Rick Wise
1
COW Coin
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There’s at least one other method: place a clean (seam-free, no repairs) 6×6 or 8×8 or 12×12 single or double scrim behind the talent. It will blur the background. A double blurs a lot more than a single. These also reduce light intensity, which may or may not be a good thing for the scene. You can further blur background by lighting the surface of the scrim. The trick is to have the scrim far enough back so that the tiny squares do not read as anything but a blur. Usually a single works best, without or without being lit.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Your question may be quick, but any serious reply could be very, very long. In fact, to reply fully would be to give you a 45-hour class in lighting with tungsten, fluorescent, and daylight units, and all the grip equipment we use to shape, block, and augment light. That would be just the beginning.
The bottom line is: to light well, you have to learn to see light and shadow and color well. When you can do that, you can shoot beautifully in available light — you move the action to where the light is “right.” You can also shoot beautifully with very little equipment — again, taking advantage of what’s there.
First off, be exact about how much you can spend. Don’t be coy. Just the facts, please. Then we can at least point you in a few directions. After that it’s up to you to experiment, experiment, experiment.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
If you do not stand directly in front of the monitor, and do not move the camera, you can paste in video later in post. However, if you stand or cross in front of that monitor, you will need to cover it with green (or blue), light it to key, and then use chromakey to replace the green with video. Note that it’s usually difficult to light a green-screened monitor cleanly — no shadows around any of the edges. If the monitor surface is curved, that adds to the difficulty the job: it’s hard to make the green cloth stick seamlessly on a curved surface.
There is one other option: run the video you want live while taping. Remember that TV monitors are roughly daylight color temperature (around5,500K) so if you want to include live video you need to light your scene with daylight units. You can, however, use 1/2 CTB (daylight blue) on tungsten lights and get a good, warm look. We do that all the time.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Thanks, Steve. Yes, that helps. Not perfect, but better. And, seems to work best to run three “color-balance” corrections, one after the other. The first, just a little tweak, the second, a little tweak more, etc. This is an FX I’ve never used before – silly me. One gets used to grabbing the same solutions, so this was a good wake-up.
By the way, I just checked the light with a color meter. The meter calls for adding 1/2 minus green. But a quick test shows (not surprisingly) that a full half is too much; 1/4 is just fine, and would have avoided all the ugly cast. (In general, I’ve found correcting 1/2 the strength that the meter calls for works best, whether it’s adding blue to tungsten lights to balance to daylight, or orange (CTO) to daylight lights to match to tungsten, etc.)
Sure wish 6cc worked here — potentially a better solution. I’ve emailed Carl but don’t really expect to hear back. If I do, I’ll post the reply.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
I tried Magic Bullet again to see if I could get rid of the obnoxious green cast from a bad light. Nothing there seems any better than Vegas’ color corrector. Steve, do you have a suggestion here?
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
1) not sure what you mean about “good quality lighting” — do you mean equipment? or how do do it?
2)a soft box converts your relatively small, hard light, into a larger, softer one. You can also fly diffusion out in front of the light for a similar or even softer look. The big advantage of the softbox / chimera is that when you move the light, you move the diffusion at the same time. The big advantage of flying the diffusion separately is that you can usually achieve a much softer look. I end up, frequently, using both a chimera and also flying a piece of 1/2 grid diffusion (if there’s enough stop) out in front. Even a piece of 4 x 4 opal will make the chimera much softer, provided the light fills the opal survace and the opal is close to the subject. What makes a light soft is how it wraps around the subject. So a large sheet of diffusion placed close to the subject has much more soft wrap than the same size diffusion placed 10′ away. In other words, a “soft light” can be a hard light if it is placed far from the subject. Conversely, if you were to place a studio 10K 2 feet away from the face of your subject, you would have in effect a soft wrap — of course, the subject would die of the heat very quickly….
3) Foamcore, which you can buy at art supply houses as well as at film supply stores, makes for cheap bounce. You may also be able to find larger sheets of styrofoam for an even softer bounce. Some grips glue a sheet of fragile styrofoam on a piece of foamcore (usually 4 x 4 each) so that the same piece can be used harder or softer as needed by just flipping the bounce side, plus the foamcore proves more strength to the fragile styrofoam.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
1. It is rare for bulbs to explode – it’s happened to me once in about 50 years
2. any wire scrim will cut the light somewhat
3. I know of no indicators that you can check to determine if a bulb is close to exploding.Bottom line: protect your talent and yourself with wire scrims if you are using open-faced fixtures.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Excellent!
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
This is no doubt a minority view: I don’t much care for Magic Bullet Looks. I tried it. It’s fun to play with, once you figure out how to access the controls (play the tutorial on their site.) There are lots and lots of variables you can adjust. The interface is slick. However, Magic is extremely slow to render. And any looks it comes up with that I want, I can achieve using Vegas FX plus the 6-color corrector and render out the results more quickly.
I understand that for some people it is truly magic. For me it was a distraction. Back to work…..
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
In the States this is probably the FloLight (https://www.prompterpeople.com/flolight.php).
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com