[Bill Davis]

Todd,

Maybe not crazy but difficult.

I agree with Mark that with a pole that long, the stability will be in question. I think the sucker will act like a long fishing pole with a big fat lead weight on the end and will NEVER settle down and be still.

My bigger concern, however, is ceiling height verses camera shot geomertry. Unless the hallway has a HUGE overhead space available, the camera’s lens angle (particularly the skyward axis) is going to pretty much REQUIRE you to put the camera high and shoot down if you don’t want to see the pole and lighting rig in the shot.

One thing people always forget when thinking about light placement is that if you place a camera lens at eye height, the further away from the camera you go the more space it will “see” in ALL directions. Left right, UP and DOWN. To cut down seeing any lights or rig, you’d need to tilt the camera pretty significantly such that the upper plane of the shot would stay below the ceiling and that’s a pretty radical shot.

I think your “rig” is going to need at least 20 feet of vertical clearance to pull off if you want a “normal” looking shot.

Just my guess, anyway.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

Good approaches both.

Actually, the best possible lighting scenario in this is to show up and be lucky enough to get a day with even, high clouds so that GOD presents you with a huge natural softbox over the course – with nice breaks in the clouds OVER THE MOUNTAINS in the background in order to provide suitable highlights.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could predict THAT in advance!

This whole discussion is a great example of why the ONLY path to consistent results in lighting is experience.

You have to be able to show up. READ the situation you’re given. Then figure out how to maximize what you have and minimize the issues. Perhaps thats re-positioning the talent AND the tee markers in order tho shoot in another direction (something the audience will NEVER notice if done carefully) – or perhaps it’s using the tee from the 7th hole and the green from the 15th hole to composite one shot – since again, the audience will never know the difference.

Maybe you have a hole where there are trees in shadow that you can use as a backdrop for a shot – and those trees will STAY in shadow from 8am to noon. Then while the overall light will change as the sun rises, at least the background will be relatively consistent.

All of this and much, much more are all a part of “reading” the location and making smart choices.

Which in the end, is another example of the whole “experience” thing. It just means we’ve tried something enough to understand why it commonly fails, and have finally started to figure out how to change things to give it the best chance of working.

[Bill Davis]

Adam,

That’s exactly what RF means. Radio frequency energy. In a situation with a lot of RF present – ANY metal cable will act as a giant antenna. Properly balanced cables that are also used properly in a balanced audio system use a phase cancellation trick to knock down this type of audible interference – but if there’s enough of it around, it can be VERY pesky to totally avoid.

Two notorious sources of RF are older style dimmers and older style fluorescent light ballasts. Both of which tend to be very common in brightly lit auto showrooms.

Thankfully, it’s really easy to find out if this is the issue. Go in after hours. Set up your gear. Then pop the breakers and/or switches on all the various lights and if your audio problems disappear, that’s the issue. Then you can try bringing them back on-line one at a time and you might discover that the ceiling cans are OK, but another circuit is not.

At the worst, you’ll have to leave the “house lights” off – and illuminate the showroom and cars with your own gear that DOESN”T generate RF.

That’s where I’d start, anyway.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Allen is also correct that you can go with natural light and use bounce fill as the key.

The only restriction is that in order to use the sun as a bounced key, your talent has to have the sun at his or her back. When conditions are right for this, the sun forms both a background light on the scene, and a rim light for the talent — and you have the right angle for the sun to hit your bounce fill pretty much full on – so that reflecting the backlight (sun) exposes your talent’s face and body equally.

The issue on a golf course – especially a green as in the OP’s shot – is that you’ll often end up with a big slash of light from your bounce that is VISIBLE across the green with a nice shadow inside IT from the talent.

The problem with golf is that you typically need lots of wide shots to follow both the movements of the golfer AND the progress of the ball – so many of the tricks of a regular talking head outdoor setup won’t work. For example, a softbox cage for tight and medium shots work great – but then you have to pull back to watch a swing or a stance adjustment and suddenly all the shadows of the cage are all over the shot.

Golf – both the sport and the task of videotaping it – are hard each very difficult to do well.

[Bill Davis]

As a veteran of more than a few “magic hour” golf course shoots over my career (notice I’m in Scottsdale, AZ?) allow me to chime in here.

