Week 9 - Some More Lighting Setups

Hands-On Exercise - Digital Camera

This week we replicated a few different lighting setups, one was a shot from the Blade Runner, another was a Book Light Setup, and another was a China ball soft light setup.

SETUP 1 - BLADE RUNNER - REPLICATING THE REPLICATOR

Replicating the lighting of this shot...

The full scene...

The goal: To Replicate the Crescent moon highlight on her face, the backlight smoke that becomes a diffused light source itself.

From the scene we deducted that the backlight was coming from a lower angle and only a slit of it was lighting the entire scene. The lens they used was probably a 65mm but since we dont have that we went with the 85mm.

How we recreated it

Camera

RED on sticks with 85mm lens, placed at an angle to cheat and get the crescent light effect

on the subject

Set to 5K WS, 12fps (limitation of cam), 2900K, ISO 800, shutter 1/48.

Lighting

Senior 5K light with a 2K lightbulb (plugged in with stove tie-in), 1/4 CTB gel, 2 sandbags, 20ft away

from subject, setup at the edge of the room

Arri 650K on the floor with 1/4 CTO

- In front of it, 4x4 white diffusion, top part covered with full CTB with some clips

TV screen used as light source and set dec.

Large Gold Bounce for Fill Light, placed on the left side of the camera

1 black flag used to flag out the tables and clutter in front of the TV screen

Art Department - Set Dec.

For the back of the chair

- 2 black flags with black wrap to create the same edge

- rigged on 1 baby C-stand and 1 full apple box, both had sandbags on them

Actor was sitting on a full apple box

- they were cheated and placed at an angle

A table

-table was also cheated and placed at an angle

Smoke was created using a vape

Lighting Setup Overhead

RESULTS

My phone camera doesn't do it justice. It can't take proper pictures in low light but this is to have an idea of what it was.

We managed to get the backlight smoke effect as well.

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SETUP 2 - BOOK LIGHT SETUP

Used to turn hard focused lights into soft light sources. Can be done only with powerfull light sources because the light is being bounced twice.

It is achieved by bouncing a hard light onto a reflective surface, then diffusing it through a fabric, which results in a doubled diffusion of light. It makes skintones look really good. It's a very simple setup.

How it was achieved

Camera

RED on sticks with 85mm lens

Lighting

Senior 5K light with a 2K lightbulb (plugged in with stove tie-in) with 2 sandbags pointed towards a 4x4

white bounce that was being held a few inches above the ground. 1 edge of the 4x4 White Diffuser was

placed next to the 4x4 bounce and angled to catched the light bouncing off of the 4x4

bounce. All of this place parallel to the subject on their left side.

A small white bounce was held on the right side of the subject to provide a little bit of fill.

Lighting Setup Overhead

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SETUP 3 - CHINA BALL SETUP

Used as a soft light source. Cheap alternative and small alternative to a big rig setup with diffusion. A good place to find good priced China balls are IKEA. Can very easily be rigged on a pole and used to follow a character walking to light them from above.

How it was achieved

Camera

RED on sticks with 85mm lens

Lighting

1 China Ball with a lightbulb inside, plugged

into a dimmer and setup on a C-stand above

the subject. A sandbag was placed on the C-

stand.

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Comments and Takeaways

Fun times with everyone. It was a little tiring to do all those setups in 1 class but it was fun. I found the booklight setup and china ball setup very useful and will definitely use them in my next shoots. We also got a little sneak peak of the new cameras and it was exciting. It has a VistaVision sensor and can record both proxies and 4K footage simultaneously! Very curious to find out more about it. I'm happy to see it is smaller because it means less weight for handheld shots. All in all a great day and a fun experience.