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Clinton closer ad on TLS Panchro 75mm

E

Erich Roland

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We shot the Hillary Clinton 2 minute closer ad on Amira with Cooke 75mm TLS rehoused S2.

Digital post zoom.
 

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thanks Nick, it was an honor to be involved in this last (possibly historic) HRC shoot this past Sunday.

I brought 3 master primes in case we wanted maximum BG softness for a bad background. The director was happiest with about 2.5 stop worth of blur (on 75mm MP) which was fine with me since I wanted to use the Panchro (2.3). The only Cooke I brought was the 75mm S2, so that was the choice. It was the right lens to give me a softer and more rounded less contrasty image.
 
Looks great...can you say what the basic lighting setup was?
 
Scot, For Hillary key we created a large soft ring light with Kino's. Then a few lite mats for a back light. I'll post a few pics when I can dig them out.

erich
 
Erich Roland said:
Scot, For Hillary key we created a large soft ring light with Kino's. Then a few lite mats for a back light. I'll post a few pics when I can dig them out.

erich
Click to expand...

Would be great to see those shots...
 
You mean the Key vs fill? yes more like 1:1

It was one big soft ring light key. #nofill
 

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Hi Erich,

Looks great.

4 x KinoFlo divas mounted vertically behind the silk behind the camera? Awesome.

Craig Lees
UK
 
ratio

ratio

Karim D. Ghantous said:
Sorry, I meant subject:background. I should have specified.
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Karim, that's a complicated question, and I'll try and explain what I was up against.

Going into this shoot the producer/director wanted a "night" look as this was to be aired the eve before the election. So in my mind that suggested tungsten look with practicals and some amount of light fall off. We set up with a stand-in and asked for wardrobe choice, which we were told was a darkish jacket and off white blouse. we made choices based on that and everybody was happy with the look before talent. When the Secretary showed up she had decided to go all white, or slightly off white. This threw a wrench into our set up as I had zero ability to slow down the light on her wardrobe (which was screaming bright) vs the background.

Understand that they are late to begin with and have very limited time as she was to hit 4-5 stops that day, and nobody would take kindly to "please give me 10 minutes to try and solve a new problem" as we've had plenty of time already. No not possible, nobody understands this stuff. While she and the director chatted a bit we scrambled and turned off one bulb of each lamp that makes up the soft ring, as I needed to slow down that wardrobe primarily and figured they would need to bring up her face a bit in post to compensate. Plus she was leaning forward more then our stand-in was so she was bright! The Arri camera is forgiving on the top side but I still needed to get that white outfit down to about 87-90 or else. Keeping the work we did on the background was the whole purpose of bringing the for-ground down, otherwise I could just stop down to accomidate, but that would have made the background too dark, and I wanted to be wide open on the lens.

At that point it was go-go-go..... no more time for fiddling. So to answer your question, it was carefully planned and set up to look great on the monitor with the stand-in, and at the last moment all the planning went out the window and the background ended up sort of close to what we had set up but in the end it was up to the post guys to find the balance. I hear he made a power window to work the wardrobe down a bit more.

Ratio of key to background..... too many values back there to have a real answer.
 
Erich, thank you for the explanation. That was quite helpful! I did wonder why she was wearing white, I have to admit. ;-)

As a footnote, making an interior look as if it's at night is something I occasionally think about. I probably should look up a basic tutorial. It seems simple enough with a bit of consideration beforehand, and it's probably easier on a set than on location.
 
Karim D. Ghantous said:
Erich, thank you for the explanation. That was quite helpful! I did wonder why she was wearing white, I have to admit. ;-)

As a footnote, making an interior look as if it's at night is something I occasionally think about. I probably should look up a basic tutorial. It seems simple enough with a bit of consideration beforehand, and it's probably easier on a set than on location.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is a hotel room, and a too-small-to-do-what-were-doing room at that!
 
Eric,
Glad to know that you shot this. Congratulations for shooting a historic spot. I admire her.

When I saw this ad first, I was wondering why at times her eyes were not very sharp. She was kind of leaning in and out. Your post tells us how even a last minute decision by a high profile talent can throw off all carefully laid out plans. Glad you didn't freak out and still managed to shoot. At what ISO were you shooting? May be if you had controllers to quickly reduce the lighting instead of switching off bulbs, it would have helped. As they say, Hind sight is 20/20 . You did great.

Thanks for sharing. And Congratulations once again!

Cheers,
Sabyasachi
 
Yes, the eyes. The post guy told me he did some tricks around the eyes that I'm not familier with. Usually when your employing digital trickery it can effect sharpness, so maybe that's part of the answer. The other issue were the leans. I had an AC on the focus but I know he missed or was late on a few of those leans on some of the takes. Not sure about this take, I think we completed maybe 5 takes. Its a 2 minute read with no cuts.

I set the camera at 800asa on the set up but at the last minute was we were scrambling I dropped to 640asa to help the brighter wardrobe set up to stay wide open on the lens as wel as turning off one bulb each on the kino's. The 75mm panchro is sharp for vintage but not modern sharp, so that may add to the apparent semi soft. Also in post Im pretty sure they do some added softening and a bit of glow.
 
Erich, Thanks so much for telling us all the super secret BTS behind this ad. Despite your challenges, I think it turned out pretty well. I know you used the Amira, but am wondering who made that choice and why, say as opposed to oh, I don't know...your STORMTROOPER!
 
Scot Yount said:
Erich, Thanks so much for telling us all the super secret BTS behind this ad. Despite your challenges, I think it turned out pretty well. I know you used the Amira, but am wondering who made that choice and why, say as opposed to oh, I don't know...your STORMTROOPER!
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BTW, If Hillary had won the election I would not be sharing this story... just because.

I made the choice of lens. Usually I'll bring super speed lenses of some kind like Master primes. Its quite common that we end up with a back ground that's too close or just not ideal in some way and having the ability to make it soft as possible is a choice I want in the tool bag. In the past when using master primes Ive added a very light softening filter to combat the MP sharpness. The Last time we filmed Hillary I tried the 75 Panchro and was very happy so I brought it along should we choose a stop that could afford the extra light needed. I had the 75mm Master prime up and had the Director look at the shot and help me decide how much stop to use ie how much softness for the back ground. He was happy at almost exactly 2.3-2.5. So that was all I needed to swap to the Panchro which was my first choice, with no added softening needed.
 
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