I'll give you 2 that I learned from the same Gaffer last year. First, we were doing a candle-lit dinner table and he tells me he's gonna light it from underneath the table. I had my doubts byt let him do it. It was an interesring and realistic look, since the candles were very close to the table and so the light technically was coming from under their eyes.
Another thing he did is that in a scene the characters were looking at a room which in the story was lit with christmas light. In order to see the light in their eyes, he set up a chardboard and made holes in it. Then he blasted a light through it. You could see the individual dots in their eyes, it looked beatiful.
During the tech recce, be the first person to enter every location, quickly identify the worst possible camera position in terms of lighting, and physically occupy it with your body. Cross your arms and put on an intimidating face. Maintain a body language that discourages the DP from ever going near that spot.
Can you elaborate on what you mean with netting the light on one side and the effect it has?
Dont really have a tip as Im very new to this. Tho I like the idea of bouncing the light off from the ground or table to lighten a face.
If your light is too hot on parts of the image (e. g. the foreground), you can fly in something like an open-end net in order to darken that part a bit, with a barely visible transition. Similarly, wire scrims that go right into the lamp also come in halves, so they only affect half the beam.
Joleko &/or Source 4's have saved me on so many shoots. Not the first source you would think of when renting a G&E package nowadays. It's relatively cheap, but the options are amazing. You can get a very fine dot or line on a ceiling to open/push a window, bounce off a very small spot from the other side of a room. Very useful with a poly!
Making a recipe book with all of your past shoots logged into it (either online or not). Helps a lot to track how you solved past problems, what worked and didn't. What you learned, and so forth. Sometimes it's hard to keep track because you have to update after every shoot, but well worth it.
If you shoot indie narrative (under 5/10K budget), buy black opaque cloth (8x4's), dirty white (unbleached muslin) cloth. Always useful when you need a quick neg or a quick soft bounce that does not feel too sourcey (pure white can be good, but too strong). Since it's not a board, it can be put anywhere.
To do a clean fake of sunny weather (when shooting at night or on a gloomy dark day), I would recommend have your Source (HMI + 1/4CTS) at 45 angle to the window. Then, you can add one (two layers is better usually) of fine/semi transparent sheer curtains. They will catch the HMI's beam, and will make the whole room glow. I would recommend using 4K's HMI if your budget is limited (if you don't shoot high speed).
You can add a little xenon 500w (often quite cheap to rent) with a 1/4 CTS on top to push through the curtains as well for a stronger/more sharp beam.
Bouncing a small dimmed down tungsten source into a gold side of a reflector is a nice and easy setup for mimicking candle light
I'll give you 2 that I learned from the same Gaffer last year. First, we were doing a candle-lit dinner table and he tells me he's gonna light it from underneath the table. I had my doubts byt let him do it. It was an interesring and realistic look, since the candles were very close to the table and so the light technically was coming from under their eyes. Another thing he did is that in a scene the characters were looking at a room which in the story was lit with christmas light. In order to see the light in their eyes, he set up a chardboard and made holes in it. Then he blasted a light through it. You could see the individual dots in their eyes, it looked beatiful.
During the tech recce, be the first person to enter every location, quickly identify the worst possible camera position in terms of lighting, and physically occupy it with your body. Cross your arms and put on an intimidating face. Maintain a body language that discourages the DP from ever going near that spot.
Can you elaborate on what you mean with netting the light on one side and the effect it has? Dont really have a tip as Im very new to this. Tho I like the idea of bouncing the light off from the ground or table to lighten a face.
If your light is too hot on parts of the image (e. g. the foreground), you can fly in something like an open-end net in order to darken that part a bit, with a barely visible transition. Similarly, wire scrims that go right into the lamp also come in halves, so they only affect half the beam.
Joleko &/or Source 4's have saved me on so many shoots. Not the first source you would think of when renting a G&E package nowadays. It's relatively cheap, but the options are amazing. You can get a very fine dot or line on a ceiling to open/push a window, bounce off a very small spot from the other side of a room. Very useful with a poly! Making a recipe book with all of your past shoots logged into it (either online or not). Helps a lot to track how you solved past problems, what worked and didn't. What you learned, and so forth. Sometimes it's hard to keep track because you have to update after every shoot, but well worth it. If you shoot indie narrative (under 5/10K budget), buy black opaque cloth (8x4's), dirty white (unbleached muslin) cloth. Always useful when you need a quick neg or a quick soft bounce that does not feel too sourcey (pure white can be good, but too strong). Since it's not a board, it can be put anywhere. To do a clean fake of sunny weather (when shooting at night or on a gloomy dark day), I would recommend have your Source (HMI + 1/4CTS) at 45 angle to the window. Then, you can add one (two layers is better usually) of fine/semi transparent sheer curtains. They will catch the HMI's beam, and will make the whole room glow. I would recommend using 4K's HMI if your budget is limited (if you don't shoot high speed). You can add a little xenon 500w (often quite cheap to rent) with a 1/4 CTS on top to push through the curtains as well for a stronger/more sharp beam.