Bradley Stearn

Just a law in the UK. We have permission to be on the streets with the car. Just won't be allowed to place tripods, light stands on public ground.

I'm shooting a short film that is set entirely inside a car soon. The film is 50% driving shots, and 50% shots where the car is parked. The whole film is one setup in terms of camera, mounted to the car bonnet, on a 35/50mm lens to capture a medium two shot of a driver and passenger in the front seat, jump cutting between different days/months. I don't have permission to light from the pavement for the shots where the car is parked due to the films budget, a generator is also out of the equation, so I have opted into hiring a selection of innovative battery powered LED lights from a rental house in London. For my main lighting setup, I have planned an autopole rig that attaches to the top of the car horizontally. Attached by K clamps and suction limpits. This will allow me to hang LEDs either side of the car, lighting the drivers and passenger side depending on the setup. My two main lights are flexible 1x1 LED panels, that also clamp into a solid 1x1 frame. The film needs to look like different times of the year, even though we are shooting it in a few days. This lighting setup will allow me to increase/decrease the intensity of the LEDs either side of the car depending on the look I am going for, whether that be a soft 'overcast' daylight, or a harsher 'sun' coming in from one side of the car, with softer skylight from the other side. There are a few night scenes as well. I will probably place some sodium gel of some sorts on the side LED panels to replicate street lights. I'm testing the kit tomorrow, but as far as I'm aware the dimmer pack for these 1x1 LEDs is separated by a wire, so I'll have my gaffer creating some kind of chase sequence to replicate the car passing street lights (naturally this will be happening anyways as we are actually pulling the action vehicle with an A-frame). internally I want to boost whatever light would be coming from the cars dashboard, my plan would be to place one of the flexible LED 1x1 sheets on the interior roof of the car, shining down onto some white paper on the dashboard, creating a soft ambient light on the drivers face. These are just some of the basic ideas I have had so far. I was wondering if anyone on the forums has had experience lighting this kind of setup with LED lights? Would be great to hear some of the tricks/tools you used to enhance the naturalism in the lighting. I'll be using a linear polariser filter on the lens to help with reflections on the car window screen. If I chose to add any lighting in front of the car, for example each side of the camera, would these lights show up as reflections on the screen? Or is that more of a problem with lights hitting the front of the car from above?

Hey guys. Currently writing my dissertation for my university degree. I'm writing on the topic of colour in film and to what extent it evokes emotions in the audience. I have discussed a lot to do with both cinematography and production design, mainly the importance of the collaboration between the two roles. A large majority of my essay is currently discussing modern black and white cinema too. I have a few questions relating to my main question. Would be highly appreciate if I could get some answers/opinions on the topic from some of the DOPs in the group. Would love to hear examples of your actual work as well. Thanks in advance. Main question: To what extent does the use of colour in film evoke specific emotions in the audience? Sub Questions: What would be your main reason for choosing to shoot a film in black and white? In what ways would you work differently in creating specific emotions, how do these differ to shooting for colour? How did you direct the audience to a certain part of the frame without the use of colour? In regards to the colour films you have shot, did you work with any kind of colour harmonies in mind when shooting the films? How closely do you work with the production designer in creating a specific feeling/mood throughout a production? If there is anything else you would like to add please do include it in your answer. Thanks!

The best place I've found in the UK that sells pretty much every Rosco or Lee gel is White Light. If I want a unique gel at a short notice, they usually get it delivered within a couple of days. Gives you the option to buy in sheets, or gels. Buying in sheets is a great budget option if you only want the gel to cover a couple of lamps. http://shopwl.com/lighting/lighting-gel/

I've been bought onto a music video as DOP super last minute, and literally have a few days to location scout and plan everything. I've had to put a lighting rental list together without even seeing the locations which is crazy, although i've seen photos and have done my best to understand everything. The music video is going to have a high key american high school feel to it, we are shooting in the UK so in terms of production design theres a lot for the art team to do. One of the locations we are shooting in is a hallway of lockers, it's quite short, about 20 feet long. One of the scenes that the director has asked me to light involves a practical light change from being low key, to quite a lot of daylight/sunlight entering the hallway. I can't seem to attach our location photo due to file size, however above our lockers is a 3 foot gap leading into another room. My plan is to place my lighting in that room, creating an artificial row of windows above the lockers. These windows will be out of my shot, just above our top edge of frame. For my high key daylight look, plan to make use of a 1.2kw HMI, along with a couple of 250 HMI pars through trace frames to fill the hallway with daylight ambience. Shooting at 5600k in camera. I then plan to have something like a 650w tungsten through a window shaped cookie, casting a beam of warmer 'sunlight' along the back wall of the hallway, and probably another smaller tungsten unit doing the same towards the foreground of the hallway. A fairly basic 'skylight' and 'sunlight' setup I suppose, it should look natural. Potentially a little bit of atmos to diffuse the tungsten lights. For the low key setup the idea is that the windows are now covered, as if the blinds are down, and only the internal lights are lighting the set. I will probably turn off the actual practical lighting, and make use of my own. The plan is to mega boom a 4ft 4 kino over the top of the lockers, so it is position lengthways down the corridor as a top light, lighting only a portion of the hallway. Potentially a very soft fill coming from just above and behind the camera to light the set a few stops under what the kino is doing. Below are some random examples of lighting, not exactly how I plan to make it look, but a clear representation of the difference in lighting between the two setups. Now the tricky thing is that the director wants to try and do a practical change from our low key setup, into the daylight setup, during a key shot in the scene which is a close-up of the female lead in the music video. It doesn't have to look natural in any way, just needs to be an obvious change. I'm thinking about having the tungsten lights on dimmers, and then flags in front of the HMIs that are then swivelled away during the change, flooding the set with the daylight ambience. I really haven't done a setup like this before, especially with kit like this either, so would love to hear how others have achieved this kind of change in the past. Im looking forward to reading the replies.

