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Hywel Phillips

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    Cinematographer
  1. Thank you, David. A perfectly illuminating reply (if you'll forgive the pun) and that picture is worth a thousand words. Much obliged. Hywel Phillips.
  2. Hi All, I could do with some advice on simulating daylight on a dark set, on a low budget feature I am DoP'ing. Please forgive the cross posting (I posted this on REDUser as well). The film is set in the 1930's, set mainly in offices with a small cast. These are going to be built as sets on a makeshift soundstage (a large barn). I've not lit interiors for daylight starting from a dark set before. Usually I shoot on location and use my lighting rig to supplement daylight or light night interiors. So the tricky bit for me is doing some sort of simulation of daylight through the office windows. I haven't seen the barn yet, the sets haven't been designed let alone built, so input I have at this stage can serve to make life much easier come the shoot! My plan would be to use my normal lighting gear (Gekko KelvinTile LED panels, Arri 650 and 150 Fresnels) and practicals to light the interior, have the windows have venetian blinds over them, and burn them out with one honking big light per window. I plan to have that shining through a big white sheet when direct sunlight is slanting in, and pointed at a big reflector for when the sun is indirect from that side of the building. I'll use my hazer to give this light a bit of presence on set (offices in the 1930s would probably have had lots of cigarette smoke anyway). I'll raise and lower the lights to change the angle and mildly gel to simulate changing time of day. Am I making a huge rookie mistake? What should I use as the honking big lights? I'm concerned that as this is a barn, not a regular soundstage, we may be very limited to the electrical power we can suck up (this is top of my list to figure out when we recce- I've requested the production hire a sparky to come along). I'm worried because when similar setups are described in American Cinematographer, they talk about 6K and 12K HMIs - that's not going to happen for this film. I'll be shooting it on my Scarlet and if I possibly can I'd like to shoot at f/4, ISO 400 ish but I can already guess we may be forced to f/2.8 and ISO 800. Obviously I'll test, but advice from old hands would be hugely welcome! Plan A: Power no object. Cheap cheap tungsten, with mild CT gel. I may not be able to lose the intensity of a full CT blue, but quarter or half should give the impression that the daylight is bluer. Options are anything from multiple 500 W worklights through stage 1K PAR cans through to 2K blondes (maybe one per window?). I need to know how many windows and how much power, ASAP. I'm very concerned that this will be pathetically dim, having run a test with my 650 Arris. Plan B: Hire HMI. This would probably be my preferred option. How does one 575 W Arri per window sound? I can hopefully squeeze several of these in under the power budget, but might have an issue with the cost budget. 1.2K is possible if there's just one or two windows. Plan C: LED. This may be the only solution if power is the major limit. Worst case scenario is a single 240 V 13 Amp circuit, in which case I'll be strongly recommending that the sets be built with just one small window and using all my cheap LED panels to make some dim and feeble attempt at daylight, whilst relying on the nice high CRI Gekkos to do the lighting of the talent on set. Any advice gratefully received! I don't think the production will stand or fall on how much like daylight my windows are, but since they are going to be in most scenes I'd like to do the best job I can. Cheers, Hywel
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