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Showing results for tags 'lighting'.
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Hey guys, I am shooting a short comedy film for class, and was hoping for some suggestions with my setup! Mind you, I am very new to all this. Since it is a comedy, I was planning on using a lot of soft light. I have a few softboxes, a few umbrella lights, and a few chinaballs. The setup I was planning on running, was two 1000 Lumen LED worklights for my background (with orange or blue gel depending on the scene) and a chinaball with orange or blue gel with a 105W CFL (600W equivalent) in front of my actor. If necessary, I would use a white reflector to fill the shadows on my actors face. The reason I want to use worklights if possible, is that they are MUCH easier to gel. I have heard they run a little bit green, and have spikes in their color charts, but will that really affect me in a real life situation? The two backlights I use would probably have different hues of the same color, ie. frost blue and full blue CTB Thank you all for the help! I look forward to learning with you! -
Hi, Im Gaffing a music video shoot where the client requested bare fluorescent tubes to be placed in the scene as practicals. Where can i buy tubes that i can power single bare tubes. Whats the best way to add color to them, would spray painting be a good idea? Would really appreciate all the tips. Thanks! Jorge
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I'm planning on lighting the set of half a plane practically with the classic moving ovals against the talent and background. I've got a few ideas as to how to create the ovals but then to have them move I'm struggling to think of a consistent method. Any advice on how to light the outside of the plane to create an even blown out background, and foreground, including moving ovals would be greatly appreciated. Chris
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Hi, I have a music video shoot and we're currently deciding cameras. I prefer the look of the Alexa and want to push the Mini as we're mostly on steadicam. However we have a lot of strobe lighting during a performance sequence, making the Dragon with motion mount seem like the right way to go. Is the Studio the only option for choosing Alexa when dealing with strobes? We're shooting a range of speeds, ramping from 24 to 60fps. Thanks, Chris
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Hey guys, first time posting on this site after browsing the forums for a couples months. I have a student project coming up in about a month, and the location I'm planning on shooting at is set up in a way that for the majority of the scene I'd be lighting downstage. I understand why you shoot from upstage, so that the shadows end up on the side of the subject facing the lens, ultimately making a more flattering image. But here's the problem... What's motivating the light for the scene is one giant window that also serves as one of the four walls of the room. The location is a sunroom (not sure if the term is made up or not) in a house, and is already furnished so I'd be blocking the scene according to rooms current layout. I just wanted to know if anyone has experience lighting this way or knows of any examples where downstage lighting has been done successfully, or if I should just avoid lighting this way at all costs. I hope this post made sense and that I haven't filled it with a bunch of unnecessary text :wacko: -
Hi guys, I wanted to find out what techniques people are using to combat/harness overhead light. I've got a scene coming up where there's a bunch of fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling (the only motivation for light in the location) so I'd like to use it as the main source but keep it fairly low-key with nice shaping to the faces. In my previous experience I've found it difficult to achieve a flattering look on the talent (such as the attached image from Skyfall - which works well for the scene but is what I'm trying to avoid). Are there any techniques you employ in your own work to avoid overly shadowy eyes? I thought Rodrigo Prieto's work in Wolf of Wall Street (image attached) was really well handled as there's a nice shaping of light on the faces in what would otherwise be quite a flat looking environment with banks of fluorescents in the ceiling of an office - would he have employed additional lamps from lower angles in conjunction with the practical lights in the ceiling to create a pleasing lighting contrast to the faces? There are a few ideas I've already experimented with such as softening the overhead light with diffusion - which I like but, again, still gives pools of shadow under the eyes. Bouncing the light from below with reflectors softens the contrast of overhead lighting but always feels like an additional source coming from an angle which doesn't feel natural? Maybe I need to be more subtle.. What techniques do you recommend/use in every day situations? I'd be interested to hear advice for all manner of situations (low key, high key, dramatic, experimental, etc). I love Robert Richardson's top-light look but I'd like to avoid this style in favour of a softer, more natural feel for my upcoming project. Thanks in advance! - James.
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Hello all, this is my first post here and I really need some advice on how to go about that! I have a project coming up which involves interior and exterior shots. My main concern is lighting the outdoors night scenes. The scene involves two actors having a dialogue while they go about dumping a body in a car. This takes place at night. Mood: Dark as possible - its is a murder after all, mysterious. The only source of light is kind of a Sodium Light high up on the wall next to them which is pretty strong if they stand on its range. (and some other lights in the distant background which only offer some perspective) eventually they will sit next to each other (some other shots involve them standing almost under the sodium light talking - but these ones are the widest ones and obviously the biggest worry for me since I need to light from further away) My initial thought is to keep it as simple as possible and try to utilise what I have as much as possible. I can always try to match the sodium light for the interior shoots as it supposedly shinning through the window-> using half orange and +green or even a dedicated gel. But now I am left with trying to light up their faces and at the same time trying to make them look natural, I can budget some diva kinoflos and pretend that there are some other street lamps around of a different color temperature(or even match it), but I am worried it might not look as natural as i want and that it might sort of spill all over the place and destroy the mood. The camera is an Arri Alexa with a kit of prime lenses. This is working in my favour so I cant complaint I just need to sort out my lighting kit list soon and these scenes do trouble me since its the first time I am lighting an outdoor night scene. Much appreciated in advance any advice is welcome! thanks!