Hey guys. This forum has been the best resource for me in learning lighting over the last year, I really appreciate all of the advice and help everyone gives. I mainly work as a camera assistant, however I try to DOP whenever I get the chance. Here is the reel I managed to build up over the last year. Would love to hear opinions and constructive criticism on my work please. I'm always looking to improve. I am going to redo the grade on a lot of these shots, I had time after a grading session yesterday to quickly go through some of the shots with my grader, and now I wish we had spent a little more time on each shot. https://vimeo.com/151536591

Mainly worked with tungsten, had about 5 dedos in play, a 650w as a soft bounced key, and a pocket HMI as a cooler backlight, representing moonlight.

Here are the rushes from the final shoot. There are so many things that I want to change now that I didnt see/liked on the day/now don't like. I know how I would improve for the future, if I ever get the chance to do this kind of thing again. I know the opening 15mm shot doesn't work very well, it's just too wide for the effect to work. I may have over used the lighting effects, however it is starting to grow on me now and im starting to like it all. Maybe with some great sound design the effect will be sold really well.

Thanks for the reply Mark. I agree with you on the swaying car lights, I think in a later test roll I told the spark on those lights to keep the swaying, but not to keep returning back to centre. So he can move to the left, but hold that position for longer before moving back. We had someone with a plank of wood on the wheel arch, however the cars suspension is just so stiff, it just didn't want to move. Would you suggest we maybe try handheld instead, and use the movement from that to make the car look less 'tied down'. Thanks again

We had our pre-light for this shoot yesterday, we decided to scrap the tunnel idea, especially doing it as a practical lighting change. We decided to just try and perfect selling that the car is driving down a motorway, or other road. I've attached a video with our 3 test shots. The first shot is a 15mm reverse from the back seat of the car. Things that will be different on the day are that the car rear lights in the background will be closer, similar to the medium 2 shot car front headlights. They will also be red as they are rear lights. For that shot we will also have a light rain machine, with the window wipers going. Combined with the haze i'm hoping all of that put together will sell the effect nicely. We had some problems with our medium shot shot, regarding reflections from our lighting showing up in the front window screen. our passing street light on c-stand arm that we had passing over the top of the car in the reverse shot, was then reflecting horribly on the screen. So we pulled that lamp back to the side of the car to solve that. We then could see the whole ceiling of our room, which isn't a studio, so we solved that by putting a black drape over the whole car. One thing I am struggling with is selling a believable exterior to the audience. At the moment I am happy with the interior of the car, the passing street lights, cars and traffic light effects work well, but the exteriors are too black. I was wondering what you have all done in the past to sell a believable exterior? The footage is all ungraded, log-c straight out of the Alexa.

For the tight shots I can cheat the tubes to make it look more, the wide will be a medium 2 shot of the two people in the car. It's a really small car, a mini cooper, so hopefully I won't have to fill too much space. I have access to kino flos as well if I need to add more punch into the scene.

I would love to see the train shot! Did you do it all using poor mans process? Did you use any rear projection as well?

Ideally wanting to see the reflection on the outside of the window screen. My current plan makes use of 3 cheap fluorescent tubes that I found from my local hardware shop. CRI wise they are horrible, but I think it will work for the 'dirty daylight' look that tunnels usually have. My plan is to have 3 of these tubes around the car, one either side, and one at the back. They will be switched on and then lowered down, creating a white out effect around the windows. We are having a rain machine as well, so hopefully the rain drops will also help create this white out effect. I have also managed to get hold of a Westcott LED ice light, I will most likely have an electrician waving this around to imitate the passing fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. I guess I will have to play around with reflections to make sure my sparks aren't seen in the windows as well. I suppose if I want to chose not to see the tube reflections passing by on the front window, I could rig a separate 650w or 300w fresnel, with full CTB above the car, and have my gaffer dimming this off an on rapidly. I reckon this would be enough to make the lighting in the tunnel look different, compared to the swinging /dimming street light effect I will be doing for the exterior sections.

I've worked with the Alexa Mini twice now, and couldn't seem to get the wifi controller working on my phone. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5. I can connect to the cameras wifi output, but when I go to type in the mini-00000.local into my browser, I just get a can't connect message. Has anyone else had this problem, or is it as simple as 'won't work with android phones'?

