VERTIBLOG Film School XII - THE $1,000 MOVIE, Part 11
PRE PRODUCTION (continued)
Step 2: Gear
II. Audio Gear
Back in the "Find Your Crew" section when we were looking for our Sound Mixer, I suggested you may have to spend some money here. I haven't changed my mind. Go through the steps I outlined to try and track down a proper sound mixer, but I suspect you're going to end up purchasing a cheap-o audio package from some on-line source.
Again, look back in the "Find Your Crew" section.
Step 2: Gear
III. Lighting Kit / Grip Kit
Most well-budgeted productions have a dedicated grip truck which contains an ungodly number of lights, clamps, fixtures, cabling, stands, flags, scrims, snoots, diffusion, gels, sandbags, apple crates, and every other thing that's usually desired to make a well-budgeted movie.
You'll have no such thing.
Perhaps you landed a pro DP with his own truck... or at least his own lighting kit and grip equipment.
But you probably didn't. And now, you're going to have to punt.
Below find a list of the neccesities, and how to get them:
LIGHTS.
For our purposes, there are pretty much two kinds of artificial lights -- flourescent and incandescent (also referred to as tungsten). The camera sees these different lights differently --they have different color temperatures. The color temperature of floursecent fixtures, those long tube-y lights we have in our office buildings and schools looks much whiter/bluer to a video camera than traditional lights bulbs -- the kind we have in our living rooms and kitchens --which are much more orange-y looking.
You're going to want to stay in the land of tungsten. And luckily, it's a pretty cheap trip.
Work Lights
What you're going to be looking for are portable, versatile and cheap light sources to use indoors. First stop: Home Depot (Lowe's will do, I guess), to pick up some work lights.
Work lights like these will run you anywhere from $15-$30 for a single 500k fixture, $25-$40 for a double fixture 1000k (pictured).
Real production lights are designed to be a lot more controllable -- they'll have barn doors, which allow you to block light from leaking to where you don't want it; flood/spot controls to give a wider/more narrow swath of light; and scrims, which are little screens that go in front of the lamp to cut down its intensity. With these worklights, you have none of that. But, you will have illumination. And you'll have it cheap.
Clamp Light
Clamp lights are handy for tighter spaces or awkward positioning. You will also be able to mount them higher, off of a ceiling for a hair/back light perhaps, and you can easily swap out the bulb for a lower/higher intensity source (40w, 60w, 100w). Incredibly cheap, too -- $7-$9.
China Lantern
Go to Pier One Imports and pick up a cheap china lantern. They are simply light fixtures with a round, spherical paper shade surrounding it. They're great for illuminating close-ups on actors with a nice soft light.
Gels
Gels are little pieces of transparent/translucent plastic that are put in front of lights for various reasons. Hopefully your DP will know all about them.
There are typically three uses for gels: to change the color of the light, to color correct the light, and to diffuse the light.
To change the color of the light, you're going to want "theatrical" gels. Dario Argento uses the hell out of the these. So do most old school horror movies. Theatrical gels can give you vibrant blues, red, greens... whatever. Be careful though. You can very easily end up looking tacky.
To color correct, you're going to want CTB (Color Tempertaure Blue). You can get CTB in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 or full opacities. CTB will make your indoor tungsten lights match daylight. So if you have scenes that take place near windows and you want to give the illusion of all your light coming from outside, this is what you'd use. The opposite of CTB is CTO (Color Temperatire Orgaange). CTO also comes in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and full, and is used to correct daylight into tungsten balanced light. If you were carefully lighting an interior, but wanted an open window, you would use CTO to cover the window.
To diffuse light, you're going to want a couple of sheets of tough spun (a white fabric-y material) and perhaps a sheet of opal (a milky frost gel). These two types of diffusion will help boatloads if you're lighting a person's face with a strong wattage light, and need to cut down its intensity.
Single sheets (usually 20x24 or 12x12) of these different material will run between $5.00-$6.00 each. Some companies sell variety packs of the different types of gels for $18-$25 each.
GRIP EQUIPMENT
C-Stand
You should really have a C-Stand. I just checked eBay and saw a handful of them selling for under $60.00. A C-Stand is an invaluable piece of equipment that serves many purposes: holding flags and reflectors, rigging lights, holding a fishpole. It's an extra set of hands that are more stable, stronger and can reach much further than the human kind.
Reflector
A reflector is simply a large card or piece of fabric that is usually white on one side and reflective silver on the other. They're used to reflect available light toward a subject/object when other means of lighting are not desired or impracticle. Professionals use what's called a FlexFill, which is way too fancy for us. We can go to the art supply store and buy a large piece of foam core /poster board. On one side simply glue down wrinkly tin foil and keep the other side white.
********************************************
Hey, this is where I conclude the on-line portion of the manuscript. I refer to it as a manuscript now, because that's how it exists. I've ported over all of the blog entries, re-wrote them, and have been feverishly adding to it. Right now, I stand at just over 100 pages, and I'm going to try in earnest at getting it published.
