sing, dancing and puppets

[chris kempinski]

This is going to be my first Red shoot. I'm not as nervous as I probably should be but it's just another camera right? Plus I am surrounded by very skilled people lighting, grip and camera.

 

This time it's a story told in dance of a moth that falls in love with a butterfly. Very well choreographed and an amazing creative team involved so far. We have rigged most of the lights and are building a scaffolding tower so the puppeteers can wield their magic from a catwalk above. The entire show is taking place at night in a forest (on a sound stage of course) and is going to be pretty neat to watch.

 

The puppets are being woven with an LED fabric that comes to life with animatronics to control wing flapping and head movement. We go for camera tests on the 6th and I am very concerned about the rolling shutter and these moving glowing actors with dimmable LED's.

 

When I get some stills I will post them.

 

I plan on lighting with a grad of rosco cal cyan. We did some camera tests earlier and decided to use doubled up cal 90 on the background trees, single cal 90 backlight leko's with gobo patterns for light shaft effects (we have some atmosphere) a cal 30 for the key and a cal 15 for a very subtle over the camera 12X12 bounce for an eyelight/front fill

 

I have been given all the toys this time. Dolly, Jib arm, crane with remote head, steady-cam everything but a techno-crane. If I can't do this one right perhaps I'll take up cooking.

[Steve McBride]

Definitely sounds like it's going to be interesting and fun. Can't wait to see some stills.

[Kevin Zanit]

Should be interesting. My two friends shot and gaffed a season of "Crank Yankers" which had puppets of the furry variety. They were surprised at how well the puppets took hard light, like from a 5k skypan or 10k. I guess when you think about, it makes sense because the material the puppets are made out of sort of naturally diffused the light.