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Hi, I'm looking for scenes or music videos shot in theater or against red curtains for inspiration. Any suggestions? Thanks :)
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Hi Guys: I have been a DoP for about 2 years and I just got a Hair commercial job. From what I have learned in the industry I know that the shine of the hair is solved with hard lighting depending on the shots and where they want the shine on the hair. The big problem is I have a set full of mirrors and shiny walls and I would really appreciate it if you could help me solve this. I am attaching the reference they sent me for the bathroom. Thank you!
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Hi everyone! What are folks using these days for high-output sharp-beamed flashlights? I have a scene primarily lit by a flashlight cutting through a (haze-filled) dark church. I'd love the sharp edges (almost Source-4ish) of what they had with the Maxabeam in Jurassic Park, but in a smaller package. I'm F55 on this, but I might be overcranked so figure I'll be at 640ISO at a T2.8 and need the beam to really cut through the haze. Maglight sized would be great. Blue beam is fine. Anything new and exciting out there for sharp flashlights or do I need to have the actor use an old boxy Maxabeam? Thanks! -George
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I'm new at this and have a quick question that maybe someone with more experience could give me a heads up on: I need to shoot an actor (full body + shadow) against a green screen INSIDE. That part is okay. Problem is I need to make it look like it was shot in sunlight from a shadows point of view. When composited, the studio light gives distorted shadows because of the close proximity of the light to the subject (a few feet) as opposed to the backplate (the sun, a couple of million miles). In CG (my previous gig) this light would be called 'infinite light'. How do I get parallel light (infinite light) crisp looking shadows inside my space which is 14' high. Can it be done & how? I've tried researching the net but maybe I'm not using the right keywords. -
So I'm shooting a short film and it mostly takes place at night on the road inside a car, and I have a very low budget, it's supposed to look like a kind of b horror/grindhouse movie. My inspiration of the lighting is Deathproof by QT, here's a picture and basically I'm looking to light my scene exactly like that, my question is, how can i achieve this cheaply? which lights do you recommend and how do i place them? Thanks
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I need some suggestions on how to light up this scene. Right now there's nothing but a 150w Dedo light point down on the character.
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Hello, everyone, The title pretty much sums my issue up— I purchased this light off ebay but have no idea how to power the source with its 5 pin xlr power cord. thanks! -
I love the moving colorful lights here. But it's driving me crazy that I can't find out how this was accomplished. Any suggestions? http://vimeo.com/101388682 -
Hey everyone, I'm trying to re-create this still from King of the Hill as a learning exercise. I attached it below. It seems fairly straight forward but I can't seem to get the key to look right. I used a charlie bar and two Dedo 150's for the background and that looked ok but the eyelight kick and the key i'm struggling with. Thoughts? Diagrams? Thanks so much!
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Hey All, Quick rigging question. I'm shooting something that specifically requires (for reasons pertaining to the location) us to use Barger 6 lights as a spacelight system, rather than standard mole 6k socapex spacelight. Anyone have experience rigging a 6 light toppy from a lighting grid? What do I need to do this? The yoke looks like it is going to make it challenging... Thanks in advance for any wisdom!
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Hello everyone. I recently shot a music video and have run into a bit of an issue with the highlights. One of the hero props on this one was a set of floating, glowing orbs a la John Carpenters "Starman". The characters had them in most scenes. Images attached. I was shooting on a Sony F5 with the Raw recorder. We also had proxies at XAVC 2k going to SXS cards. I rated the camera at 1250 most of the time to lessen noise, but when dealing with extreme highlights went to 2000 to have the most headroom. No LUTS were baked in, and I shot S-LOG2 Both the proxies and the RAW recordings have this issue. It shows up in Sony RAW Viewer and in Premiere CC. It shows up when looking at the RAWs and the SXS XAVC proxies. We decided early on to fly an actual LED light source on strings and do our best to hide the wires (which were also powering the orbs) It turned out great and we were ecstatic on set. Being able to key light with a moving source that was also a prop was amazing. However, when looking closer at the captured footage we found that the banding and pixelation around the orbs was terrible, especially when pushing the exposure towards the dark end. Quick movement seems to accentuate the issue. The odd thing is that the frames themselves seem fine, only when playing back do they look odd. The paused frames are clean of banding and posterization. I figured with 16BIT RAW we would be fine. It was obvious we were clipping the highlights. We tried to do so whenever possible to avoid too much compositing. Most modern digital cinema cameras aren't film....but highlight roll of is quite decent nowadays. What I wasn't expecting was terrible banding and posterization. Here is a clip (prores export, not de-squeezed, Slog) that shows the worst of it. It happens a lot. You have to watch in HD to notice the issue. https://youtu.be/vbKAWkfgCA8 Notice the posterization on the orb as it descends and on his face as it crosses around his back. We had planned to composite a VFX orb over some of the blown white highlights anyways. So, I would imagine that smoothing the banding in post might be an option, but it even shows up on hands and faces that get too close to the clipped highlights, as seen in this clip. I have no idea how to fix this issue. Is it something debearing or reincoding may fix or am I just out of luck? Im no expert, but I assumed the camera would be able to handle some blown highlights. After all, clipping windows, little hot spots, and clouds can look fine on this camera in my experience. All of my research pointed to the ability to wrangle down highlights in post. If anyone has any helpful words it would be most appreciated. Im not the most tech savvy at this point in my career, and even if this project is unfortunately hurt by this issue I would love to know why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Or if anyone has any pointers towards a fix/workaround. My hope is that is an issue with post processing and not something that the raw recorder or F5 did internally...Like I said, the frames themselves are clear of the issue, it is only when you hit play that the digital garbage appears. Thanks so much for your time!
