Robert Richardson lighting style: how to?

[David Battistella]

I routinely blow stuff out on digital. Forgive the shitty DVD screen grabs, but you get the idea.

Smoke plays a factor here.

What is the approach with smoke in terms of maintaining continuity?

David

 

[Nick Gardner]

I have used smoke a lot. When on a set or an interior, We fog the area till there is a good base, then maintain between takes. There are occasional situations where continuity is tough, like when you are doing coverage, and one person is screaming back lit and the other person is not. You just have to take those as they come, add smoke, tweek lighting. I know how to say "more smoke" in a bunch of different languages ;-) I routinely use smoke in any period piece. Partially because it looks great, and adds a 3dimensional quality to the light, and partially because there was a lot of smoke when everything was lit by fire and the sun. There is always something burning in third world countries. cooking fires, burning garbage, lamps, I imagine before electricity it was pretty hazy.

Nick

 

[David Battistella]

Yep.

No getting around smoke conitnutiry. It's just important to keep an extra attentive eye on those smokey scenes.

David

 

[Pablo Villegas S.]

I routinely blow stuff out on digital. Forgive the shitty DVD screen grabs, but you get the idea.

What light is that? the back light? the beam is quite narrow, is it a Xenon?

Thanks.

 

[Nick Gardner]

6k arri fresnel. Mounted on a turtle base c stand base, shot more or less straight up into a 4x4 mirror. You get the benifit of having the light farther away, and it's easier to manipulate a mirror way high up than a 6k. Plus, the sets were built kind of close to the walls, so it would have been hard to get the light far enough back.

Nick

 

[Pablo Villegas S.]

Thank you very much for the answer.

 

[Nick Gardner]

No problem. It took me a long time to figure out how to get that zenon looking punch through windows. I used to use pars, but they don't throw hard enough shadows to get the window pattern unless they are waaay far away, and that is often impractical. Love fresnels ;-). Plus they are usually cheap because everyone wants pars.

Nick

 

[Tim Hole]

Nice thread, getting to sticky status.

I am prone to parcan's and ACL's and have built blinders for a similar look, although not on digital (I haven't avoided it, just not the opportunity). Although the control of the light via cutting with flags etc affects the fall off and the directional nature of the lights used has an influence too, how different is the fall off on digital to film. That is the origin of the fear is it not...that film has a far more pleasing fall off into the blown out aspects. With the pretty close to hard lines on the blown out aspects of the shots I would suppose its makes little difference between film and digital. But would HDRx allow a more subtle blend I wonder. Maybe with the help of a power window.

 

[Pablo Villegas S.]

No problem. It took me a long time to figure out how to get that zenon looking punch through windows. I used to use pars, but they don't throw hard enough shadows to get the window pattern unless they are waaay far away, and that is often impractical. Love fresnels ;-). Plus they are usually cheap because everyone wants pars.

Nick

Yeah, I use Pars, but It's hard to get that well defined beam, and Xenons are expensive to rent here.

Thanks againg for the tip.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Sometimes I'll gang up three or so Source-4 Lekos with narrow lenses coming through one window - through smoke, it looks like a single beam being broken up by a tree branch or other obstruction. Of course, on the floor you might see multiple shadows, etc.

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

I find molebeams (preferably the tungsten ones) to far more interesting in their character (feels way more like a sun beaming in) the surface where it hits also as a "broken" touch, which resembles IMO the sun more as well and you will not have multiple shadows as it's one source

 

[David Battistella]

Speaking of hard lighting on digital (particularly with the EPIC. Everyone should have a look at these tests being done in Norway by our friend Gunliek.

This thread is full of interesting very recent imagery.

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?59179-1st-24-hours-with-an-Epic



David

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I find molebeams (preferably the tungsten ones) to far more interesting in their character (feels way more like a sun beaming in) the surface where it hits also as a "broken" touch, which resembles IMO the sun more as well and you will not have multiple shadows as it's one source

But molebeams don't produce a particularly sharp nor clean shadow pattern compared to a fresnel. When I first heard of Molebeams, my hope was that they were basically like a tungsten Xenon, but that didn't turn out to be the case. All of these lights have their strengths and weaknesses for creating sunlight effects. If you want a sharp pattern, a 20K fresnel with the lens removed is not a bad effect but it's pretty bulky and power inefficient. If you want punch, a 10K PAR isn't bad but the beam spreads. If you want parallel rays, then Xenons and Lekos are good but then you get the funny patterns.

 

[paulherrin]

That is the origin of the fear is it not...that film has a far more pleasing fall off into the blown out aspects. With the pretty close to hard lines on the blown out aspects of the shots I would suppose its makes little difference between film and digital. But would HDRx allow a more subtle blend I wonder. Maybe with the help of a power window.

that has more to do with the sensor and color science used... the epic seems to be doing very well with natural rolloffs... you can also adjust curves in the final image, i'm not sure hdr would do too much extra except give you that information to blend in and manipulate.