White Cyc, Car shoot.

[Mitch Ayers]

Hey Guys.

have a car spot coming up, first time shooting a car in a white cyc. My gaff has a few times, and I think we can get good results together.


The sike is an egg shell. but I have been toying with the idea of using white perspex on the floor to create the reflection.
My only concern is, the small budget and not much shoot time reg day (8 hrs, no pre-light) . recipe for mediocracy.

Has anybody tried this? any issues of advice? I would love to test this, though its a little hard to get a studio and a heap of white perspex.

thanks guys.

Mitch

 

[Björn Benckert]

Treat a car like a big mirror ball. In other words your "your reflection map" is everything. That is actually what you are shooting, not so much the car. So a perfectly white cyclo does not give much life if ´its not flagged/ blocked.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Treat a car like a big mirror ball. In other words your "your reflection map" is everything. That is actually what you are shooting, not so much the car. So a perfectly white cyclo does not give much life if ´its not flagged/ blocked.

Word. Negative fill is the name of the game!

Not sure about the perspex, sorry Mitch...

 

[Louis Maddalena]

Negative fill is huge just like said above, It really helps with give the car some texture. We also would use a few large white silks as well to get some contrast to the negative fill. Don't forget to also hit the car with some light from the top, you need to accent the shoulder line to give some shape to the car.

 

[Mitch Ayers]

thanks for the information guys, really apprecaite it, keep it coming.

Thinking now of painting the floor a full gloss white in hopes of getting that reflection for the wides. Perspex might be too much of an issue.

Neg fill it is!

 

[Björn Benckert]

thanks for the information guys, really apprecaite it, keep it coming.

Thinking now of painting the floor a full gloss white in hopes of getting that reflection for the wides. Perspex might be too much of an issue.

Neg fill it is!

I would go to the 3D guys build the studio at hand as a simple model and then stick a stock cg car in there and start sticking lights and negative fills into the scene. Goes way faster to experiment like that and then when happy you just go to the studio and hang what ever is needed according to the 3D sketch.

but again high contrast surrounding is what makes it pop. Like black panels in front of lit big white silks etc. and you see everything in the reflection including your self, camera client, client monitor etc. Just as if you shoot a mirror ball...

 

[Marc Wielage]

Be aware that many car spots with white cyc rooms have a ton of VFX and/or color-correction work in order to make the surrounding area look "perfect." It rarely looks that even on the set.

It does help to have as big an area as possible. I heard an interview with John Hodgeman of the "Mac vs. PC" commercials, and he commented that those commercials were shot on a 150' enormous square white seamless studio lit by softlights. It was ridiculous, because he and Justin Long were in about 1/20th of that area, but the producers were intent on the white background being absolutely perfect. That was 15-16 years ago; nowadays, they do a lot of Flame work and so on to nail down the shadows, reflections, and so on.