Torben Greve

Or should I just rig up our stills lights and turn on their pilot light? They are 600w each, so I could probably get around 2400w inside that box.

You can also get these types of tubes from BBS Lighting now with a very high cri value.

Hi So, I'm shooting a job next week on our in-house semi seamless background. Cameras: 2 (3)x Canon 5D3, would love to not go under F 4.0 since the shallow depth is a bit too much for me below that for this situation. The setup is 4 girls discussing a topic, seated in a couch and two chairs. The film will end up being in black and white, but I would like to light it as to get a slight drop off of the light from the girls to the background, to make them stand out. As you can see on the photos, we have quite a few rigging options, but I havent really figured out exactly what to do with lights. If keeping in mind the above; could I get a result like that by rigging up two space lights over each two girls? Maybe a bit in front of them...? I imagine the space lights would be easier to control and still give a relatively pleasing light. How powerful would you reckon those would need to be? And even with the space lights would I have to light them with another light? Maybe a fresnel relatively high up doing a sort of key for the one group while slightly rim lighting the other and vice versa. Or is it more feasible to rig up the 4 x 4 metre silk we have in an Arri frame and then hang a couple of blonds shooting down? This I imagine would force me to work a bit more with skirts and so on, to get some sort of drop off? Would love to hear other ideas! OH... the large light hanging in the ceiling is a soft box made for still life flash, so I'm not sure it would be able to handle the heat much less fit the fixtures inside :) Cheers

Did you try a test with simple bounce boards? Simplicity is often the king rather than adding more and more lights... Choices on how to frame your shot can also alleviate the issue, unless of course you MUST HAVE that infront of a window shot. I recall reading on Deakins forum a lot of times, fx. in the movie prisoners the shots in the grandmas house were only lit from the outside and the filled with board from the inside. But like Will said, the light comes from the side. And then if you still have window, but only a little, it will be eaiser to ND down. One could also argue that the natural light of a particular room is what makes that room work and completely changing it might ruin more than than it helps. Sometimes it could even make the image more interesting by putting up black to remove excessive bounce from a white room. I have a shoot on monday where one of the scenes will have my main character of that scene backlit by a large living room window. I'm choosing to fill him with a board from the right and a little front to make it wrap a little and then expose him correctly on the right side and let the left do what ever it does. If anything needs to be added it will most likely be another board fill from the left but futher away. But again, it's all a matter of taste, and all solutions mentioned are good and certainly one can only appreciate Guy's extensive and detailed posts because they hold a lot of info and ways to do things. If I had the time, I'd make a portfolio with reference shots from different DPs with different lighting for various situations and setups and then decide based on the script which of the refs would suit the scene best and then go that way. But until then I remain a Deakins fan and will try to mimick his work style as far as I can with my limited experience and budgets :)

I got as far as signing in my name etc… but then you have to fill out your credit card. I hate those kinds of things. Either it's free with no obligation or it's not… not something in between. So by default I went and googled videoblocks.com, you should do the same. This is just the first one I clicked on. http://www.yelp.com/biz/video-blocks-reston?nb=1 I really don't care if videoblocks is sponsering cinematography.com… this just don't seem like a really good sponsor in regards to customer satisfaction. Just wanted to throw a heads up since I guess every member got this mail... Torben

Let's revive this thread... because now there is a proper answer to the OPs question. Answer: Magic Lantern with 1000x speed 64gb Komputerbay cards. And it's looking mighty fine, apart from the no sound issue :) www.vimeo.com/groups/raw

Consider using directional lavs? Omnilavs tend to pick up way more than you often want. But ofcourse, if you don't mind that ambient sound in the background of traffic etc. then omnis would be fine. And put them on the talent....

Funny how you can change your mind over a periode of time, but then again, manufacturers get better and better, including the Chinese and others. I don't know how far the fresnel type lights have moved, but one thing I'm starting to notice is that the new comers in LED panel lights are doing pretty well and off-setting the market with their very much lower prices. Have a look at the F&V stuff... you get three light for roughly 1 LP light's price. That's a big difference. And otherwise.... heck, even worklights or par cans can look decent through diffusion.

Just want to toss this in here as others mentioned LEDs... you shouldn't overlook the F&V stuff. To be honest they look better than the LP stuff and are far cheaper. Also a new product announced itself on the news thread: Hexolux. I just peaked at their website, and even though they don't have a lot of punch, they do have paper CRIs that will make the jaws drop on both Arri and LP. I'd love to get a chance to play around with those.

Heya... This is my first piece of fictional work as DoP and lighting. The director is a friend of mine, and the actors are both from the School for stage acting in Aarhus Denmark. It was a production done to take the students out of the chronological world and into the magical world of (short) film production. I basically packed up all my gear but only ended up using a couple of Arri fresnels and my collection of practical lamps. The director wanted to underexpose it deliberately, so I did.... It was shot on the FS100 with Canon L lenses. I worked with bounced and flagged light, practicals or diffused pin spots (Pulsar Pinspot MK3). The premise was; no pre-planning more or less for my part. I didn't see the location until the day of shooting, so I had to improvise a quick setup in regards to the lights in the room. We shot over the course of three days from late afternoon till late night. But feel free to hit me... Having seen the clips and the end movie so many times by now I have become totally blind to my own mistakes. (Apart from the fact that I misses the focus a couple of places). English subtitles are available... click to enable.

