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I'd like to resurrect the "Post a lighting setup" topic from a long time ago!


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100,000 watts on a close up?! Not even Andrzej Sekula goes that far....

 

Show us the wide shots.

 

 

LOL, OK OK. I tried to have enough light flying around so I didnt have to light the close ups, made for a quick shoot.

Cheers G

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this is from music video i shoot

 

1- tota light on boom arm

 

4- par64( 2 from each side) for back light the dancers AND the rain

 

2- blonds for the background (1 with dark blue 1 with FULL CTB)

Edited by Ram Shani
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Here's something I'm still working on. I shot/directed/wrote/edited it.

Here's some stills. . .

 

 

post-1413-1179647512_thumb.jpg post-1413-1179647435_thumb.jpg

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Most of the fill/ambient light in the room is real ambient daylight, though the "sun" on the subjects is a 1K mole fresnel with some kind of ND gel on it (probably a .3); I balanced the camera for daylight and let thes "sun" go warm. There's a 2x3 Chimera gelled blue for extra fill in some shots, and a 650 fresnel in the wide. The 650 is the spot on the wall in the kitchen. The sun, if you look at the wide/2shot, is off to the right, out of frame. 650 next to it, with barn doors closed and twisted to create that spot. The softbox is pretty much in front of them, out of frame (camera's axis in the 2s/wide shot).

 

In retrospect, I wish I'd let the sun, when it's backlighting the afro'd fella, go hotter, and the same in the single of the afro-less guy (but just a little hotter). Actually I don't care for the light's positioning in that one, but we were in a hurry, and technically, that's the "correct" position for that source, from that angle, even though it's flat on his face, so I couldn't think of anything clever to do to cheat it, and didn't want to lose even more time. Oh, in addition, the 650 became the splash in the room behind him for that shot.

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Part Deux

 

Since it won't let me upload more photos, I'll start another post

 

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These are from the same project, though I didn't end up using any of this footage. I still think it looks pretty cool.

 

Here we have a black backdrop, some duvetyne (sp?) I've acquired somewhere, held by a c stand. The edge lights are the 650 and an 300w fresnel, one on each side of the various subjects, and the softbox filling from the front.

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Okay, so here is a setup I did not to long ago. This shot is not a frame grab from the project, but a shot taken from a digital camera on set. It gives the idea of the setup though. the actual film was shot on 5218.

 

It was a film about the last 8 minutes before the sun burnt out, and was quite stylized in terms of lighting. here is the basic setup:

 

2k scoop hanging from the grid to create basic fill.

arri 350, gelled amber to create effect of candles on the girls face.

2k scoop behind the window to create ambient sunlight (Window was gelled with full grid cloth)

750 zip gelled with 216 to create effect of sunlight hitting girls back.

1k baby, going through a gobo to create venetian blind effect on door.

 

Like I said this is a shot from a digital camera, not the actual camera, so there are a few shadows that shouldn't be there. But tell me what you think overall. Oh, I should note that the film itself was bleach bypass, so the colours were less saturated.

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

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This is in Chartres Cathedral, France for a NatGeo shoot last winter. (French crew was great). I snapped this off - this was one of many lights needed to illuminate this massive interior. I used a mixture of multiple 2, 5 & 10K tungsten units with 4 and 6K HMI - lots of bouncing off floors to create soft sources from below arches etc. Wish I had more shots of the setup but didn't have time. My apologies that this isn't really a shot of a setup, but I thought this was kind of an interesting photo of one light in a setup that was underway...

 

This shot was taken in the morning, and so when we finally started to roll, the daylight was far more powerfull and therefore the windows were more vibrant than what you see here.

 

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Okay, so here is a setup I did not to long ago. This shot is not a frame grab from the project, but a shot taken from a digital camera on set. It gives the idea of the setup though. the actual film was shot on 5218.

 

It was a film about the last 8 minutes before the sun burnt out, and was quite stylized in terms of lighting. here is the basic setup:

 

2k scoop hanging from the grid to create basic fill.

arri 350, gelled amber to create effect of candles on the girls face.

2k scoop behind the window to create ambient sunlight (Window was gelled with full grid cloth)

750 zip gelled with 216 to create effect of sunlight hitting girls back.

1k baby, going through a gobo to create venetian blind effect on door.

 

Like I said this is a shot from a digital camera, not the actual camera, so there are a few shadows that shouldn't be there. But tell me what you think overall. Oh, I should note that the film itself was bleach bypass, so the colours were less saturated.

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

 

Looks like the work of a third year Ryerson student :D

 

Seriously, excellent work, very professional!

 

R,

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  • 2 weeks later...

Coming late to this thread (as usual.) Some stills from a music video:

 

HVX-200 to P2.

 

As originally shot with morning sky dome and single Baby as kicker:

INYL_s01a_01-2_best_picture_320.jpg

 

After my creative grading/cc/filtering/etc.:

INYL_s01a_01-4_vignette_320.jpg

 

Two Tweenies bouncing off the water for caustics (one with 1/2 +green) and two Kino 4Bank 4' heads underwater.

inyl_14.jpg

 

As shot with available daylight (I held for a sunlight edge on her and clouds on him.)

inyl_vfx_retinue_gs_6.jpginyl_vfx_retinue_gs_0.jpg

The gag is that each of the members of her retinue slow to a frozen stop as she continues toward camera, sidling around the two in front.