Yeah, the light is lovely just after dawn. But out here in the southwest, the lovely light of “magic hour” actually lasts about 20-30 minutes if you’re lucky. And during that entire stretch of time, you’ll constantly be adjusting your iris as the overall light level changes.

The most instructive part of your photo is the band of green in the center of the shot’s vertical dimension. It’s telling you that the sun is so low that it’s lighting the mountain but NOT lighting the foreground green – that’s taking light only from the reflected light of the mountain background and the water.

That band of far off trees is going to EXPLODE with light soon. So anything shot wide will NOT match after the sun infects the background.

Put a talent on that green and even before the background goes to hell, the rising sun will likely hit the talent in the face and even a tight CU exposure will go bad.

You can shoot this kind of stuff, but you have to be very careful about the direction the tee (and therefore talent) faces, the trees and shrubbery near and far, and the backgrounds.

The ONLY way to really extend the time in a scene like this is to fly diffusion between the sun and the talent, bring in the HMI’s to kick the subject up to match the background and keep a LOT of water on hand so everyone doesn’t pass out from sunstroke.

It’s that or accept that over a two to three morning shoot, you’re likely to get coverage for about 5 minutes of on-screen content if you have both a first and second unit running. (one on the tee to cover the tee shots, and the other on the fairway or green, to cover where those shots land.

Like I said, here in the southwest relatively close to the equator, magic hour is typically measured in minutes.

If you’re going ahead with this, drop me a line via email. I’d be happy to talk you through some of my hard won experience of shooting EFP setups on golf courses.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

I’m scared by the words “car dealership showroom.” As the past owner of an ad agency that had the local Cadillac dealer as a long time client – there’s NOTHING I hate more than car dealership showrooms.

They’re typically lit in such a way as to make all the nice shiny cars sparkle – yet it’s the nature of most dealerships to be as CHEAP as possible on construction and stuff like light fixtures and wiring.

In addition, the one’s I’ve worked most in love stuff like dimmers on their lighting circuits so they can make the place look ever so ELEGANT by cutting the lights down

My initial suspicion is that you’re shooting in a veritable HIVE of RF.

If so it’s time to either hire an audio guy or spend some time learning how to do audio properly yourself.

As you’re learning, Audio is the most difficult part of video. And it can’t be faked.

Spend the money to do it right, or understand that if you expect your audio gear to simply “plug and play flawlessly” without any real understanding — your operation is going to fall seriously short of professional at this point in your business life.

Simple as that.

Your call.

[Bill Davis]

I’ve done about 25 projects on my 5d Mk ii and I’ve NEVER had a plug into the mic imput on the beast.

The on-board mic is enough to record a scratch track that works fine with Plural Eyes Software that will sync the sumptuous 5d video with audio off virtually any outboard recording you want to use.

For me that’s a Zoom H4n for basic projects and an actual sound guy feeding a dedicated audio computer through an outboard hardware interface for important work.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

Ty,

I wasn’t the OP, but I’m still writing down Eric’s name.

I guess I’m at the point in my career where if a set of cans start going intermittant – I’ll pass them down to Mikey and Pull out the checkbook.

Like all other generations before his, current music seems designed less for memorability and more for the purpose of making the older generation suffer. Even the melodic stuff out there now like Owl City can drive you nuts when it’s on in the house 24/7.

Take care, friend.

[Bill Davis]

I’ve got to also chime in and note that in the modern equipment era, soldering isn’t what it used to be.

When I learned the craft, a typical circuit board had wired the size of small worms and even a guy like me with fingers the size of cigars and all the dexterity of an arthritic cloven hoof horse could solder.

Today, you’re likely to strip the dang wires and find a little string of mono-filimaent lovingly wrapped by a foil connector the size and relative stability of a gnats pubic hair.

The last two times I’ve pulled out my soldering iron, then opened up something like a headphone cup or a mic casing I’ve put it back nearly as fast.

If you can DIY in this brave new modern era of electronics manufacturing, I bow to you.

For what it’s worth.

[Bill Davis]

And in just a couple of days – we have more than a few “short films” done on the new iPhone.

Here’s an interesting one that even has “behind the scenes” shots of how they rigged the thing.

Oh, and it was shot in HD 720p and edited on iMovie for the iPhone.

Such is the modern era.

https://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2010/06/29/short-film-shot-and-edited-entirely-on-iphone-4/
Short Film Shot and Edited Entirely on iPhone 4

The times they ARE a changing.