How about a grad ND filter on the lens and frame for it....? Have you tested to see how much you can save in post?

This may not be anyones right way of doing it.... but the following screenshot from a short I did last week used motivated light from the simple set design. I hung 3 wall lamps in the room in strategic places and then used them as motivation for putting up fresnels and spots. The table lamp in front of her gives her a fair amount of light even though it's only 15w. The wall lamps were also 15w. Behind me and the camera I had placed 650w fresnel bouncing into some Westcott ultrabounce and then flagged down as needed. To her left, I used diffused 100w pin spots to carry the wall lamps to her as rim light. Apart from that, the light is from the practicals. All wall lamps were 15w, the table lamp in the back room was a 25w and the globe hanging in htere was a 15w. You can do a lot with practicals, but for my own work I would help them come along a bit. One tip... While it would have been fun to have more lights, it would have been even more fun having more stands and flags! Grip is underestimated! Snap of opposite view....:

Im totally ignorant on this, but what about those festival retailers? Often you can buy packages where you by so and so many party balloons and they throw in the adequate amount of helium for them... toss the balloons and use the helium. This is just for an example: http://ballonsalg.dk/shop/ballongas-helium-kit-7c1.html?gclid=COz85Yb-hbICFYZ2cAodd1EAKw

wow... sorry, but I have to toss this in here, since that is what I see first when I walk into that BMD forum. What the beep are people doing with those grades??? They are messing up the DR all the way..... "Here's my take" "this is my version..." suddenly every indie camera guy crawls out and thinks he can grade as well, and they ruin the footage completely. Why do people always have to over-exaggerate?? Sorry... don't want to steal the thunder of the BMC, because I think it's got something going, but right now it's just not getting the right treatment. Looking forward to seeing some properly graded footage, done by people who are dedicated to that job.

Thanks James... Actually I found a way to get them cheap to Denmark, so I used the Boxes link you gave. They have free shipping in the states. It's outrageous how buying directly through the shop and having them sent it to me costs 130 dollars more than when I take care of the shipping myself :D They actually wanted 177 dollars for shipping 4 blankets to Denmark hehe.

This is an excellent thread to answer your questions: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=41388

Cheers for the suggestion, al though they are the right kind I'm looking for, they are an American shop and all out of stock for some reason :(

In another post David Mullen wrote shortly about lighting the scene and "fixing" the close-ups. If you're reading this David, could you elaborate a bit more? To what extent can one go in "fixing" the close-ups? I find that one of the side effects of loving photography and cinematography is that one notices too much how scenes are lit and sometimes I think that the fixing is pretty obvious. Would you say that the "good image" rules over actually being true to the scene?

Are there any practicals in the shot from above? Do they have a closed top? If so... replace the practicals with high wattage lamps and have them help you out. Or China balls with same lamps on booms or poles next to the camera. Will you be using snappy cuts? Then your could simply light each shot if you have the time... the travel distance on the close-ups would probably be short enough to accommodate room for the Chinas. Lower the fresnels a bit so they still only rim the side of arms etc.

Yeah that would be the first place to try, but the stuff we use here are these thinish grey blankets which we call "dog blankets"... I guess I could fold them up a bit to get some volume but still. :S

That show has got it all... me and the misses were late arrivers, but we fell in love with it right away. It's not just the lighting and cinematography, the whole thing just comes together and makes it perfect. I find it odd that Cranston took so long to get so significant roles as of late... he's quite talented imo. I love the lighting... side lighting hard, lovely colors. I wish there were more behind footage than there is.

Like everyone else I'm always looking for used deals, and I came across a couple of used Arri Apollo 2.5kw HMI fresnels. However, it seems impossible to find any info about them as to wether these are still worth the money and effort. Are these still going strong? Or will it become harder and harder to find any replacement parts / bulbs for them? Anything else to be aware of?

I've been searching around and either I find the thin moving blankets or the expensive quilted Matthews or similar named blankets. I'd love to get some tip where to get the quilted furniture pads that also it advertised in the states for around 12 dollars each. Unfortunately the shipping price from the states is way more than the blankets, hence I want to find them here... Thanks in advance!

The devil is in the details... thanks for sharing this. I like these types of thorough tests and would love to do them myself. It's interesting to see the minute and subtle changes and how much they matter in respects to pass a certain look. I can see why DPs would choose the full and half grid before anything else, it looks very pleasing and the tonality is nice. I know "common" people probably wouldn't know the difference as to explain it with words, but I do believe that we perceive a whole lot more than we think we do and therefore to me it makes a huge difference wether or not one picks one over the other for specific purposes. Thanks again.

From what I've heard and read.. (not experienced yet...) the chinese knock offs, you get what you pay for. They are close but not close enough and you're likely to end up with broken knobs, faulty wiring besides the beam quality mentioned. However, it sounds like it is possible to get hold of decent "knockoffs" like the brands Cinelight and Filmgear. You still won't have the indestructability of Arri, but you come closer in regards to the light quality, and they are damn cheap. And like mentioned... there's always used items. I just got myself an Arri 650 fresnel in excellent condition for no money at all. Spend some time sifting through the scarse reviews of lamps and so on. Maybe take a chance now and then. The good thing about the cheap brands is that you can buy a lamp relatively cheap and if it turns out to be shite then you can just ditch it (or sell it to some other guy who wants to try it out...)