silhouette lighting, james bond intro style

A

ade4all

Veteran
how can I get this look? I've been asked to film the silhouette of 2 dancers which will be projected at a fashion show. I have no real experience with lighting, being a run n gun documentary maker mainly. i have access to 2 very cheap 500 watt video lights - could I just place these behind the dancers but out of shot & get them to dance in front of a white background? or is there a better way? also are there any settings on the dvx which would help create these strong outlines?
I've searched through a lot of threads & couldn't find any answers
 
Try using a greenscreen, then cut out their silhuoettes, if thats possible. Either that or try pointing the lights at a large white fabric screen, put the dancers in between the light and the screen, then filming from outside the screen.
 
thanks for the reply, when you say film from outside the screen - do you mean from behind the screen ie the other side of it? sorry if it's a stupid question just want to clarify
 
This is certainly not my field of expertise ,but for what it is worth:
I would first find a large background or use a seamless photo backdrop paper on a pipe to ensure the background is a consistant color, be that digital green or chroma blue or even white for a lum key. Then I would get my performers to wear everthing that is the same or close to the same color ideally dark or black. it will just help in keeping the light from bouncing around. This set up with the background lit very hot and strong backlighting on your talent should give you something to take over to someone who is good with After Effects or another compositiong tool. It sounds to me like they are asking for the "i-pod" commercial look and a compositor can probably give you great advice non what they will need to work with. Iknow it should not be a big deal, to get a reasonble facimile, butit woud be o get detail like the ipod stuff. Ihope this is of some help and not too far off course.
 
thanks again - i guess it's going to need a fair bit of post work & maybe some more lights - i'm doing it as a freebie favour for a friend, with the naive hope that it was a simple, 5 minute thing to do - on the other hand it'll be a great experience to learn some lighting & get better with after effects, so it's all good really - cheers
 
I, personally, would bypass the green screen, thing, but that may only be because I dont do green screen work.

I would find a large white wall in a controlled light environment - say a warehouse - and light the wall as hot and evenly as you can. Then, bring your subjects off the wall as far as possible to keep spill from hitting them. Then, set your exposure to bring the wall into Zebra. If the rest of the room is dark, your subjects should be complete silhouettes. You cant then play with the levels in post to fine tune it.

Here is something I did with just normal footage of my subject against a white wall. The wall is not lit at all and the subject is lit from the front. Not at all ideal lighting for the Silhouette, but tweaking in post almost gets it there. With proper lighting it will work. (I didnt shoot this at all with silhouette in mind.)

Two versions. First version was screwing around and thought it looked interesting. Second version, I tweaked some more to really pull out the silhouette. I really like the second as it ends up with an iPod commercial kinda feel.

65247286.jpg

65247313.jpg


I realize it's not exactly what you want, but just picture that original footage as normal, room light lit. It really shows what can be done if you even try to light for silhouette.

(I also really like the subtle detail showing through - the arms and the hair pin.)

And no, sorry, I dont remember my post settings. Camera setting was default F6.

Good luck.

-GageFX
 
Another alternative to keying just just shooting against a hot matte with no light on your subject, and then bring the white levels down so the whites get pure white and the blacks get crunched. You can then color and screen in your talent over your background.
 
fantastic, thankyou all for your advice, I really like the look of that 2nd image. i'll try this technique & report back with some results. great advice once again from this wonderful site
 
Just thought I'd post a little more footage. Again, this wasn't shot for silhouette, but I do have a light on the BG this time. A single 750w Lowel Tota. It doesnt have a great spread, especially how close I had to have it, but it worked. Again, the room was a normal lit room - fluors all over the ceiling - and I have a 250w light cam left for rim on the actors.

I left just a few frames at the beginning and end to show the pre-edited. Watching it again, it's not much, but you can slightly see.

Training footage shot on default F6, 24Pa, 1/250 shutter. (Poor girl was at 4.5 hours in training that night at this time in the footage. Poor me shot 5 hours of BTS, two cameras.)

I now know what I did to get the effect. I dont remember that this second, but if you want I'll open up Vegas and write down the steps. Very simple.

Also, remember that if you have no lighting on your subjects, the close and details will fade out. If they're wearing black, even more. I like my details,
though.

http://rivenmovie.com/randomclips/silfight2.mov


Good luck and post some of that footage.

-GageFX
 
great, thanks for the footage, love the movement effect from the shutter speed, especially with that crisp white background. i guess for a wide shot with 2 dancers i'm going to need all the extra bg light i can to make it nice & hot & even. with dark clothes & no other lighting, i think it'd work perfectly well

i'd also be very interested in your settings - i use premiere but presume it would relate.

thanks again for your time & advice, will definitely post some footage when i'm done
 
For the lighting, my single BG light was only18" away from the way and pointing almost straight up. The studio is only 20 feet wide in that direction and I couldnt bring it off the wall far enough to spread the light more. If you bring yours off to about 5' or so, it will do much better than I did.

I'll jump on my editing box tomorrow and write those settings down. I'll take some screen caps too - might help you translate into Premier.

-GageFX
 
Sorry the images are so big. I wanted you to be able to read what is onscreen. The clip is just a random section with a white background, chosen as a good example for this excercise.. It was from a lighting test a few months ago.

I applied the "Secondary Color Corrector" to the clip. I then desaturated, set gamma to minimum, set gain to maximum, and offeset to minimum. I dont know if this is the best way to do this, but it was easy and got decent results. Maybe a Premier guy can chime in and let you know how this translates to Premier CC controls.

Here is the first with the clips original settings:
66706964.jpg

66706976.jpg


Hope this helps.

-GageFX
 
There is a filmmaker on this board, a guy named desperatecomfort, who has this film series called "Man Hole" that makes extensive use of this style of lighting/effect.

He might be able to help.
 
Gage you have gone far beyond the call of duty on this one, thankyou once again - I have prempro 1.5 & though I couldn't find a secondary color corrector, I was able to follow & replicate what you have done using the HSL function within the color corrector. Seems to work a treat - hopefully be filming in the next week or so when her 'dancers' are available - will post some footage then.
Zoo - thanks for the tip, I'm downloading some 'man hole' stuff now, sounds intriguing
 
Here you go. My workflow was slightly different, but fundementally the same.

Gage: you could probably pick up something too - I added a step. I found out i got better results by flooring the levels. here are the grabs...and sorry for the size too

Original (I cropped the pic for the final one):


Final 1 (The shot of the Fast Color Corrector. Its under Color Correction in Effects):


Final 2 (The rest of my effects):


Here ya go. Hope it helps!
 
cool. hard to see on my phone right now, I' ll check it out on the comp tonight.

- GageFX
 
Malcolm,

I dont see the differenc between the first silhouette and the second. I even opened them both in PS and couldn't see anything. It might just be me, but how would you describe the difference bewteen the first and second?

Thanks,

GageFX
 
Ade,

You are more than welcome. I'm honored to try to help and I hope you get great results. Wish you were local, I'd throw in some lights for you to really blow that wall out.

Good luck and be sure to post. Even if you blow it (and I'm sure you wont) it will be educational to see what you've done. Just Gumping my way through and trying to figure things out as I go. I'm glad you had the question as it gave me reason to do it again and learn what it was I did.

Take care,

GageFX
 
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