freddie bonfanti

as a spark working in Britain mate, i completely understand what you mean...especially about kinos and battery powered pocket pars. its funny you say that, i hear the same so often from other frustrated Dps complaining to the gaffer on set. im not very fond on kino flos, very fidgety to assemble and horrible light, especially when used in period pieces... covered wagons are much better, more lightweight, easy to mae and use heck i should built a lot of them, make them look safe and tidy and sell them to Panalux London! do you think they'll buy them Adam??? probably not! ;-)

id love to know how much diesel was used in total...ive seen an Aggreko 500Kw gennie once, coolest thing ever

make sure those fluoros REALLY need to be corrected with minus green, sometimes available fixtures are all mismatched so checking first would be recommended. there are lots of options really but if you dont mind a bit of mixing in temperatures you could replace al the fluoro fixtures with 55w white tubes or something that gives you 3200k and leave the daylight uncorrected. ive seen it done lots of times and it works really well. Seamus McGarvey often does it, he likes mixing temperatures. or you could swap them with T5 daylight fixtures and have everything daylight, so your temperature is the same. or you could switch the fluoros off and see what happens with just daylight coming through the windows... where is your window facing at? south? north? what time will you be shooting at? check where the sun is going to be, that can be another important factor all the best F

yeah color temprature shouldnt be a problem, also using smoke might be an idea to enhance the beam effect

How does a 5k skypan compare to an image80 in output and light quality? Kinos shift magenta and skypans shift orange due to off-white reflectors... well skypans are old school big tungstens and if you live them naked then youd be getting quite a strong falloff, always depending how high or low you hang them on your rig. image80s are fluorescents and the falloff would be much smaller compared to the skypans, theyre basically like to 44s put together! color temperature shouldnt be a problem when using tungsten lights.it all depends on your rig really, i personally would find hanging and rigging skypans a bit easier than image 80s, plus its better to start with a stronger source and maybe cutting it down with diffusion Also I was watching the BTS of a Benny Boom music video and they were using a 15x15' chimera looking softbox...and a briese. :blink: What kind of lamps are in these? I'd assume an array of pars/openface-bulbs or kino megatubes? Kind of like a mini fisher light. its definitely some sort of tungsten going through a 8x8 or 12x12 frame of diff. i couldnt really tell what it is but it could be wendys, i love rigs like those. actually wendys could be an option for your job, too...rigging them on a solid truss with a big enough frame of silk or grid which you can lower and higher as you want and wiring them into a decent dimmer desk would be ideal, just like in that video!

hi, i kind of understand why you'd be rather using tungsten than HMIs, but as Tim said HMIs arent as bad as you think. ive seen more tungsten bulbs going off that HMI ones, sometimes a few old HMI lamps with a fault in the micro switch system, but if you know how to use them properly it should be fine. the other real advantage with tungsten a part from being cheaper and less "fidgety" is that you always get the right color temperature, something that is often hard to get with HMIs, especially the smaller heads IMO. anyway no matter what lamp you will be using when dealing with electrics there is no easier way, make sure things are safe and secure

wonderful dinner scene, with the classic soft toplight which in this case is really bright...i liked it a lot, what was the lighting setup? ta

There is no reason logistically to shoot 100. well, there is, im assuming he's using such a slow stock to give the post production boys an almost grainless picture for the compositing process...

i had the same problem on a feature, silk just sucks to much light when using a soft source like spacelights and you end up shooting almost wide open with the focus puller in tears ;-). i wonder what 1/4 grid would do, as Kevin suggested. i love it when used in front of a punchy source like a Dino but ive never tried using it with spacelights. another option for you Matt could be skypans and then silk or grid, im sure theyd be easier to control than maxis

we usually get them from our lighting companies on the job as part of the practical kit, ive never tried to find them elsewhere. depending where your location is, give the nearest company a call and im sure theyll help you out. you may be able to hire a kit from them. Panalux are in London, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow best F

Can someone please give me some figures here, since I've got 1500sq ft of bluesceen to light and have a very limited budget and need to know (to-the-light) what we need to hire. its not so easy to answer precisely to your question, mate. what kind of studio space is it? does it have an existing lighting rig? what is your budget? and most importantly have you got a qualified gaffer? he should be the one coming up with the plan. anyway as everyone else already mentioned 6k spacelights can do the job beautifully, but to get 5.6 at 100 ASA i would say you're gonna need lots of them and probably some CYC or other types of tungstens to help, which means you'll need quite a lot of power

