Lighting advice for tabletop stop motion

J

jbradstreet

New member
Hi All,

Have a cool little shoot coming up that, for various reasons (read: money), I'll be DoP'ing myself and could use help from the more knowledgeable amongst us.

The setup will be a stop motion shoot set on a table, with action contained to a 3m wide x 2m high x 2m deep set (room itself is 6m square). The "set" will be mostly open space set on a physical table, with the objects / characters usually around 1-3 feet tall, so it's not exactly a miniature shoot per say. The look will be a fairly even soft bright light, so no hard key, rim, etc.

The biggest question is lighting - with what and how. The shoot will be going on for weeks, so renting seems like it will be a non-option, and happy to put the $2-3k available into purchasing lights. SO... what to buy?

I've been looking at an Arri Softbank 4 light kit, that seems like it might be a decent option that could cover this shoot and others to follow, but I'll be honest that's just a swing in the dark. I know the Arri name alone is costing money, but would prefer gear that will last, as opposed to getting eBay specials. But not an Arri snob by any means, so if there's other reputable gear that's equal quality I'm all ears.

Was also interested in LitePanels or the like (Coollight, etc.) for power consumption, HEAT, etc. but don't think the couple grand at my disposal will go too far.

Gear alone is obviously just the tip of the iceberg, as I'm fully aware there's going to be a lot of experimenting to get the right look. So any and all advice is greatly appreciated. Ultimately I'd love to have a full grip truck at the ready to keep trying things until it's right, and click "buy". But alas...

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to shed some light on the situation. And yes, pun intended..

Cheers,
Jesse
 
A lot of my income is from still shooting - when my teenage son & friends did some stop motion, I set them up a speedotron rig (strobes) and it looked great with no flicker - they were shooting "Stills" after all...

Were I doing this, I'd try to avoid tungsten. All that time tweaking motion and tiny sets and models under hot lights - uh uh. I'd do some tests with Kinos or some sort of flos.

Seriously, I'm thinking of putting one of those signatures on my profile that says "test, test, test". You can get pointers & general ideas here, some from experienced pros and the occasional wild guess. If you have a $2-$3k budget, take a look at the storyboards and rent some stuff for a weekend and do some tests. That's the only way to find the correct answer to your specific problem. Good luck, sounds like a really cool (or really frustrating!) project.
 
I work at a lighting rental house in the bay area and we recently filled an order for the same guys who did Coraline, James and the Giant Peach, and a bunch of other stop motion movies. It seemed like their main lights were inkys, which are 200 watt fixtures, then they had a few babys and some baby juniors. They also picked up a bunch of focal spots for the babys and the inkys.

The only other thing I would really suggest is some Roscoe LitePads. They're very light, very cheap for what they are, and give you a nice soft light. I think if you got some of those along with a few inkys with focal spots, and maybe a baby, you'd be set.
 
RyanT said:
I work at a lighting rental house in the bay area and we recently filled an order for the same guys who did Coraline, James and the Giant Peach, and a bunch of other stop motion movies. It seemed like their main lights were inkys, which are 200 watt fixtures, then they had a few babys and some baby juniors. They also picked up a bunch of focal spots for the babys and the inkys.

The only other thing I would really suggest is some Roscoe LitePads. They're very light, very cheap for what they are, and give you a nice soft light. I think if you got some of those along with a few inkys with focal spots, and maybe a baby, you'd be set.
Click to expand...

That's some great inside knowledge right there. Someone working at a rental house could probably write a great instructional cinematography book/DVD by relating their inside knowledge of major examples.
 
This probably goes without saying, but you need to watch out for flicker. Step one is to do everything in manual mode on the camera. If anything at all in the camera is changing between shots (aperture, ISO, shutter speed, focus, etc.), it will manifest itself as flicker or other similar artifacts.

I've seen reports by some people that indicate the most reliable lenses to use were the old Nikon primes, since they had an aperture ring right on the camera. Having said that, I've done some simple stop motion time lapse stuff with all Canon gear and it worked just great.

I think the lighting will be just like a full sized live action shoot, but smaller :)
 
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