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Lighting a Room With TV LIGHT


Dangnpuppet

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It's usually called a "TV gag," sibling to the "fireplace gag" and the "movie screen gag."

 

The basic idea is to have a soft light source of the desired color, and flicker the output with either a dimmer or with shadows in front of the light.

 

There are any number of ways to set this up, and everyone has their favorites. I like a simple approach, which is to put a small light on a beaver board and bounce it into a piece of beadboard or foamcore approximately the same size as the TV screen. Gel the light with Full CTB, and put the light on a dimmer (blackwrap the head to contain spill). Have someone practice dimming the light at different speeds and intensities until you come up with a pattern and levels that look right on camera. Try to make the pace SLOW, with abrupt changes in level (like you get when cutting to different shots on the TV). A too-fast flicker just looks fake. Try looking at the light a real TV gives off in a darkened room, and observe the pattern. You may want to time your pattern to the material the character is supposed to be watching.

 

A couple things about dimmers; you'll notice that you can't dim a light too much before the color temperature warms up too much. So you end up working in a narrow range of dimming. Also, "hand squeezers" or household-type dimmers are usually limited to 1K, so if you need a bigger light you have to step up to a Variac. These are usually 2K or 5k, and pull the full amperage even when dimmed. Variacs can also squeak when "twiddled," so you end up putting them in the next room and covering them with a furny pad for sound.

 

Magic Gadgets makes a great little flicker box that's programmable, and has some good TV effects built in. Or, with practice you can have someone wiggle their fingers in front of the light source to break up the levels and shape of the light a little. I gaffed a whole feature with no flicker box and did every firelight and TV scene this way, and it looked fine.

 

There are variations on the concept that add more lights, sometimes of different colors, dimming at different rates. Sometime people build complete softboxes instead of bounces. I've tried almost every technique and keep coming back to the simplest -- a single light on a dimmer of some sort.

 

The last time I did a TV gag was a daytime interior, so I used a 2K BJ with double CTB, on a 2K Variac. Worked great. Even though a TV screen is usually daylight-balanced and should give off "white" light in a daytime scene, I still felt the TV needed a bluish light to help "sell" the illusion. I did a scene once where a character was supposed to be watching a porno, and someone suggested giving the TV glow a pinkish hue. We tried it and it just didn't look right. We went back to blue because it just worked better.

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I took the gag a bit differently when I did it.

basically took 2 clear CD case fronts and covered one in CTB (use O if you're primarily balancing to B) and the other in I used either a miinus red or a party green, i can't remember & pop a small light back there, 100w pepper maybe 250w. anyway have someone *shake it up* by passing the cases w/ the gels infront of the light (the light should be directed to where you want the desired effect, obviously) whatcha think, it makes for a bit dynamic.

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I just watched Godsend last night (at least part of it, before, well, blech... probably the worst movie I've seen since Butterfly Effect ) :(

 

There's a scene where Greg Kinnear is watching home videos, and they used "white" light with no flicker. It looked fine and believable with the pace of the editing.

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The last time I created a television flicker was daytime interior as well. We used a tungsten balanced Kino box with a different color gel wrapped around each of the four bulbs. (each bulb controlled by its own switch) It looked nice for the mood we wanted and wasnt too harsh on the daylit interior. We alternated the flicker slow enough so that it was believable but the colors did create a stylized feel (which went with the feel of the film).

 

You may want to try a similar set up in a Kino box with blue gels of different intensities on each light and definately some diffusion in front of it (even if you want it as the key). Since it will be a more prominent light in the scene you will want to get the pattern timing down (as Nash said) to keep it believable.

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  • 7 years later...

Hi Michael,

I like the TV gag approach but I was curious what purpose does the beaver board serve? Are you literally just putting the light on it? If you could let me know that would be great. Thanks

 

 

It's usually called a "TV gag," sibling to the "fireplace gag" and the "movie screen gag."

 

The basic idea is to have a soft light source of the desired color, and flicker the output with either a dimmer or with shadows in front of the light.

 

There are any number of ways to set this up, and everyone has their favorites. I like a simple approach, which is to put a small light on a beaver board and bounce it into a piece of beadboard or foamcore approximately the same size as the TV screen. Gel the light with Full CTB, and put the light on a dimmer (blackwrap the head to contain spill). Have someone practice dimming the light at different speeds and intensities until you come up with a pattern and levels that look right on camera. Try to make the pace SLOW, with abrupt changes in level (like you get when cutting to different shots on the TV). A too-fast flicker just looks fake. Try looking at the light a real TV gives off in a darkened room, and observe the pattern. You may want to time your pattern to the material the character is supposed to be watching.

 

A couple things about dimmers; you'll notice that you can't dim a light too much before the color temperature warms up too much. So you end up working in a narrow range of dimming. Also, "hand squeezers" or household-type dimmers are usually limited to 1K, so if you need a bigger light you have to step up to a Variac. These are usually 2K or 5k, and pull the full amperage even when dimmed. Variacs can also squeak when "twiddled," so you end up putting them in the next room and covering them with a furny pad for sound.

 

Magic Gadgets makes a great little flicker box that's programmable, and has some good TV effects built in. Or, with practice you can have someone wiggle their fingers in front of the light source to break up the levels and shape of the light a little. I gaffed a whole feature with no flicker box and did every firelight and TV scene this way, and it looked fine.

 

There are variations on the concept that add more lights, sometimes of different colors, dimming at different rates. Sometime people build complete softboxes instead of bounces. I've tried almost every technique and keep coming back to the simplest -- a single light on a dimmer of some sort.

 

The last time I did a TV gag was a daytime interior, so I used a 2K BJ with double CTB, on a 2K Variac. Worked great. Even though a TV screen is usually daylight-balanced and should give off "white" light in a daytime scene, I still felt the TV needed a bluish light to help "sell" the illusion. I did a scene once where a character was supposed to be watching a porno, and someone suggested giving the TV glow a pinkish hue. We tried it and it just didn't look right. We went back to blue because it just worked better.

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