Lighting for Clay-mation

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Phil2281

New member
Hi , I'm looking for lighting advice on lighting a clay-mation film.

I'm making a short clay-mation film. I'm shooting with my sony rx100 and I am looking at setting up lights. I will black out the room's only window so I am not a slave to shooting at a specific time or at the mercy of ambient light changes throughout the course of shooting.

I dont want to spend a great deal of money either so don't want pro-lights that cost several hundred dollars. I have heard and read 500w halogens from a hardware store work well. Of course though I'm working on a much smaller scale with clay-mation so I'm not sure if that is overkill for a small small set space or not. I'm thinking set one up and bounce it off the ceiling or a board for the main light. Maybe diffuse it if its too harsh still. would that be enough? A smaller light to pair with it in case I need a back-light/fill or something would be handy but I am not sure what I can pair with a 500w halogen that will match? Does it need to be another less powerful halogen or something else? I can grab a few gels pretty easy as well and experiment with them.

One scene is an exterior on an alien world (so I have some freedom there in regards to colour I can experiment with what i think suits)

and 2 interior scenes.

one interior will be in an interegation room where I need to have the room dimly lit and a lamp on a subject. So for that shot i would need a practical that would be small enough to just light something the size of an action figure. It would be even better if this practical could feature in the frame but can work it so that it isnt.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated as I am a writer who has just started directing and am fairly new to photography and all the science that comes with it.
 
Clay-mation using actual modelling clay? Then heat from lights will be a definite issue - you don't want figures drooping as they start to melt. Or you after a few hours... :)

Personally I'd look at LED lights, as they run very cool - and they're much more common and cheaper these days, I've even seen them in hardware stores, although obviously such lights aren't intended for photographic purposes. Small LEDs (e.g. torches) may also be suitable for your practical lighting. LEDs, especially the cheap ones, do have problems with manufacturing inconsistency, and often put out a rather uneven colour spectrum (especially the infamous "Green Spike") which can complicate chromakey work and colour correction, but for a first animation on a budget, they're still a good option.
 
What clang said.
Years ago, I tried some clay (Plasticene?) animation with 16mm film. My tungsten movie lights heated up the small room quickly. The warm figures were leaving oily "footprints" on the poster board I was using as a floor. I was getting sweaty and uncomfortable.
I'd suggest you look at on-camera LED movie lights (but don't use them on camera). If you have a shot that requires lighting a large area, use a fluorescent light, which will have more punch.
-- Ken
 
yeah plasticine. Do you really believe a halogen light being bounced would cause an issue with melting/heat/temp?

what quality will small led lights give me?
 
You won't need many watts since the area you are lighting is small and you'll be placing the lights closer to the subject than normal. I found a domestic tungsten 100W bulb in a desk lamp to be overkill on some modelwork experiments I did some time ago and that was with the light hungry HVX. In fact it was perfect at 3 to 4ft distance to light an 8in model spaceship as if by the sun. LED will let you work a lot cooler. And don't forget diffusion (unless you want the ultra-high contrast of the 'sun' in space/no atmosphere look). Diffusion will be particularly useful in lighting backgrounds without multiple shadow sources and let you get even coverage over a larger area. Also it will be fiddly to flag off point sources at this scale. I recommend those little alligator clips on flexible necks sometimes sold in $2 shops and stationery outlets for this purpose. Buy some black card and cut it to custom shaped flags as required if you want to go to that extreme. A very low budget way to experiment with the principle behind the big boy tricks and toys!

If you have an 'alien' set check out the original Wallace and Grommit movie where they have crackers on the moon ('don't forget the cheese grommit, the cheese!') for some claymation lighting on the moon.
 
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