I wanna see your - BTS Lighting Setups!

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...and a source 4 bouncing off a bounce board on the right).

What is a Source 4?
I googled it, and I see how the light looks like, but Ive never used them, not seen them used.

Why use this? When?
 
The Source-4 is pretty much the coolest tungsten light you can get. It's basically a spotlight, with 4 shutters on the side so you can make the light into any shape with 4 sides.

They're great for a couple things, the first obviously is just as a spotlight. Maybe you're shooting a movie with a stage production in it, the source-4 could be used as a follow spot. You can also get different lenses to make that spot be wider or narrower. Changing the lens will also make it more or less punchy, just like spotting and flooding a lamp will.

The other thing they're great for is just when you want a really hard light. Since it's focused through a lens the edges created by the light are very crisp and sharp. Always a good lamp to use as a hard kicker or scratch.

The last thing you can do, which is my favorite application, is you can take a bounce card like they did here and punch a source 4 into it. Then you use the shutters on the side to control the light off of everything but the bounce board. I also like taping show card deep into the set and then having the source 4 out of the way bouncing into the card. That way you don't have to rig this big softlight in your set and instead can get that same quality of light with just some tape and showcard.
 
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Regarding the source four and the example you posted. Are those juniors or the big guys? From what I can tell when reading the speccs off the local dealer, the juniors are 575w and the big guys are 750w?
Any chance you know how many FC these put out when rigged to a bounce card as you did? (or in other words... how many FCs the bounce card would put out.)
 
Regarding the source four and the example you posted. Are those juniors or the big guys? From what I can tell when reading the speccs off the local dealer, the juniors are 575w and the big guys are 750w?
Any chance you know how many FC these put out when rigged to a bounce card as you did? (or in other words... how many FCs the bounce card would put out.)

EDIT: Nvm, I found out there's something called Google taht takes search words and such ;) Here's the photometrics from the Jr. lamp:

http://www.texasscenic.com/ETC%20Sheets/7062L1010_Source_Four_jr_Zoom_Spec_Sht_vD.pdf
 
Exactly what we did, I love bouncing the s4, its much easier to control, you could even toss a pizzabox up there
The one we were using was the 750, but it was the zoom version, so that guy is twice the size as the fixed beam (It even uses a junior pin ha!) I'd pick that over the fixed since its easier to control, but damn its big.

Once thing I love doing with it is lighting props, for example a bar scene you create a thin beam of light and you just hit the glasses and bottles from the side, lower the intensity a bit and it gives it a little glimmer if there is none.

Here's another quick one, again sorry for low quality, I promise I'll bring in better ones (just got a smartphone so I'm dying to try it out on set for 8MP of fun!)



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Don't have a screencap, but it was a small student film we had done. No gaffer, they thought I was, so I just played along and played with the lighting heh heh
Big light off a bounce board, kino on the back. Think we had some fresnels on the other side of the room to enhance the hair light on the museum props

I just realized someone did the c-stand lefty-loosey... tsk tsk not calling that guy back
 
Here's a quite simple set up we used for an acoustic music video:
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Had a 2.5k HMi punching through the window on the left, two red heads through some washing on the right and three dedos as kickers/points of interest over the screen in the back. The back window helped with some hair light as well, but it was mainly the dedos. We mucked around with gels but ended up deciding that we were happy with the mixed colour temps, warm fill etc. I would have loved to have some nd for the hmi, but it wasn't available to us unfortunately. And yeah, we had to have everything quite far away as it was filmed live. For the cu's of the lead singer we cheated the fill up quite a bit and put some diffusion up in front of the hmi for the piano shot. The final video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAPsMp-8DLs
 
Heres some of my instagramness: http://instagram.com/p/MwdZZarm-W/

Very simple setup aside from the pyro, just a 650 in the back (seen in screen) with what I believe was some sort of CTB gel over it. And on the right a 1k soft light, the fire did the rest of the lighting.
No still since I was just the grip there, but I took a look into the monitor and it looked pretty badass.

(No the guy isnt flicking the camera off)

Camera: AF100
 
.....

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I recall we had a 2k going from the side, through a big silk which was up close to the talent, a 650 up top going through a 2x2 gel (forgot what we had used, 25-something) and a source 4 bouncing off a bounce board on the right). It was pretty experimental, but here is the final result (camera dpt didn't do a great job with exposure)

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I'll post more elaborate scenes

That high angle top light key is seriously un flattering on the womans face . Particularly around her eyes and mouth!. Was it supposed to be ?
 
That high angle top light key is seriously un flattering on the womans face . Particularly around her eyes and mouth!. Was it supposed to be ?

