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Optimal size for overhead softbox for boxing ring scene


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Halogen and tungsten are the same thing. Tungsten fillament. Halogen is simply a more efficient version of the standard eddison bulb you get at walmart. All film lights are Tungsten Halogen and emit a 3200k color.

Color quality will match any other tungsten light.

Good luck, my friend.

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13 hours ago, Stephen Sanchez said:

Halogen and tungsten are the same thing. Tungsten fillament. Halogen is simply a more efficient version of the standard eddison bulb you get at walmart. All film lights are Tungsten Halogen and emit a 3200k color.

Color quality will match any other tungsten light.

Good luck, my friend.

Surely halogen is nominally 3400 and the older non-halogens are still 3200?

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8 minutes ago, Stephen Sanchez said:

I hundred or so Kelvin off from 3200 is practically unnoticeable.

Nothing in life is ever perfectly one color temperature. The viewer will never notice.

100K around 3200K is about 10 mireds, which is half the mired shift of a one-eighth CT straw filter. You might barely be able to see it side by side if you looked very carefully, but it's probably less than the colour error created by bouncing light off a white-painted wall, which won't be a calibrated white.

It's an even smaller difference - around 3 mireds - at CTs around 5600K.

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Thanks for all your great advice guys, the shoot went very well aside from delays meaning I only had a 3 hour window lol ? I'll post in about 1 week here. I got them to install a dimmer on those downlight so i had them on a tiny amount and along with the practicals I think it all works well. 

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Thanks Satsuki! That was actually super rushed... quickly brought all my small leds around to focus red gels in the area but id lit around the whole factory as best as possible so i could get spot setups fast. I only had 2 hours for the above, aside from the typewriter/mechanical room shots which I did the day after. 

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9 minutes ago, David Pritchard said:

Thanks Satsuki! That was actually super rushed... quickly brought all my small leds around to focus red gels in the area but id lit around the whole factory as best as possible so i could get spot setups fast. I only had 2 hours for the above, aside from the typewriter/mechanical room shots which I did the day after. 

Well, it doesn’t look it. I think sometimes we do our best work when we don’t have time to think too much and work with what’s at hand. Plan really well ahead of time, then just let ‘er rip on the day. Congrats on the film!

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7 hours ago, David Pritchard said:

Thanks for your help guys. Think I got some ok shots, was actually rushed into 2 hours  ?


Thanks for sharing David, I think you did pretty well for only having 2hrs to shoot! I would have asked for at least two full days plus a pre-light day for something of that scale.

Not quite sure what’s going on story-wise. I think it would have worked better to start with opera man and have him lead us to the ring. But once you’re there, it would have been nice to have an antagonist (wicker king?) that’s betting against him or something. Otherwise, not much is really happening. Just my opinion, and really more on the director and writer than you as the DP.  

I do think the opera man sequence is over-lit. I like the extreme wide with the overhead lamp and hard light over the wheel sculpture, but I would have removed a few lights for the closer shots and reduced the amount of haze. Composition-wise, I don’t love the lamp right above of his head. Maybe you could have used a hard spotty tungsten source above the table motivated by the overhead lamp and let the low bounce light the man’s face. I dunno, but those shots need more contrast and I think the broad overhead source above the table in the tighter shots is killing the mood. Getting closer with a wide fast lens could have helped to make the space feel bigger and stranger too. I know designers and art directors love to see everything they built, but it really defeats the purpose if you don’t set the mood.

If I would change one thing about the boxing ring set up, it would be to have the ring lights hotter, even overexposed a few stops. You could play it as hot sunlight streaming in from holes in the roof overhead. Then let everything outside the ring play darker with the bounce from the ring working as a sidelight or ambience on them. This would also allow you to crush the blacks more in the grade. 

Anyway, I hope you don’t mind my analysis, I thought you did really well considering the lack of time and resources you had at hand. You’ve got some nice shots for your reel at least. Congrats on getting the project done, and best of luck on the next one! 

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Thanks so much for the feedback!! Actually I had a good few hours to light, it's just they didn't finish the ring until half my shooting time was gone so meant way less time to shoot the main sequence with all those people so didnt get quite a few closeups in the action I wanted but oh well...Also those hanging lights behind the ring were meant to be tungsten/incandescent but they bought none dimmable leds by accident. Far too bright so had to move them quite far back. 

Totally agree the "story" blows hard. It really fell apart when I had no time and client didnt wanna hire the main people for another day.  So i'm treating it as more an example of lighting lol. Nice analysis of the guy at the desk. Again it was a rush and I decided to just use practical's already there such as an already hanging overhead tungsten par... I just attached some diffusion to soften it a little and probably hazed a bit much ? Was also a lot of daylight leaking in as it was in the corner of a large factory actually.

As you say onto the next one, nice experience!

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1 minute ago, David Pritchard said:

Thanks so much for the feedback!! Actually I had a good few hours to light, it's just they didn't finish the ring until half my shooting time was gone...

Yes indeed, you’ll know to ask for a pre-light day now!

I feel your pain with the scheduling thing. I once shot a similar style of short film out in Death Valley, which is a National Park. The director ended up not getting a permit because said permit would not have allowed us to shoot outside of the parking lot. I think there may have been some misunderstanding there, but I don’t really know. We shot half of a fight sequence in the desert salt flats, then got shut down by the park rangers. Had to finish the other half on a horse trail in Los Angeles Griffith Park (also without a permit). ?

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