech scout, no scout, was simply told the dimensions of the shooting area. basically like shooting against a cyc, only it's a red curtain, and the coverage is as wide as the space on stage (12 foot wide stage)...they also gave me a depth of 9 feet of space, but i'm not really sure if they know what they mean by that..soo...subjects are a band, playing on stage, 6 members, but the singer is the hero of the whole thing. he's also got a dark skin tone, where as the dancers will most likely be lighter. the pluses here are they are shooting dead on, with the possibilty of maybe panning slightly but highly doubtful. wides, then meds, then tight. no other setups, no flipping a room, nada. pretty much photo studio lighting. they also said they wanted high key, soft lighting...so, photo lighting. pretty boring, but hey, whatever. for 100 bucks, i managed to get this package for them: 1 8x8 frame + rollers + ears (or something to that affect, maybe cardis, whatever works) 3 standard c's (maybe 40s if their feelin nice, but not neccessary) 1k fresnel 100-200w something..most likely a 200w inkie, but anything 150-200 should be cool. stingers for this 8x china silk quick n dirty plot using boyd hobbs icons (thanks man!) first box is the stage area, black box would be where the band is..not to any type of scale, haha a) 2, 1k fresnels, pooled into an 8x half silk as the soft, wrapping key...can be moved along the camera axis to the side for slight contrast as needed...this is going to vomit a ton of soft light, with spill (they can't afford a single flag, though, i'll prolly end up slinging duvy over it or something if i need to cut an edge... B) 650 fnl. backlight, can be on either side, maybe just an edge, whatever looks nice..might let it spill onto the curtain a bit, will keep it a stop , 1.5 hotter then the key side and punchy..possibly opal, maybe not... c) smaller source..maybe fill? maybe a kicker? maybe hidden in the drum kit for some backlight/underlight...haven't really decided, but this little guy will add to the overall contrast.... that's about it...super low budget...i'll try and get some stills of the footage so you can see how it turned out

I've been dreaming of a switchover to LED from tungsten since LED lighting first start seeing heavy use in the architecture market......If anything maybe they'll drive down the price of similar sized tungsten units. Interesting that they have a source 4 look to them in the IBC video. I'm all for a future without blown globes and less power consumption. I'm excited!

Dynamic range is a big one. As sensors get larger this seems to become less of a problem. I personally find that if I'm going to blow something out I'd rather be using film. The loss of detail is more organic and gradual vs digital clipping. It's a very minor thing in the grand scheme I guess. The easiest way I can explain dynamic range and latitude is to think of it as the way to gauge what you can get away with. It's the range of exposure you have before your negative falls apart...by looking at the dynamic range of a film stock you would know that you could go 2 or 3 stops under exposed but still maintain detail, or 4 or 5 stops over exposed and still maintain detail...film stock has a lot of stops of latitude vs digital formats, though like I said the gap is shrinking by the day. The reason you'd want more range is it gives you more room to "work"...for a long time shooting digital seemed like shooting reversal film to me..very little leeway on exposure... anyway, if you have any interest in cinematography at all, read up on dynamic range, sensitometry, and latitude...it's the basis of cinematography there are a few other factors in film vs digital.. high speed photography and film being progressive (no blend frames) critical focus and optical viewfinders vs lcds i learned how to expose on film, and I'm not even that old, though my class was the first not required to cut on a steinbeck....i prefer film, but as a realist I know we'll get to the point where film shows are in the minority (you'd be surprised at how much is still shot on 35..hell, some current shows are done on 16mm) there's something..unique.. about film itself. you could say it's the chemical reaction of the halide, and maybe the parallels to the similar reactions in the human eye with photorecptor cells to light...but it's just.....unexplainable..a different aesthetic. it's energy vs pixels... i would shoot everything on film if i could....but i'm just a romantic like that as a sidenote: you should place some kind of importance on getting good lenses! it doesn't matter what you're recording onto if your lenses are horrible pieces of junk

I find that people always forget that you lose more light with CTB then CTO. It's fine if you have the intensity to play with, but if I need every bit of light I'd rather balance 5600 to 3200 then vice versa. It should be noted there are trade offs in doing this. Tungsten units are typically less expensive by far when compared to a 5600k unit like an HMI...but they are less efficient and run hotter usually. If anything it really makes you appreciate the human eye and it's ability to maintain color consistency on the fly. Here's an interesting blog post I found the other day on a photographer that has a shift of color temp between his left and right eye. http://www.pixiq.com/article/the-white-balance-of-your-eyes Something I hadn't considered people deal with, pretty interesting.

I've always wanted to try doing almost a cookie pattern of cut up diff on a frame in front of another solid frame of slightly heavier diffusion, so the directionality is only broken up in places. I always wondered how that would look, if it would blend if you had ... less falloff... for lack of a better term. This would you give you hotter less diffused areas, with softer diffused areas...I just don't know if that contrast in quality of light would be pronounced enough that the effect is even worth trying.

interesting, any specific reason for choosing the white frost over say 250 or 215/216, or even the opal frost? again, just curious...

you could also just say screw it, tell them it'll look better if you don't see the motion in the windows, and just keep the bus non moving, and blow out the windows with your sources, either directly or through a frame of something. then it'll be consistent.