I agree too, on set I softly asked why it was playing there, well the DP wanted it for some reason, something less... interviewish would have worked IMO. If I had more say in lighting I'd have scratched it completely.
But as a grip I get to see many DPs f&%k up lighting with a push of a power button :/
 
I've got a few photos from some sort of bigger projects that I've worked on recently. I can't really say that much, but this one was a night shoot at this underground structure. We had one condor was rigged with a 4k HMI...I think it had either a medium or a spot lens in it shooting down this shaft. Thats the one on the bottom thats more horizontal.

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Then we lit the topside with a 135' condor at full extension rigged with a 24-light Dino, 2 9-Light Maxibrute, and a handful of par cans. Everything was gelled with 250 and Half CTB. I'm pretty sure the nine lights were checkered narrow and medium globes. We wrapped duvatyne between the 9 lights and the frames to create softboxes and prevent spill from creeping out.
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Also had a super soft cookie made out of luann on the front of the 24 light.

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I wish I had more pictures of this one because it was pretty frickin cool, this was for a motorcycle commercial. We had 60 Phillips Colorblast LEDs that we put down this tunnel. They were all controlled via DMX and we were able to control the color and intensity from a laptop we had on set. So, if they wanted blue, it was just a touch of a button and it would all be blue. We also had an arrimax 18k on the opposite end of the tunnel pushing a little backlight in, along with a 2k xenon light to add a pretty hard edge to it. We also went along the top with a scissorlift and turned off every other light that was in the tunnel to create more pronounced pools of light. Here's the final commercial we came out with...Honestly, you'll be able to see much better of what we did in the commercial than in my picture! If you want to know how any other parts of it were lit, I'd be glad to explain what we did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hJHS2tf69s


Later I did another one of these things...definitely a lot easier cable wise on this one. We had 4 12 light HPL's on our condor...this one was a day shoot, but they opted for tungsten for the warmth and for the fact that they were shooting high speed with the phantom, so HMI's would have ended up causing flicker problems.

The first setup, the camera car would drive around the side of the track there as the motorcyle took the turn, for this one the 12 lights acted as just a bit of warm fill.

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These were a bunch of different commercials, here's the one from this shot...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW4kckoa5_U&feature=relmfu


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Here's from this shot.

The next setup, we used them as a bit of an edge light as the camera car sped down the track, following the motorcycle from the side, eventually swinging behind him. You can see at the bottom of the condor, we did have a 4x mirror on standby, which we ended up using in addition to the 12 lights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYWMC8PWDHQ&feature=relmfu

Here's one with some of the other shots we did...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNUTA_4ghfc


One thing I learned from this one is uh...tungsten doesn't do anything outside. We had around 300 amps of power up there and even then it was barely making a dent.
 
Build a 5x5 foot PVC frame and hang a white shower curtain from it. Buy a 2 Light rack of Halogen worklights at Home Depot and pump through the curtain at your subject. Gives a soft, yet contrasty look.








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We used no lighting outdoors, just ND filters when needed.

nice frame!
Doesn't the curtain get too hot?
 
@ RyanT

Feel sorry for that genie op on that first rig with the 9lights and cans, I hope he had a fire blanket up there. That looks like it got hot!
 
That one was actually unmanned. Way too much weight already, so we just threw it up there and adjusted the basket the best we could to aim the lights.
 
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These examples were taken from my lighting blog

Small Cast & Crew (about 5 total) - Lighting diagrams have been provided at the link as well:
http://lightingalchemy.blogspot.com/2012/02/lighting-alchemy-bts-of-working-from.html

Scene from a feature film I shot, showing the breakdown of the lighting, and talks about why I did what I did. Smaller crew of 10:
http://lightingalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/05/lighting-for-iso-800.html

Two BTS videos from a short I did in a studio set showing what went into the lighting and camera- Larger crew of 20:
http://lightingalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/05/blackstar-warrior-episode-01-fan-film.html
http://lightingalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/05/blackstar-warrior-episode-02-fan-film.html

And a BTS video from a short I did with a crew of 2 (Myself and my assistant):
http://lightingalchemy.blogspot.com/2011/05/voices-from-dark.html

Hopefully that give a decent range of lighting options / projects. It isn't anything with condors, but they all use professional movie lights ...
 
Here are some BTS shots from a music video and a period fashion photo/video shoot I did last year.
Very simple lighting set ups used here, but hopefully to great effect. Kino Flos, Flourescent lamps and soft box, with Dedo-Lites for fill.

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The result:

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The result:

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Behind the scenes video shows more of the lighting set up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzNBpqLRiw&feature=youtu.be


Photography and direction by: Reynolds Brothers
Hair and Makeup by: Heather Bunker
Wardrobe Design by: Emma Cains
Additional photography and video by: Alice Ball
 
Sorry, hadn't checked this in a while. The curtain would get warm, but not hot, though it did get too close once and melted a hole that I had to patch.

Yes, all the grabs were lit with just that setup and a combination of the room lights at the location. Sometimes I'd turn them on, other times I'd turn them off depending on the look I needed.
 
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