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Hello, We are shooting a short film. One of the locations is a 3rd story Apartment, with small balconies on some windows. We really want to use the location because it is an original 1970s Austrian Apartment with interiors. How would you light it though? Or would you? Shooting with daylight for three days could give us some continuity issues. Or would you shoot all of the shots featuring windows at once and then everything else seperately? I thought about putting lights on some of the balconies and putting up see-thru curtains , so they're kinda blown out, but it wouldn't work on all the windows. Do you guys have any ideas?
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Hi We're shooting a short film and one scene plays in an apartment. We found this 3rd story apartment and really want to use it, because it is an original 1920s Austrian Apartment. We need a 7 minute dialogue scene in the Apartment and are thinking of how to shoot it. We wanna shoot it four days and have as little of a hassle as possible. I thought about putting lights on the balconies and see thru curtains on the windows, but they're not in front of all of the windows (the balconies). Could I just light it from the inside and somehow place a backlight above the window? Or does anybody have an idea to add interesting light? What would you guys do? thanks, carlo zappella
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Hi We're shooting a short film and one scene plays in an apartment. We found this 3rd story apartment and really want to use it, because it is an original 1920s Austrian Apartment. We need a 7 minute dialogue scene in the Apartment and are thinking of how to shoot it. We wanna shoot it four days and have as little of a hassle as possible (lighting continuity errors) I thought about putting lights on the balconies and see thru curtains on the windows, but they're not in front of all of the windows (the balconies). Could I just light it from the inside and somehow place a backlight above the window? Or does anybody have an idea to add interesting lighting stuff? What would you guys do? thanks, Carlo Zappella
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Hello, We are shooting a short film. One of the locations is a 3rd story Apartment, with small balconies on some windows. We really want to use the location because it is an original 1970s Austrian Apartment with interiors. How would you light it though? Or would you? Shooting with daylight for three days could give us some continuity issues. Or would you shoot all of the shots featuring windows at once and then everything else seperately? I thought about putting lights on some of the balconies and putting up see-thru curtains , so they're kinda blown out, but it wouldn't work on all the windows. Do you guys have any ideas?
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I lit a music video last week, and one of the setups called for lighting as if it was 'twilight'. I knew just using CTB to get the blue light of twilight wouldn't work, so I did some research and ended up buying some Lee Filters 161 Slate Blue. I used Slate Blue on some HMIs, and softened and diffused the light as much as possible to get the soft blue light that you see just after sunset. I was quite happy with the outcome, but it wasn't really the kind of blue I was after. I was wondering if anyone else has had experience using special colour gels to light for twilight? What kind of setups did you use? With the power of grading nowadays, is it easier to just fix the colour in post? I guess it's an interesting debate, but I do like to get what I want in camera, so that minimal things have to be changed in post. More about the shoot on my blog.
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Welding/Grinding/Metalwork Lighting Effect
Alan McIlrath posted a topic in Lighting for Film & Video
Hi all, I'm looking for some advice/ideas/thoughts on a lighting effect I'm trying to recreate. I'm shooting a micro-budget short next week which features a scene of building/metalwork going on behind a closed door. I found a good reference for the effect I'd like to recreate (00.00-00.02): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6JTi__Mtb8 One slight difference from the reference is the scene will be shot at night and moonlit. So far the only idea I really have had is to try a couple of blondes on dimmers and maybe add some sparks in post and let the sound design carry the effect. I'd be keen to hear if anyone else has tried this and what the outcome was. For the shoot I'll have a 2.5k Par HMI, some Blondes, Red Heads, 650W Fresnel and some Dedolight 150W, unfortunately I don't have a welder! Thanks in advance for any input. Alan -
First would would like to apologize for my ignorance on this subject, but I'm still new to this and would appreciate any help in understanding the matter. My question is in regards to F-Stops or "Stops". I have been reading a couple of forums on the site and I noticed using those terms in regards to lighting i.e. gels (CTO or CTB) or filters. When someone says that you if you use this type of gel or filter it will be about 2 "stops" down what does that mean exactly. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks.
