Stuart Allman

A director that I'm working with on a short really likes the party scene lighting from "Meet Joe Black." He wants me to do something similar for a cafe table scene in his film that we're shooting at the end of the month. So far what I see is a large diffusion frame to the right of Clair, a hair light, separartion/back lighting on her shoulder, and some sort of fill/wrapping light. What I'm having trouble figuring out is how to match the fill/wrap lighting. It seems to fill all the way over to her far bicep. I see lanterns in the background of the shot. I'm wondering if the best way to do this is with a soft overhead fill from Chinese lanterns or using a more frontal bounce source just off to camera right. Perhaps Emmanuel used a spotted Fresnel, although I don't see a double shadow. It's also difficult to make out the light diagram from the reflections in her eyes since it's Youtube quality, but I don't immediately see a double bright spot. There's a shadow under her near side chin, but that could still indicate multiple lighting scenarios. Help would be much appreciated. Stuart -------------------------- illuma.blogspot.com

Speaking as an EE who moonlights as a camera person, 1-2kW isn't really that difficult of a design. I was once involved in a 1.2kW design. Now when you get to 10-20kW things get a bit out of my comfort zone. However, as Shelly pointed out, it really depends on the bulbs mass/thermal time constant. 3-phase power might be the easiest way to go. I once did some tests with the FS-700 and various tungsten fixtures just to see where things are truly noticeable. http://videogearsandiego.blogspot.com/2013/06/video-lighting-for-high-frame-rate-video.html

I was wondering what he meant by LEP. I've never seen that acronym used before with regards to plasma lights. S. ----------------------------- illuma.blogspot.com

Kenny, Have you had an opportunity to evaluate Hive plasma lights? They come in fixtures similar to a tungsten unit and don't flicker at any frame rate. The lights are daylight balanced (5600K) and do not dim without going severely blue (12000K-ish), but supposedly offer better color rendering than HMI at 100% output. Unfortunately the fixtures tend to be boutique priced last time I checked, but they might fit into your particular budget (just not mine). Hope this helps. S. ------------------------- illuma.blogspot.com

I'm shooting a short project this Saturday and I have an opportunity on Friday night to perform lighting tests with the actors. I watched Russell Carpenter's tutorial on actor lighting tests on the ASC web site, but haven't found any other useful references. Does anyones have tips, tricks, and tutorial links on how to best perform lighting tests on actors? This project is for the Producers Guild of America contest, so I don't know the genre, nor do I have a script - I won't until Saturday morning! Ideally I'd like to get "generic" advice on how you go about testing in pre-production. S. Allman ----------------------------------- illuma.blogspot.com