black city lighting

[Nossair CHKERBOUBY]

hi guys,

 

can someone tell me how this scene was lit, and i want to know how do they get that kind of vignette in the background, is it with flags or something like that?

thank you

[David Mullen ASC]

A soft box as a top light with a teaser skirt would create that soft cut on the walls. Though considering you can see some of the top light reflected in the clock, the teaser in this case would have to be fairly short, so odds are high that the darkening along the top of the wall and the sides of the frame was enhanced in post with a soft vignette.

[Jared Bedrejo]

David, what exactly is a teaser skirt? Couldn't find any info about it online.

[David Mullen ASC]

A teaser is the same thing as a cutter, something that flags the light.

 

A skirt is just black cloth than hangs loosely down, usually around the sides of a soft box in the ceiling. If the flag had to be rigid so it could be angled, then you couldn't use a skirt. For example, if that table was soft lit by a Kino pointed straight down, then it could be teased with a skirt hung around the edges if the barn doors weren't enough (or if it were something like a Kino Image 80 that doesn't come with barn doors), but if that Kino was slightly upstage and angled as a backlight, then you'd have to use something like rigid barn door extenders to further cut the light, if necessary.

 

It's possible that a Kino Image 80 with its egg crate would create enough of a soft cut along the wall, it's hard to tell, depends on how high the light was above the set. Or it could just be a 4' 4-bank Kino above the table and the bar doors are creating the soft cut along the walls. Certainly the reflection in the clock looks like a 4' 4-bank Kino but it could be a large squarer soft box with a short skirt where the clock is just reflecting half the light that it can see beyond the skirt edge nearest the wall.

[Izik Nox]

Sometimes you could get an idea of the lighting setup by looking at any reflections in glass or chrome objects in the scene. Looking at the clock on the wall it might be a soft box. If you have a larger still, it would be easier to tell. You could also use the shadows of objects to guess the approximate height. Most soft boxes I have worked with have a natural falloff like that.