Broken Planets

Lights in the sky!

Or sky lights. Ceiling windows. Whatever you name them, I hate them.

Today's first production day on the set of 'Broken Planets' started out to be rather smooth as we first shot in the right-hand part of the set. This part, as I have previously elaborated upon, was rather easy to light when using the warm lighting tones I had planned for the 'Drastic Future' scenario.

I rigged the background lighting as I did for the production of 'A Good One' since it immediately gives the set a warm and loving atmosphere. I then rigged the redhead on the side of the set in a slightly different way so that it would cast a contrasting back light on the actress and her armchair.

However, I had a bit of an issue with balancing the golden and purple lighting I had planned on using and to get it to fall right onto the actress' face. My aim was to cast a line of light in her face, where the rim of her outlines were illuminated in purple while the rest of her face was illuminated in a warm, golden tone. This was difficult to pull off as my vision required my actress to sit upright and turn her face into a certain direction to make that lighting work. Problem was, that her character was supposed to be dead and thus slumped in her armchair.

I experimented with the re-positioning of the LED lights as well as their set intensities, but the light I was looking for got somewhat lost amidst the bright red that was reflected from the armchair in which my actress sat. I tried moving the red head around a bit and turned it off to see whether that improved the situation. And the purple tone indeed was better, but the missing red back light now resulted in the image to look flat and somewhat washed out. So I returned the red head to its original position and moved the LED's closer to her onto the set in an attempt to recreate that lighting scenario, dialling down the intensity so that I would not blind her with the lights I rigged. I then managed to recreate that line faintly (colour correction would definitely be needed to enhance that in post). But it was to no avail.

Why? Because my lights would then have been in shot. Visibly, without compromise.

So I moved the lights back to their original positions where I had planned them to with the lighting diagrams I devised. It meant that the purple got somewhat lost amidst the golden tones, but I decided to let the light stay on in case the camera would still pick it up to be improved upon in the edit. I thus reset all LED light settings to my previous preferences.

The rest of the crew filmed the shots Chloe wanted for that part of the set, while I was controlling the lights and making sure that the V-Locks did not fail us, as we've again received one that was rather weak but still working. Since many groups were filming simultaneously with the LED's, the V-Locks were in high demand and spare ones constantly on the charger. With us, we've been guaranteed to get a second, charged spare in the afternoon.

Which meant that I had to be economical in the use of the batteries until then and turn them off when they were not in immediate use, which I regularly did in between shots and, naturally, whenever I was resetting the lights.

With the rest of the day and lighting the other parts of the set on the left-hand side, I encountered more issues. As this set was skylit by the window ceiling directly above, it was really difficult to pull off the 'moody' lighting scenario that Chloe envisioned, especially on wider shots than a medium close up or mid shot.

Already after the test shoot but before the Easter break, I was talking to our technician about possible solutions to the issue, as we were just coming back from the shoot and I had already put three LED's, one red head and one of the oblong LED's onto the set without any great changes in the result. I had done much research online on the issue but did not find a reliable solution I could take care of as a student. Even versed indie filmmakers remained silent in that regard.

So I asked our technician as a last resort of sorts, in case that he knew a trick or had had a similar issue and solved that. I was being told that the only option he saw theoretically was to scaffold the set and flag it to the best of my abilities in order to block out the light. I asked him whether we would have access to either a scaffold of this height or a flag large enough to cover the ceiling window. He answered in the negative, but recommended that we should rather focus on closer shots and avoid wide shots if feasible and underexpose the camera by about 2. in order to make the footage appear darker.

It was obvious that this solution was by no means feasible or easy to achieve within the time that we have got and the means we have at hand. But I got curious about the possibilities and costs of renting a scaffold for three days, so I did a bit of research on the internet to see what was theoretically possible.

In Germany, scaffolding is usually charged by the day and can easily cost up to thousands of Euros if not carefully selected, which is why I thought I might have a look into the British side of things to see whether the prices were similar.

My research resulted in a lot of fairly high prices that we would have been unable to pay with our current budget of £150 in total (before the payment of actor's travel expenses, props, refreshments, and so on). Renting a scaffold for the height that we had to reach on set costs about £280 per day or £650 per week, which far surpassed the budget we have.

Just out of interest, I looked further into buying options and found various websites that offered scaffolds for purchase. However, even the cheapest solution that I was able to find already cost more than we had available as a budget (the prices for a scaffold where from about £229.99 to £1,249.99), so it was out of the question as well.

With flags, the largest ones I found were 48x48 inches wide and cost in between £105 and £135, depending on where you get that from. As I don't exactly know how large the ceiling windows are, it could also be possible that one of these flags would not have been enough. Even if I chose the cheapest possibly (buying the cheapest scaffold and only needing one of the cheapest flags), we would have ended up with an additional budget of £335.

So essentially, we would need to create a controlled environment by flagging the ceiling window, but we currently neither have the possibility to safely get up there nor flag it appropriately. We neither do have the equipment, nor the funds to hire a scaffold or a flag in the size required to properly install it.

Thus, I chalked it up under one of these issues that we are currently unable to solve due to our level of inexpertise and sufficient funds.

Returning to the topic of today's shoot, I attempted to make the 'moody' science-fiction light work as much as possible by installing up to four LED's and a red head and trying to block the light to the best of my abilities by either using a large blanket that I borrowed from the production design stores for close ups or by waiting for a cloud to pass before the sun for wider shots.

And while, naturally, the blocking with the blanket was rather effective, even though it needed every helping hand on set, the second option turned out to be not as successful. After a certain point in our schedule, we had to abandon waiting for the clouds as we feared that we would not be able to accomplish our production schedule and get the shots done that were much needed.

As it was the first day, I informed Adam and Nathan as our camera operators about the recommendation Lee gave me regarding the underexposure of the image. Together, during the first setup of the darker lighting scenario, we experimented with the aperture setting on camera to see which would look the darkest but also the most natural lighting with the fewest highlights from the sun. We found that and f-stop of 3.4 was the sweet spot for wider shots that best combined both aspects and thus we mostly stuck to that setting, apart from the (medium) close ups (sometimes blocked with a blanket) where we would end up as high as 2.4.

At the end of the first day, I can only say that I learned a lot about lighting, even though I am still nowhere near mastering it. I started to develop a better intuition of what might work and what might not, but I will still need to learn to control dark light settings. And I will need to actively practise it as well.

Furthermore, I will start to save up for a personal (and larger!) gel package over the summer break in order to have more variety in playing with lighting scenarios and colour combinations in the future.

References:

Castle Scaffold (2018) Homepage [online] http://www.castlescaffold.co.uk/ [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

Filmtools (2018) Matthews 48x48 Road Flag [online] http://www.filmtools.com/ligdep/lighting-control/scrims-and-flags/matthews-48-x-48-road-flag-double-scrim-169194.html [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

Flash Light (2018) Black Flag on Metal Frame [online] http://www.flash-light.co.uk/product/black-flag-on-metal-frame/ [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

Home Advice Guide (2018) Detailed Guide to Scaffolding Costs [online] http://www.homeadviceguide.com/a-detailed-guide-to-scaffolding-costs/ [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

Ladders and Scaffold Towers (2018) Scaffold Towers [online] https://www.laddersandscaffoldtowers.co.uk/acatalog/Scaffold-Towers.html [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

PD Scaffolding (2018) Homepage [online] http://pdscaffolding.co.uk/ [Accessed on 30 March 2018]

Scaffold North East (2018) Homepage [online] http://www.scaffoldnortheast.com/ [Accessed on 30 March 2018]