Yea there was some caffine... and Mini muffins....
COLD CALLS by John Whalen featuring Blanchard Ryan (OpenWater) & Ben Bailey (CashCab)
- Thread starter Jack Daniel Stanley
- Start date
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
this was one softbox to the left, with 2 flags making "barndoors" for the top and bottom of the softbox, with duvatine covering the sides. this makes a shaft of soft light, and there is a huge mirror ot the right of the tub, making the reflected bounce act as a fill. This way its bright, but looks "dark". it looks like jack added a vingette and colored it blue in the grade.
Dude very interesting! I love this level of detail! Keep it coming.
Jeff Anderson
Custom Title!
this was one softbox to the left, with 2 flags making "barndoors" for the top and bottom of the softbox, with duvatine covering the sides. this makes a shaft of soft light, and there is a huge mirror ot the right of the tub, making the reflected bounce act as a fill. This way its bright, but looks "dark". it looks like jack added a vingette and colored it blue in the grade.
Wow hard to believe that's just one light. The shadows and the dark feeling are amazing. I'm seeing the art direction now though. I think thats where alot of my work lacks. Very nice work. Your explanation is very much appreciated!
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
Art direction is another essential element, IMHO. A never-ending hole, but it adds so much to your film. Having a production designer is key.
Jeff Anderson
Custom Title!
Sounds like I need to do some studying up on art direction now... Wish I had the budget but I'm thinking for along the lines of one man interviews and such. Still need the art direction, just cant afford an entire person to do it...
Michael Anthony Horrigan
More Cowbell Pictures
Thanks for doing this. Great insight!
this was one softbox to the left, with 2 flags making "barndoors" for the top and bottom of the softbox, with duvatine covering the sides. this makes a shaft of soft light, and there is a huge mirror ot the right of the tub, making the reflected bounce act as a fill. This way its bright, but looks "dark". it looks like jack added a vingette and colored it blue in the grade.
Cheers,
Mike
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
Everyone in my crew was volunteering. I think that's key when starting small like most of us here. My production designer has theatre and costuming background, so he spent hours and hours finding the right props and making them old, etc.
Matias Caruso
Member
Wow, that grab looks awesome. This one's definetely on my "must see" list.
ConspiracyPenguin
Nosey Penguin
[Insert standard soft/hard box and nude woman joke here]
I love mini-muffins...
I love mini-muffins...
Yeah, yeah, yeah... softbox...we all know you really just wanted to get her in the tub! (good work)
Blanchard is a team player. She only draws two lines in the sand:
- Turn around time. Eighteen hour days are fine (we didn't have any though) as long as she has her turn around time.
- No electrics hung over the tub. (we didn't need any) Camera was fine with it's little battery. With an awesome but small / non union crew like ours with DIY and cheapo lights, no way I would put an actor in a tub with lights hung over it anyway.
I will post a raw grab and a pic of the lighting setup for this shot.
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
One thing to do is just look at the frame and ask "what could be better" in terms of the "stuff". In the shot.
Here's a example of free cheap art direction that made a ton of difference.
... I'm talking about the kitchen utensils behind the phone.
They weren't already there in the location, or not in that spot. We brought the phone with us. It was purchased for a certain look and to be pageable from the another handset to make it ring on cue.
So we placed it in the foreground of the shot as storyboarded.
Something didn't seem perfect. Maybe the phone didn't take up as much of the shot as I thought it would when boarded. Maybe she was so out of focus that there was really no composition in that 2/3 rds of the frame ...
All it took was a quick look around to find a jar with some spoons and whisk thingy in it and now we have 3 levels of focus / depth of field, which makes the frame look more dimensional (3 dimensional) and that's always a goal in lighting and art direction, etc. Is to make a two dimensional, flat medium look 3 dimensional. Plus 3 levels of depth just looks cooler. In focus. Out of focus. Blob. And it it draws your eye across the frame in a better way.
So looking at the monitor and saying what could I change to add depth, or texture, or draw the eye just with what you have on set can make a difference.
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
One thing to do is just look at the frame and ask "what could be better" in terms of the "stuff". In the shot.
Here's a example of free cheap art direction that made a ton of difference.
... I'm talking about the kitchen utensils behind the phone.
