translight techniques

[Mate Widamon]

Hi everybody,

 

I am prepping for a feature and half of the film is taking place in an apartment. We are building the apt in a studio and I will have two rooms with large windows. The view from the window will be block houses and rooftops. We will use a 65 x 15 feet translight as a background with the view printed on it. In the apt I will have plenty of day, evening, dusk and night scenes and we are planning to go with long takes with lots of dolly moves.

 

I'd like to ask for your opinion on translight techniques as I am quite confused.

 

I have found a demo from Rosco SoftDrop. That is a based on a night time print and it is supposed to be lit from the front in order to achieve day and backlit to get the night look. I heard though that it doesnt work very well. Also we would need to hire a scenic photographer from Rosco to do the picture for the print. Anybody has any experience with that?

 

Our art director suggest that we should have 2 translights. 1 with a daylight photo printed on it and 1 with a night time print of the same view so we can change the backdrops according to our scenes. In that case for the night time scenes I would always have the same windows illuminated in the windows of the blockhouses in our view.

 

However my gaffer suggests that we should only have 1 daylight print on the translight. He says for the daytime scenes we should light it from the front and for the night scenes we just reduce the ambient and the make some warm lights in he windows from behind. In this case we would have the variety for each night scene so we could have different lights to be switched on in the windows of the blockhouse.

 

These are 3 completely different ways, Please share me your experiences. All comments are much appreciated.

[Allan Staley]

I Know this is a bit old but answers may be useful for some one else. Rosco day/night backdrops are as you describe, they are not the only people who do it but their softdrops have a certain look that many favour. As a translight photographer for a day to night backdrop you would ideally capture both day and night image. The night image may well be enhanced if the are not enough windows etc lit up, the key is that you are using specific equipment to produce very large files which then must be matched so as rgistration can be achieved between the day and night shot prior to printing. You can achieve both a dawn and dusk effect by having a combination of both front and rear lighting. windows that are illuminated in the night shot can be blocked out to create some change in the window views. Real strength of the day to nights is that with just a change of lighting you can jump between day and night pretty quickley.

Allan Staley translight photographer

Transligtht Images