wow, yeah, that really makes no sense from a production standpoint. so, not surprising, right? well, god. is there any way to get a large green screen rag, say 12 by or 20 by? you might get something nicer that way since it doesn't seem like you have any camera movement on the wide shots from inside the bus (at least I hope not). then you can scratch the entire moving section of the day, or use it to shoot the background if you want to light the scene with that diffused overcast look...or come back and shoot the background action on a sunny day, but however you shoot it, just make sure you'd match that to the greenscreen setup in terms of interior and exterior light coming in. you gain way more control over your situation, but you'd need to get a frame, stands, and the rag (sandbags, line to anchor it), and you'd need to shoot the background, and then hopefully have someone in post who can do an easy key like that. it may very well be a hard sell to production, and i also have no idea how that camera does with this kind of work... i honestly do a lot of lower budget jobs where things are done practically, so maybe one of the bigger dps here will have better advice on setting up a process shot on a stage or something like that. it sounds like this is pretty low budget though, so you either gotta work with what you have, but the weather and scheduling isn't on your side, or do a basic green screen setup and fake it. i would talk to production if you can and tell them exactly what the issues are. if they don't care, well, at least you tried? and if this is happening tomorrow morning, i wish you the best of luck my friend. let us know how it goes...

Here's how I would approach it, it might not be the best method, and someone else might have something smarter, but off the top of my head; 4 hours of bus movement, with 2 kinos to light the interior. 8 hours of bus on a lot or whatever, and you have a bunch of 1k-2ks fixtures. to me that says you can control the interior exposure no matter what, be it stopped or in motion. you say the scene is 80% tight with a few wide shots. I would use a sun tracking device, and check the weather, make sure you have some sun. use the 4 hours of motion to shoot your wides, obviously only rolling when the sun in position and is blowing out the windows. note whatever you're getting from the sun exposure wise (might even haveta apply ND gels to windows if you want to catch some detail in the windows and you can't balance enough with the interior). get your 20% wide shots done. park the bus, and depending how wide your tight shots are, just use your tungsten fixtures from outside the bus and match the exposure/intensity/directionality you were getting from the sun. now if the windows are heavily tinted like a lot of commercial buses i've been on, then you're kind of more screwed. or if the day is completely overcast this approach will not work, whatsoever. if you search around for "the shuttle" thread on this forum some folks discuss lighting the interior of a moving bus with distribution from marine batteries. it went a bit over my head, but perhaps having power and the ability to rig to the outside of the bus while it's in motion might be another approach, though more costly and grip/electric heavy.

and a link to a description of a leko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lekolite

Hey bob! Crazy I haven't run into you on a job since prolouge. to the original poster: Here's an example of the streak filter + leko's aimed at the lens. I gaffed, so I couldn't tell you what glass they were using (pretty sure it was zeiss not cooke though) and I also didn't know they'd use stuff with our fixtures in the final cut, so that was kind of strange, but for most of the stuff on the white cyc, we built a goalpost behind them with 3 lekos and just rotated the barrel depending on what flare they wanted. I think they were going for the star trek thing as much as possible without going to anamorphic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJVn-SM9uY Wish I had access to the raw footage, we did a wide with the 3 lekos coming in top down as vertical slashes in symmetrical pattern, which you see in some closeups, but the wide had an interesting look to it. They also gave the entire thing a slight pastel grade, so some of the contrast is lost :\

I'd throw a leko or two in the mix and possibly a low density streak filter....I've always had nice results throwing the leko just out of frame and focusing into the lens, the cutters can let you do some interesting shapes as well. I shot some NFL cheerleaders for a PSA, and I was told we'd be on field. Turns out we were in a loading dock, so I shot as shallow as I could, hurriedly tossed up a 1k fresnel behind them and just tried to shoot into the back light as much as possible so no one would focus on the fact that they were in a damn warehouse. (sorry for the compression, file size limit here) I was using the newer EF glass with the 7D. I feel like using older lenses would most likely flash the entire frame given the lack of reflective coating...at least that was always my experience using older 16mm lenses (everything had a "70's" look to it with that flashed low con thing going on)

Just curious, is the soft key gag in your example a booklight? Or just single diff (bounce with no diff, or just unit punched through diff)? I usually tend to go with china balls as my gag source for in play practicals like that, since I always found that it seemed to match the quality of light that a lampshade gives you. Wondering if the booklight may be the nicer choice.... My guess, based on the falloff on her face, is that it wasn't super diffused, but I'm dying to know :P

these are great, i think you've convinced me to use photoshop instead of scrawl on a piece of paper like I usually do. thanks!

I picked up the Minolta Flashmeter 6/vi which of course was then discontinued a year later when minolta went bust. You can check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/Konica-Minolta-8057-103-Flash-Meter-VI/dp/B00009XUYW ...it was kind of their answer to the Sekonic 508... I picked it up because the form factor was slim, it runs on a single AA battery, and I liked the approach they took with the spotmeter placement. It also feels a bit lighter then the sekonic or spectra meters I've used in the past. Downside being the amazon picture is a lie, there's no backlight illumination of any kind on the front LCD, however the spotmeter viewfinder is illuminated. Weird they cut that feature from the FM5... I've also never run across anyone else with this meter on set which I've always found odd, as it was 25-50 dollars cheaper then the competition.... its also got the programmable range feature, but I always thought that was more trouble then it was worth. You'd pretty much know the stocks range you'd be shooting, and at most you'd maybe have 2-3 different stocks in play so it seemed like overkill.