Is this lighting possible?

[Shooter]

Working under those massive soft boxes in a blacked out studio is one of the magic moments that one sometimes experiences as a D.P (or crew)

The light is so soft and so close...everything gets wrapped and contoured in it . Looks gorgeous.

The other moment I enjoy is a full white limbo cyc

[cpc]

For revealing and suggesting shape and curves you will certainly need very large lights as pointed above, for nice and smooth reflections.
But. If you only need a smallish moving strip of light, you might be able to get away with a 4 ft light (kino or rectangular soft box) close to the car and possibly a wide lens. The wide lens is important for some shots because it will pick the light reflection from wider angles. In other words, where a long lens won't pick up reflection, the wide lens will. You will still likely need to move both the light and the lens to keep the reflection going around the surface. How well will this work depends on the kind of shot you want. And you will still need to black out stuff around the car, or you will pick unwanted reflections.

I strongly suggest reading up on product photography. This will teach you a lot about managing and exploiting reflection, and especially specular reflection. Shooting cars is really just a scaled up product photography task.

[sonofaresiii]

if i understand you correctly, you want a small strip of light to move across an object. there's no trick to it. block out everything that's not the strip of light you want, and then point it over the object.

you could use flags. you could use blackwrap. you could use your hands. whatever blocks the light.

i will suggest you put the object that's blocking the light as far from it as possible, to get more hardened shadow edges, and use a hard light.

if it were me, what i'd probably do is put two flags with the small strip in between them on two c-stands, untightened so you can move them, and tie the flags together so they move together. there are probably other, possibly better ways, that's just the first that came to mind. look around and be creative.

[Shooter]

There is a trick to it.

You will see everything that you suggest reflected and you underestimate the size of the light source and the masks required.

Try it and see.

Actually...the trick is ...lots of dollars, lots of time and probably multiple passes ( motion control) ...then some serous post production..

[sonofaresiii]

well you can see the reflections in his reference photo, too. i guess i must just not quite understand what he wants to do.

[paulears]

Pickthorn is on the mark. The US ellipsoidal UK profile fixtures have a focal point in the optics system - not like fresnels, so anything at the focal point plane can be projected.

There are usually four shutters and a perfect line of light can be created with the fixtures as they come out of the box. Not new - these have been around since the late 60s. If you want to create patterns then you use gobos, which you slide in. usually metallic because of the heat at that point, but glass is available.
http://www.dhalighting.co.uk/

With the shutters you can created the line of light very simply, and if you want to see the beam, hire a hazer, and then the light in the air can be seen too. Not the same as a smoke machine, as the particle size is much smaller in a hazer and cameras can see right through it. You can't do it with a Fresnel and barndoors without the edges being soft. Gobos and shutters can be really sharp in fixtures with decent lenses - like the ETC source 4s. 575 or 750W lamps

With something like a custom gobo in a bright moving light fixture, you could programme the movement so it's repeatable take to take.

[Shooter]

Those units would definitely have a place in achieving this but how?

Lets assume the car is in a perfect limbo set ( floor/ wall / ceiling cyc) This required to be lit so there is a base exposure on the car. (Lets assume a black car o a white cyc)

SO...What does one project the unit onto . White? How will the beam show as a hard contrasty edge.

consider a black cyc...and also ...how will the beam show.

I come back to lots of $$$ lots of time lots of post...multiple pass (motion control)...and in all of that is where the light units come in.

[cpc]

The only way these lights could make sense for lighting a car is if you only really care about the diffuse reflection. Which is not the common way of lighting shiny objects. Beautiful specular reflection is all about light size (and light-to-subject-to-camera distance).
But hey, if you don't want shiny you can totally shoot with small/hard lights. Make sure they don't make specular reflections though.