They weren't already there in the location, or not in that spot. We brought the phone with us. It was purchased for a certain look and to be pageable from the another handset to make it ring on cue.
So we placed it in the foreground of the shot as storyboarded.
Something didn't seem perfect. Maybe the phone didn't take up as much of the shot as I thought it would when boarded. Maybe she was so out of focus that there was really no composition in that 2/3 rds of the frame ...
All it took was a quick look around to find a jar with some spoons and whisk thingy in it and now we have 3 levels of focus / depth of field, which makes the frame look more dimensional (3 dimensional) and that's always a goal in lighting and art direction, etc. Is to make a two dimensional, flat medium look 3 dimensional. Plus 3 levels of depth just looks cooler. In focus. Out of focus. Blob. And it it draws your eye across the frame in a better way.
So looking at the monitor and saying what could I change to add depth, or texture, or draw the eye just with what you have on set can make a difference.
Hmm. Well put. I knew some of my shots worked and some didn't, but I didn't know why. Now I do.
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
Is that anamorphic flare I see on the lamp? Did you guys add that in post with Looks?
Mike Insane
Well-known member
Wow Jack, the grabs are really impressive. Really really impressive.
I'll never tell. But that would be a good way to do it : )
Looks is awesome.
But yeah the idea for this scene was a back lit flarey Speilberg's E.T. / A.I. diffused look.
Looks would be a good way to get those flares if you weren't shooting on an anamorphic lens.
gabrielflorit
Well-known member
I'll never tell. But that would be a good way to do it : )
Looks is awesome.
But yeah the idea for this scene was a back lit flarey Speilberg's E.T. / A.I. diffused look.
Looks would be a good way to get those flares if you weren't shooting on an anamorphic lens.
Dude! Really? You gotta tell. Come on. Iscorama? Regardless, who doesn't love the anamorphic look. :beer:
Thanks Mike. and everyone who's offered comments
:beer:
Yeah, I did it with looks. I was trying to hint as much
I'll use the tub shot as a segue to from art direction to the BTS shots I promised of the raw grab and light set up.
First a look at the tub shot where we weren't as successful or thoughtful as we could have been in terms of Art Direction / dressing the set / and it would have just taken a few seconds.
Here's the final shot again:
What could we have easily done to make this better? A couple of things. I won't make too many excuses, but yeah we were beat, this was the martini shot, and the home owners were beginning to wonder if we'd ever leave. So anyway what could we have done?
One thing to remember is that usually, less is more. More examples of this in the lighting raw grab post (tomorrow). But look at the color palette of the above shot.
What sticks out? The red. candles? Is the story about the red candles? Do we want our eye to go there? Would it just be better if they were gone? I think so.
Here's a crudely photoshopped, better art directed version:
Now we've restricted the palette to blue and cream or flesh tone. Less is more. There's more of a statement. It's cleaner. You could choose to keep the red, but they should be arranged a little more artfully probably, if so.
Speaking of clean. In the photoshopped version I removed the foam that appears on the edge of the tub in the real version. In real life do suds get on the edge of the tub in a bubble bath? Probably. But we weren't going for real life here. We were going for a super perfect Hollywood thriller world, even more than that, a parody of such a world. I spotted the spots in later takes and we wiped them up, but those takes weren't as good for the camera move we were going for as this take was.
Another thing - could have made the arrangement of the candles so they framed her a little better even if they weren't completely symmetrical. Right now, especially in the photoshopped version they're a little too asymmetrical.
Also the area of marble outside the tub where the suds were is just screaming for something like a candle to go there. Too much negative space there makes the comp feel unbalanced.
Also look how the line of the candle behind the phone side of her head collides with her head. Not ideal in our two dimensional medium. This does two things, neither of them good. 1) it makes the composition look crowded. Too many lines vying for that area. 2) it emphasizes the flatness of the medium / makes the shot look flat. If we saw that with our eye we could see the depth. But the fact that it's behind her but looks no different than if it were coming out of the side of her head, again, makes it look flat. Would have been better to move that to camera left 8 or 12 inches.
So again. I should have been more on it and could have fixed / come up with these things easily on the fly in the moment. But was just trying to get out of the people's house by that point.