Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Simulating Campfire Lighting

Joe Taylor

Joe Taylor

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
1,146
Reaction score
0
Points
36
Location
Las Vegas, Nevada
Website
www.joetaylorcinema.com
Will be shooting a campfire scene that takes place in a shallow cove. Will have a small fire that serves as the key lighting source but will need to augment the campfire with LED lights. If anybody has any experience with a similar lighting arrangement, can you advise how you lit your scene and especially what gel filters you used?
 
Get a hold of one of ARRI's Skypanels. With version 3.0 firmware loaded, you can simulate and manipulate effects such as a candle or fire.
 
Or for far less, put orange or red gels on the LEDS and flick them on and off.
 
You could consider one of these:
 
Lite gear has the effect built into some of its power supply dimmers as well. But its a fun learning experience to try and come up with old school (analog) ways to achieve the effect. Ive seen some clever ways over the years before all these digital machines that can work quite well. Think multiple layers and not just one device. A base exposure layer that can rise and fall on a dimmer within a small range to keep a base level exposure like 2.5-3 stops under, and then 2-3 different flicker sources that can come and go to simulate flames. Good times.
 
A "Covered wagon" is a good gag for this. A 2x4 with 3 or 4 edison sockets screwed to it, then a piece of chicken wire stapled or screwed to the board to make the cover. Diffusion of choice applied to the chicken wire. Then a magic gadgets flicker box to dial in the flicker effect. Screw a baby plate to the back so you can mount it to whatever. Having done something like 30 hrs of TV shows where sunlight and fire are the only light sources, this has been my favorite way to do it.

You can do the same thing with LEDs and something like this -

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Flame-flic...351044?hash=item1c80e19284:g:hnYAAOSwiYFXFBpy

I haven't tried that particular model. You can get banding issues with some of those on LEDs, which is why I prefer to use tungsten. The decay is more natural on tungsten as well.

Nick
 
Brian F Kobylarz said:
Get a hold of one of ARRI's Skypanels. With version 3.0 firmware loaded, you can simulate and manipulate effects such as a candle or fire.
Click to expand...

This is clearly the easiest, more accurate, and most repeatable answer.

We have the SkyPanels with 3.0 firmware and you'd be surprised at the level of control you have when creating fire effects.
 
Chris McKechnie said:
Or for a poor-mans fire simulator, just put an in-line dimmer on any tungsten source, and slide it up and down a little bit. Easy.
Click to expand...

Even poorer... if its quite close to the actors (up to 3m) and you don't need a ton of light, use a real fire shot that is played back on a LCD TV screen. I've been watching the final shot of Paranoid Park and the flame effects on the wall and objects makes a nice movements like in real life. The saturation is not quite there though... ;-)
 
You can also put a tungsten quartz halogen globe inside the actual fire since the glass and base are designed for temperatures higher than flames, then dim it way down for warmth, maybe dim it up & down slightly. This trick though is only necessary for wide shots where you can't add anything from off-screen to supplement the flames, otherwise most other techniques are better since you can soften the light.

In some ways, the best flicker effect I can get is still to randomly dance my fingers and hands in front of an orange-gelled lamp. You just have to have a feeling for the rate and randomness of the flicker but you can look at the subject while you do it and adjust the effect, it's sort of a blend of using your wiggling fingers to create a subtle flicker and then occasionally swiping your whole hand in front of the light for a bigger flicker. What's good about doing this is that by shifting your hand or a small flag in front of the light, the source on the face seems to shift from side to side like real flames would.

The only problem with this technique is having the actor laugh at your jazz hands moves.
 
All excellent suggestions, Sky Panels are outside my budget. We will be shooting with ikan LED's. I really hope to find the best gels for the lights. We will have a small fire going throughout the shoot.
 
If you're mixing your gelled LED's (which I hope aren't daylight) wit real fire, then the color you gel them is less critical because it all gets mixed together. I find that Full CTS is fine for fire most of the time, you can always adjust the hue and warmth further in post color-correction. Sometimes I go with Full + Half CTS when my lights are the only firelight effect because I think that real flames are that orange, but again, even then it's normally not that critical to match, you can use Full CTS and tweak it later.

It gets trickier when you are mixing with other colors like blue moonlight because you don't want to get too extreme in the difference in color temperatures. In those situations, I try to make the moonlight very pale in blue, like only 1/4 CTB.
 
Bought some full Straw David. The LEDS are bi-color. I believe the actual camp fire with produce the desired flicker. We are testing tomorrow at our cave location.
 
Hey Taylor. There is a lot of dialogue in this scene. 5+ pages
 
Joe Taylor said:
Bought some full Straw David. The LEDS are bi-color. I believe the actual camp fire with produce the desired flicker. We are testing tomorrow at our cave location.
Click to expand...

Shine your light through the flames and smoke and that will flicker it. Conrad Hall lit a fire scene in "Day of the Locust" by shining lights through rising smoke from the campfire, which created a shimmering effect.
 
Have been watching westerns with camp fire scenes, the stand outs are 3:10 to Yuma and especially "The Homesman" with the campfire situated inside a cave/cove that's about the same size as my "set." Will be doing tests tomorrow night. Smoke is a big issue since it really messes with my actors, so I bought a case of synthetic "smokeless" logs. Hopefully they'll be convincing onscreen. Will try bouncing a gelled LED off the cave ceiling for fill and lighting through the fire per David's suggestion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top