I'm shooting a poor mans driving scene in a couple of weeks time, it's for an experimental cinematography unit that I'm doing for part of my film degree. My plan is to have the car appear as if it's driving down a street at night. For this I'll be using a soft moonlight key, along with various sodium gelled lamps, a mockup traffic light made up of 3 dedos with coloured gels, and various lamps swinging and swivelling replicating passing cars etc.. I want to do a practical lighting change as if the car has driven into a tunnel. I plan on just having everything on a dimmer, so i'll dim down all of the sodium lights, and dim up a side daylight balanced light shining into the car, with the addition of poly on the other side for fill light. This will be the ambient light from the tunnel, probably a dirty kind of daylight, for the cheap fluorescent look, i'm thinking like Rotherhithe tunnel in London. My main question is that I want to achieve the effect of passing overhead fluorescent strips reflecting on the cars front window screen. I'm aware that this might be achievable in post, however for the sake of trying, I'd like to see if it would be possible to create this lighting effect practically. An idea I have is to use a single fluorescent tube (either a kino 1 bank, or a cheap shop bought tube) rigged above the car as if its on the roof of the tunnel. Then I would have a spark simple move a cookie along the light, and have the light switch off, then reset have the same movement again. Just wondering if/how anyone has done this effect successfully in the past? Thanks in advance for any replies, I appreciate the support on this forum a lot!

Hi Jon, I'm still learning to pick out lighting from just looking at the shot, but I'll offer my thoughts. I'd say that with the talking head shots in that video, that a soft source was used just off to camera left. The lighting is fairly flat and even, which is what you'd expect for a cooking show I suppose. I don't know what kit you have access to, but a Kino Flo with white diffusion would be a good direct soft source. If you're using tungsten lighting, then a fresnel through a trace frame, or bounced off poly would give you soft light as well.

As Satsuki mentioned, the power of the light depends on how many footcandles are required. I have used dedo 150w's in the past and achieved similar beams of light. It just required for me to have the light a lot closer in the frame. I recently shot a prison cell scene which was quite right, and had lights rigged up on an autopole just out of the top frame. I found that placing objects in front of the shaft of light created an interesting beam, so I clipped some croc-clips on the kino, to create shadows in the dedos beam.

Here is an extremely low res ungraded still that the director sent me over facebook. I tested a few lee sodium gels - high sodium, 1/2 mustard/yellow and urban sodium - my favourite out of those three was the urban sodium on a tungsten light. I ended up using that for my key lights in this wide shot, which was a bounced 650w fresnel for the artists key, and a 2kw through some metal fencing for the crowd. I still haven't found a mercury solution that I like. I tried lee steel green, but it just didn't give me a gritty enough colour in my opinion. I ended up using a 250w HMI par with 1/2 CTO and 1/2 +green for the mercury vapour look. I placed this lamp pointing towards the back wall. Would be good to hear your opinions on this shot David.

Thanks for the amazing reply David! I never said thank you when you initially posted this a while back. I'm doing a shoot next week where I want to mix Sodium and Mercury vapour colours, just like you have in your posted image. I'm going to try out Lee Filters Urban Sodium and Steel Green for this mixture. What is your experience in using these gels with both tungsten and HMI? I'm going to be using some tungsten fresnels and dedos, along with a couple of 200w pocket HMI par lights. I'll do some tests of my own before the shoot as well. Would you suggest placing some CTO 1/4 or 1/2 onto the HMIs with the steel green, just match it more to the warmth of the urban sodium?

I'm a student, so whoever I have gaffering for me probably isn't going to have the electrical knowledge. If the directors dad is an electrician, and is willing to help us out for free, I don't see anything wrong with that? This is why I come to the forums, to ask for advice.

Great reply thanks Mark! Turns out the directors dad is an electrician, so we have him wiring up our lights for the shoot now. They were going to buy off the shelf builders lights, but they looked cheap and a lot more expensive it buy each unit.

Hey guys! I've been asked to DOP a music video with a very low budget, with the simple premise of it being an underground rave with hanging edison lightbulbs on dimmers/flickering. We are hoping to have the bulbs in cages like the one pictured, and then ideally I would have the cables going to some cheap 300w 13a dimmers that I purchased on Amazon. The plan is that a few bulbs can be dimmed at once using one dimmer. Dimmers: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mercury-350-109-DMR-1-Dimmer-Switch/dp/B000LAU04K I was wondering if anyone knew of anywhere to buy lamp holders for the edison bayonet fit bulbs, that go straight to a 13a 3 pin UK mains plug? Or is this something that would require some DIY re-wiring?

I'll be keeping an eye out for MR or Arri 650w still though, so if anyone is selling in the UK please do let me know

I ended up buying 2 LTM 100w peppers. I'm sure for what I need them for they will be great. Just little accent/kicker lights that will probably always come in handy. Does anyone know how they compare to Dedo 150w in terms of how focused the spot is?

I have just found some LTM 100w peppers for sale. They definitely seem like something I wouldn't mind having in my lighting arsenal. Has anyone had experience working with LTM lights? I have never heard of this brand. Would they compare on a similar level to the Arri 150w pepper? If they do, I'll probably try and make the purchase!