Tyler Graim

Hi Michael,

I like the TV gag approach but I was curious what purpose does the beaver board serve? Are you literally just putting the light on it? If you could let me know that would be great. Thanks

It's usually called a "TV gag," sibling to the "fireplace gag" and the "movie screen gag."

 

The basic idea is to have a soft light source of the desired color, and flicker the output with either a dimmer or with shadows in front of the light.

 

There are any number of ways to set this up, and everyone has their favorites. I like a simple approach, which is to put a small light on a beaver board and bounce it into a piece of beadboard or foamcore approximately the same size as the TV screen. Gel the light with Full CTB, and put the light on a dimmer (blackwrap the head to contain spill). Have someone practice dimming the light at different speeds and intensities until you come up with a pattern and levels that look right on camera. Try to make the pace SLOW, with abrupt changes in level (like you get when cutting to different shots on the TV). A too-fast flicker just looks fake. Try looking at the light a real TV gives off in a darkened room, and observe the pattern. You may want to time your pattern to the material the character is supposed to be watching.

 

A couple things about dimmers; you'll notice that you can't dim a light too much before the color temperature warms up too much. So you end up working in a narrow range of dimming. Also, "hand squeezers" or household-type dimmers are usually limited to 1K, so if you need a bigger light you have to step up to a Variac. These are usually 2K or 5k, and pull the full amperage even when dimmed. Variacs can also squeak when "twiddled," so you end up putting them in the next room and covering them with a furny pad for sound.

 

Magic Gadgets makes a great little flicker box that's programmable, and has some good TV effects built in. Or, with practice you can have someone wiggle their fingers in front of the light source to break up the levels and shape of the light a little. I gaffed a whole feature with no flicker box and did every firelight and TV scene this way, and it looked fine.

 

There are variations on the concept that add more lights, sometimes of different colors, dimming at different rates. Sometime people build complete softboxes instead of bounces. I've tried almost every technique and keep coming back to the simplest -- a single light on a dimmer of some sort.

 

The last time I did a TV gag was a daytime interior, so I used a 2K BJ with double CTB, on a 2K Variac. Worked great. Even though a TV screen is usually daylight-balanced and should give off "white" light in a daytime scene, I still felt the TV needed a bluish light to help "sell" the illusion. I did a scene once where a character was supposed to be watching a porno, and someone suggested giving the TV glow a pinkish hue. We tried it and it just didn't look right. We went back to blue because it just worked better.

Thanks Jimmy, I figured this out like 5 minutes after i posted this, should have looked around a little bit more. But thats exactly what I am using.

Hi, I am doing a time-lapse within a very small area and do not really have enough room fro a tripod. I want to mount my 7D to a 3" railing. Does anyone have any suggestions for simple/cheap rigs that I could make or buy? Thanks for your help.

Ok thanks Dom,

I found out that my Bolex was made in 1959. The serial number is 167612. I believe it is an H16 REX1. This website says that it has a 145 degree shutter: http://www.city-net.com/~fodder/bolex/history/. This would mean about a 1/60 exposure time (exposure time=(fps x 360) / (Shutter Angle°).

If this is right I was not compensating for that. But shouldn't that mean that my footage should have been under exposed if I was exposing for a 180 degree shutter? I need to do some tests with other lenses it sounds like. Thanks for your help this enlightened me to some things about Bolex's that I didn't know.

Could be that the f-stop setting has shifted. Make sure that in the f22 setting, the iris looks almost completely closed, and, of course, wide open at the widest opening.

This lens should work the same way on any camera. Did you set up your meter for 1/75 to 1/80 sec exposure at 24 frames/sec . to take account of the Bolex in-line prism ?

Make sure your variable shutter is all the way up-open. You might want to check your exposure meter also.

Hi Bernie, Thanks for your response,

I set up my Meter for 24 f/s and the shutter angle is set at a 180 degree shutter. So you are saying that the Bolex needs to be corrected to shoot at a different shutter angle. Are you saying I should change the angle on my meter to correlate to 1/75 or 1/80 exposure time? Like maybe a 120 degree shutter? Tell me if I am getting this right. Thanks Tyler

HI,

I recently shot some footage with the 5.9mm f/1.8 Angenieux lens on a regular 16mm Bolex. It seemed like everything I shot with it was overexposed. I was curious if anyone knew if I need to adjust the f-stop because this type of lens lets too much light in for regular 16mm bolex? I am assuming it is just not made for this camera so I need to stop down a little bit to fix the exposure. If anyone has any info on this it would be appreciated.

Thanks