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Guest Stephen Murphy

Lovely work as always David. What were you using as a key in the close up of Halle Berry, 11th down from the top? It's incredibly soft but still has a nice shape.

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Often on our stages, I used a Barger Lite, which has a big Chimera bag on it, and then I draped a 6'x6' or 8'x8' grid cloth on a c-stand/pipe T-bone rig in front if I had the room (which I barely did in this case.) With the sensitivity of the Alexa, though, I often only had one of the six 650w bulbs on in the Barger -- so essentially a giant Chimera on a Tweenie!

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Looks great David! I'm especially digging the wide shot with the silhouette in front of the huge window. Was that a Translite or green screen? Any particular challenges with lighting that shot?

 

The medium shot through the cherry blossoms that cuts with the wide reminds me of a shot from the Searchers.

 

Glad to hear that you also like the Barger Lite. A few gaffers I work with think it's overkill and try to talk me out of using it but I still think a large tungsten soft source looks better for beauty than Kino Flos.

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That was a daytime translite which I lit with soft blue light for a dusk look. There were coops above the windows on the outside and overhead on the inside, all gelled blue. I think for regular day scenes, the translite was backlit with 5K sky pans, but in this shot, I turned them off and just front-lit the backing with soft blue light.

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Guest Stephen Murphy

Often on our stages, I used a Barger Lite, which has a big Chimera bag on it, and then I draped a 6'x6' or 8'x8' grid cloth on a c-stand/pipe T-bone rig in front if I had the room (which I barely did in this case.) With the sensitivity of the Alexa, though, I often only had one of the six 650w bulbs on in the Barger -- so essentially a giant Chimera on a Tweenie!

Looks lovely!

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I don't know why but this really reminds me of Space 1999. Maybe it's the set design.

Maybe Halle Berry reminds me of Helena for some reason!

 

web-extant5.jpg

 

Good luck with this David.

I have my fingers crossed that you will get a series 2.

Looks like it's getting a very positive response out there!

 

Freya

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I managed to get some footage from the pilot, not the whole thing, but I put a few scenes together from what I could gather:

 

Sort of a temporary thing until I tackle a longer reel. But it seemed like a good idea to get something recent onto my website.

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I did a binge watch of the series the other day.

 

A domesticated take on Solaris, 2001 and AI.

 

Halle Berry is great. There's not a single trace of how ridiculous the whole thing is that ever crosses her face at all. From kitchen to space and back again and she projects someone completely convinced of that world. So I'm convinced. But man, what a hurdle to overcome.

 

The spooky side of the series throws me somewhat. It's a bit too tempered. Not enough irrationality. It's a really difficult genre - the supernatural and science fiction. They operate against each other. A potential trap, which I think Extant falls into (as much as other similar works do) is not respecting or understanding the difference. Each should operate to undermine the other rather than struggle to find agreement with each other.

 

Apart from a greater scope for drama, it allows each to be elaborated in ways that don't have to take into account the concerns of the other. They can interfere with each other - deconstruct each other.

 

That was the great thing about the X Files. It understood the intrinsic difference between the genres, and was able to smash the two together, in different ways, resulting in all sorts of interesting outcomes.

 

Of course this is purely opinion. But that goes without saying. For what else would it be.

 

C

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Often on our stages, I used a Barger Lite, which has a big Chimera bag on it, and then I draped a 6'x6' or 8'x8' grid cloth on a c-stand/pipe T-bone rig in front if I had the room (which I barely did in this case.) With the sensitivity of the Alexa, though, I often only had one of the six 650w bulbs on in the Barger -- so essentially a giant Chimera on a Tweenie!

 

How did you get that soft glow on her face for the first shot on your site, David?

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I generally used a 1/8 Hollywood Black Magic for close-ups and a 1/8 Black Frost for wide shots on the shot.

 

Every Hollywood Black Magic has a built-in 1/8 Black Frost base plus whatever strength of HD Classic Soft you pick, in this case a 1/8 HD Classic Soft. So by going to a 1/8 Black Frost for the wider shots, I was basically going one step lighter in diffusion than the 1/8 Hollywood Black Magic. It's all pretty light but the Alexa image doesn't need a lot of diffusion.

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I generally used a 1/8 Hollywood Black Magic for close-ups and a 1/8 Black Frost for wide shots on the shot.

 

Every Hollywood Black Magic has a built-in 1/8 Black Frost base plus whatever strength of HD Classic Soft you pick, in this case a 1/8 HD Classic Soft. So by going to a 1/8 Black Frost for the wider shots, I was basically going one step lighter in diffusion than the 1/8 Hollywood Black Magic. It's all pretty light but the Alexa image doesn't need a lot of diffusion.

 

Yup...I was wondering how much of that softness was just native to the Alexa. Lovely work, David!

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