 

As composited and with final grading:

inyl_vfx_retinue_gs_7.jpginyl_vfx_retinue_gs_8.jpg

 

On the set:

inyl_3418.jpg

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Hey, Michael, sorry to derail the topic, but did you yourself do the grade on your footage? If so, in what program? If it's just an NLE (and not After Effects or something), can you give me the basics of what filters/techniques you used? Thanks.

Edited by Josh Bass
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Michael Morian-

 

The color regrading, why such a change from what was shot? Or were you just sharing just how much you could change the look?

 

Do you think if you had shot the blue image you could as easily warm it up to what you orginally shot?

 

What is your opinion on color regrading after the fact? Is it equally "easy" to do it in either direction or is one direction easier than the other?

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kinos underwater?

 

:) Yep. I had read some months before this shoot that you could drop the heads in water. I couldn't find that reference when I was considering the shot for the music video but with my layman's knowledge of electronics, I presumed that the high frequency of these instruments creates a very small electrical field in the water. So, I just did an acid test:

 

I weighed a c-stand with the head in the water. (It floats, BTW.)

 

I had an electric ready on the ballast switches, a grip ready to knock me clear, turned it on, and reached in the water...

 

Nothing. I didn't die, at least not this time anyway.

 

We had the Kino's, the actors, my camera assistant and myself in the pool with no ill effects. The only time I got a buzz was when I was adjusting the instrument within the water and adjusted one of the power clips on the end of a tube. I got a very slight shock, not even enough to make me clench.

 

Someone took a picture of me in my bathing suit adjusting the light. I'll see if I can find them.

 

A final note: Be sure to fully rinse your Kino heads off after being dunked in a pool then let them drain and dry in the sun. The chlorine corrodes the metal parts and the corrugated plastic housing holds water within all those tiny channels.

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Regarding grading:

 

I did the post creative work as well as the photography. I offered this shot to this thread as an example of how one might shoot a scene while keeping in mind how that footage would finally look. The extreme manipulation is not that far removed from what has been done with such film-acquired movies like "O Brother Where Art Thou" and "Minority Report" to name just two. If I could have dialed in a look in-camera, I would have considered it but I find it far better to simply acquire the best possible image on set and defer the manipulation of the image to post.

 

The purpose of the look was to distinguish the fantasy dream images from those of the "real" character.

 

I started by shooting the best possible contrast and color I could for the source image, understanding how highlights and shadow areas might be affected by my plans in post.

 

I had originally experimented with some still frames in Photoshop, building up layers of manipulation including additive blurs to simulate white diff filters, desaturation, and color casting. Then, I built that same look in Magic Bullet in order to process the footage. (A sample Photoshop and Magic Bullet Movie Looks preset are on my site. You can see how I built the look there.)

 

Note that I started with a rich, saturated, properly exposed image and essentially reduced its technical quality to arrive at a creative result.

 

In the end, even though I had shown the producer the finished look before we shot the piece, she got nervous about how I had so seriously altered the beautiful camera original and retreated from my creative look. I've since learned to get that agreement in writing before starting.

 

And thus is the danger of being a director of photography in this digital world. Imagine how hard it will be to protect your photograpy when you're delivering RAW images to post with such future cameras as the SI-2K Mini and RED one. :blink:

 

M

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If I could have dialed in a look in-camera, I would have considered it but I find it far better to simply acquire the best possible image on set and defer the manipulation of the image to post.

 

I can fully subscribe to that. I once had to edit some scenes for a TV shot that were shot with really slow shutter for effect. As you can imagine somewhere in post the producer suddenly didn't want that effect. I will always go for the cleanest and most neutral possible source material I can get. Its really easy to introduce effects alter, but try to remove those from source material.

On a funnier note, a noob camera operator shot the close ups for a 2 person talking heads scene with tungsten balance in bright sunlight. We had to make these shots B&W because back then Avid's color correction wasn't as good as today. But in the end I loved it. I came out really well...

Cheers, Dave

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Here's a simple lighting setup that you guys might be interested in. This is a goofy podcast to create some awareness for a new daily music show that I'll be lighting (I'm actually in the podcast as a "potential host" for the show). We shot the first one on an infinity white set and you can see my lighting setup at the begining of the first podcast. Very soft yet contrasty lighting.

Junior through 4'x4' of Grid Cloth as side key light

Naked pup for kicker

Soft light through Grid Cloth for uplight

Spotted Junior for White Glow

Cyc Lights for green wash

 

To subscribe, click this link; if it doesn't open iTunes, open iTunes yourself and under the 'Advanced' menu, select 'Subscribe to Podcast...', copy and paste the URL below into the box that appears.

 

http://www.miraclechannel.ca/channel/our_p...UF/mainfeed.xml

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I interchange the words Pup and Baby as the same thing. They're just 8 inch 1K Fresnels. The light that I was actually referring to in the podcast was a 6 inch 750w fresnel which is somewhere in between a Baby and a Tweenie. Therefore my use of the name Pup.

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I interchange the words Pup and Baby as the same thing. They're just 8 inch 1K Fresnels. The light that I was actually referring to in the podcast was a 6 inch 750w fresnel which is somewhere in between a Baby and a Tweenie. Therefore my use of the name Pup.

 

Gotcha! Thanks.

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