One way I save money is I rarely put KinoFlo's on my list anymore, unless I'm going for a flourescent look. Not that I dislike them, just that so many cheaper sources can do the same job quicker. funny you say that, i worked on a feature last year with Larry Smith, BSC and he had a very similar approach with kinos, we only used them as practicals, still very sparingly. he used Dedos a lot, and i was surprised how well they worked for the job. on lower budget gigs Dps tend to got for tungstens a lot, theyre reliable with constant color temperature and much cheaper than HMIs. tend to get too bloody hot tho ;-)

not that i know of, the Octodome comes with its own special 8 pin speed ring unfortunately, but im sure you can be creative and make something up. try using a couple of magic arms and k clamps or build up a mini support rig for the dome with a baby c stand and place in front of the pocket par good luck

carbon arcs and tungstens mainly...i also remember an interview with Henri Alekan (he worked on a completely different kind of movies but roughly in the same period) where he said that back then most cinematographers didnt have light meters and were used to guess exposure by eye...

having a good gaffer you trust will be a huge help! he will sort the electrical distribution for you and will suggest you what lamp to use for a desired effect. if you're not very experienced with lighting it would really be vital to find one. if you cant afford a gaffer then see if there's an experienced freelance lighting electrician who is eager to step up to gaffer and willing to work on a lower budget project... when it comes to choosing fixtures, it's about how you like to light and what style of lighting will work best to tell the story. also, how be aware of how much the lighting equipment will cost and would be the appropriate choice for each location, recces are a must. it's a very delicate process and there is little room for mistake. nailing the equipment list, having a good lighting crew and be prepared for the job will save you lots of time and money...thats why having a good gaffer its so damn important best, F

i worked with Larry Smith as an electrician on his last feature "Bronson" and his lighting was brilliant...HMIs through the windows most of the time, no fill...simple but really effective

David, i love what you're doing with lighting and your posts are just brilliant, i've got one question though: wouldn't a singular large piece of silk or grid cloth hanging below all your main overhead rig solve the problem with all those reflections? wouldn't it then look more like a large overcast sky? Freddie

love it, Stuart...well done mate

dolly, camera rigs, everything camera related...they dont touch any lighting equipment like c stands, flags and so on...

its alwayas funny to read how in America the grips take care of all the textiles, c stands and all that...here in Britain, its the sparks job...

hi all im selling my beloved Canon 814XL for 200 pounds...its in AMAZING conditions, perfect. superbe zoom lense and i include a roll of K40 in the price. let me know Freddie

i never hear the term "junior" when i work as a spark and im on a 17 ton gennie truck full of all sorts of lights so im guessing we dont use the term at all....

here in the UK we call pup a 2k fresnel...

hi all, i finally got hold of a few frame grabs from a short i shot not a long ago up here in Scotland. the film tells the sad story of Amanda, an average woman from the rough and tough East Lothian who is facing a strange case of domestic violence. we shot on a DVX100 with an M2 adaptor lensed with 3 old OLYMPUS primes (24, 90, 125). our lighting was poor: a couple of 1.2 HMIs, few redheads and a 2 bank kino the director Rob Glassford whom i worked previously with on "The Big Forever" (forum2004/index.php?showtopic=14486&hl=the+big+forever) and "The Rooftop Challenge" (forum2004/index.php?showtopic=19224&hl=MUSIC+VIDEO) didnt want this to be the usual Scottish drama, especially photographically: he wanted the lighting to be "brave" to suggest a strong feeling of sadness and danger. we discussed extensively about the use of different colours for each different scene, and i chose 3 specific colours that i believed could get each feeling across in their own special way. for instance whenever Amanda is left alone in her house i wanted to use the color blue, thus white balancing to tungsten and letting uncorrected daylight coming into the windows with smoke. this way her living room looks menacing and the only safety is outside, marked by the shafts of light on the other hand, whenever something terrible happens in the room, in presence of John the violent husband, i introduced a warmer, stronger color: orange. orange resembles the male strong character, who commits the violence. i gelled the lights with chroma orange, a part from a small practical on top of the tv. once again, there is almost no light inside, highlighting the sense of fear and separation from the outside our only exterior was a night scene with rain. it was my first rain effect and i think works quite well. i used 2 big garden sprinklers with "shower mode" on 2 C stands just out of frame, backlit with the two 1.2 HMIs one corrected to full CTO and the other with chroma orange. inside the window i put a blonde to bring up the levels. because our frame was quite tight we could get away with only 2 sprinklers. i wouldnt think it would work for anything wider than that as a last note a big thanks to my focused and top notch crew: first AC Eve Carreno and gaffer Ben Sommerville

hi all, i just wanted to say that TRUTH is officially into this years's 61TH EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, in the UK shorts category...im very happy and i think this little short film has a big potential. all the best, Freddie