CAVE SET. What do I use

I agree with you but you did read the OP right? He does not have your experience nor anywhere near the budgets your talking about. And if he's making rocks to try it out then he doesn't have the kind of crews your talking about either. 1/8" would help weight wise but also have no structural integrity at all so now you are talking serious structure. In his price range I don't think he's going to have a bunch of lifts around either. But you know we are both speculating a bit here.

So OP, what level of large structure set building experience do you have?
 
Actually to add some questions to the OP.
What are they giving you for a budget, aprox. And how large and experienced a crew do you expect to work with. And do you have any idea how much you can avoid building? IE you probably don't need a ceiling on most of it IF the cave is supposed to be really tall.
 
All very good questions. Thanks again for the info. This has been a very interesting position that my producer has put me in. I have no set design background at all. He just threw out the idea of paper mache so I just asked the question. I am a Director of Photography and Camera Operator.

Right now I have a crew of about 8. We have a couple of Props guys that are really good, that think the paper mache is possible. They have done a lot of play set design in the past and said that worked great. They just have never made a cave out of the stuff, so we are all good friends so I had some time on a Saturday and just put it together. I think it would be very possible, but time consuming to use paper mache. I don't think the walls need to be really strong, we are not climbing on these cave walls. I do agree with the lights. They do get really hot and that could cause some issues. We do have a gaffer that has a ton of equipment. He even has these lights that don't get hot that light really well. So maybe that wouldn't be an issue. Plus I think I like the idea moving walls around to look like a different set, plus using different camera positioning we could cut down on the size of the caves.

As far as budget goes I don't know what we are getting for set design, but I would say half of the film will be in these caves.

Right now we are talking about a $160,000 budget for the whole movie, so it is pretty low budget. That needs to of course pay everyone "Crew and Cast" as well as a red rental and other things like food and other film equipment.

So like I said I was just interested in the way people would go with this. I have no background in this stuff, but I am a very creative guy and that's why I ran the test for the Producer.

Because we are so low budget I would be putting in time to help put these sets together. We all play multiple rolls in our production group. Thanks again keep the feed back coming.
 
FWIW lifts here doesn't mean equipment; it means prefabricated sections of a large set piece that are built individually, then joined together in place.
 
Sad Max said:
FWIW lifts here doesn't mean equipment; it means prefabricated sections of a large set piece that are built individually, then joined together in place.
Click to expand...

AH, I've done a lot of set design and construction and trade shows and such but not art direction so I missed the term. You would probably need fifts though to get the lifts into place if your walls go very high up ;~).


Since your looking for ideas given your situation I would probably go with cloth soaked in a stiffener (as simple as startch or supper cheap latex paint (we used to toss all the leftovers in a drum and that became dark grayish "rat paint", used for priming etc)) and applied over chickenwire. You might have to stiffen up the lower part s where people actually touch. It will give you a light very paintable skin that will dry faster than mache and be a bit more flexible/ strong. Its also easier to fireproof if nec. You can usually get used sheets at places like The Goodwill that are very cheap. I would contact a manager and get to the warehouse and make a deal on the stuff that they are going to sell as rags. Even if you go with something more substantial lower down this can work well for the upper reaches. Between scrunching the chicken wire and scrunching the cloth you should be able to get very close to a finished look. I would also color the stiffener to be your base color for the rock.

Also your a DP so you know there will only be a fraction of the cave that gets a close look. Find out which parts those are and spend your budget making them look good, some of the rest probably wont need more than the dark undercoat.
 
Cheapest option is indeed Green Screen. However whether you build a set or use Chromakey, you #1 key tool is LIGHTING. Creative lighting covers all the flaws. I visited the Star Trek set once and was amazed how cheezy it was in open work lights. The magic is created with the creative lighting. Shadow is your friend.
 
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