Back to regular blogging.
Step 2: Gear
II. Audio Gear
Back in the "Find Your Crew" section when we were looking for our Sound Mixer, I suggested you may have to spend some money here. I haven't changed my mind. Go through the steps I outlined to try and track down a proper sound mixer, but I suspect you're going to end up purchasing a cheap-o audio package from some on-line source.
Again, look back in the "Find Your Crew" section.
Step 2: Gear
III. Lighting Kit / Grip Kit
Most well-budgeted productions have a dedicated grip truck which contains an ungodly number of lights, clamps, fixtures, cabling, stands, flags, scrims, snoots, diffusion, gels, sandbags, apple crates, and every other thing that's usually desired to make a well-budgeted movie.
You'll have no such thing.
Perhaps you landed a pro DP with his own truck... or at least his own lighting kit and grip equipment.
But you probably didn't. And now, you're going to have to punt.
Below find a list of the neccesities, and how to get them:
LIGHTS.
For our purposes, there are pretty much two kinds of artificial lights -- flourescent and incandescent (also referred to as tungsten). The camera sees these different lights differently --they have different color temperatures. The color temperature of floursecent fixtures, those long tube-y lights we have in our office buildings and schools looks much whiter/bluer to a video camera than traditional lights bulbs -- the kind we have in our living rooms and kitchens --which are much more orange-y looking.
You're going to want to stay in the land of tungsten. And luckily, it's a pretty cheap trip.
Work Lights
What you're going to be looking for are portable, versatile and cheap light sources to use indoors. First stop: Home Depot (Lowe's will do, I guess), to pick up some work lights.
Work lights like these will run you anywhere from $15-$30 for a single 500k fixture, $25-$40 for a double fixture 1000k (pictured).
Real production lights are designed to be a lot more controllable -- they'll have barn doors, which allow you to block light from leaking to where you don't want it; flood/spot controls to give a wider/more narrow swath of light; and scrims, which are little screens that go in front of the lamp to cut down its intensity. With these worklights, you have none of that. But, you will have illumination. And you'll have it cheap.
Clamp Light
Clamp lights are handy for tighter spaces or awkward positioning. You will also be able to mount them higher, off of a ceiling for a hair/back light perhaps, and you can easily swap out the bulb for a lower/higher intensity source (40w, 60w, 100w). Incredibly cheap, too -- $7-$9.
China Lantern
Go to Pier One Imports and pick up a cheap china lantern. They are simply light fixtures with a round, spherical paper shade surrounding it. They're great for illuminating close-ups on actors with a nice soft light.
Gels
Gels are little pieces of transparent/translucent plastic that are put in front of lights for various reasons. Hopefully your DP will know all about them.
There are typically three uses for gels: to change the color of the light, to color correct the light, and to diffuse the light.
To change the color of the light, you're going to want "theatrical" gels. Dario Argento uses the hell out of the these. So do most old school horror movies. Theatrical gels can give you vibrant blues, red, greens... whatever. Be careful though. You can very easily end up looking tacky.
To color correct, you're going to want CTB (Color Tempertaure Blue). You can get CTB in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 or full opacities. CTB will make your indoor tungsten lights match daylight. So if you have scenes that take place near windows and you want to give the illusion of all your light coming from outside, this is what you'd use. The opposite of CTB is CTO (Color Temperatire Orgaange). CTO also comes in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and full, and is used to correct daylight into tungsten balanced light. If you were carefully lighting an interior, but wanted an open window, you would use CTO to cover the window.
To diffuse light, you're going to want a couple of sheets of tough spun (a white fabric-y material) and perhaps a sheet of opal (a milky frost gel). These two types of diffusion will help boatloads if you're lighting a person's face with a strong wattage light, and need to cut down its intensity.
Single sheets (usually 20x24 or 12x12) of these different material will run between $5.00-$6.00 each. Some companies sell variety packs of the different types of gels for $18-$25 each.
GRIP EQUIPMENT
C-Stand
You should really have a C-Stand. I just checked eBay and saw a handful of them selling for under $60.00. A C-Stand is an invaluable piece of equipment that serves many purposes: holding flags and reflectors, rigging lights, holding a fishpole. It's an extra set of hands that are more stable, stronger and can reach much further than the human kind.
Reflector
A reflector is simply a large card or piece of fabric that is usually white on one side and reflective silver on the other. They're used to reflect available light toward a subject/object when other means of lighting are not desired or impracticle. Professionals use what's called a FlexFill, which is way too fancy for us. We can go to the art supply store and buy a large piece of foam core /poster board. On one side simply glue down wrinkly tin foil and keep the other side white.
********************************************
Hey, this is where I conclude the on-line portion of the manuscript. I refer to it as a manuscript now, because that's how it exists. I've ported over all of the blog entries, re-wrote them, and have been feverishly adding to it. Right now, I stand at just over 100 pages, and I'm going to try in earnest at getting it published.
Back to regular blogging.
posted by Marty at 1:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home