Rehearsing, Prepping and Lighting "The Pillars of Creation": An Odyssey
With principal photography for “The Pillars of Creation” beginning tomorrow and this shoot being heavily reliant on its set and lighting, this past week was all about rehearsals, setting up our set in what would be our auxiliary film studio – Room 64 – as well as taking out equipment and setting up my most elaborate lighting setup hitherto.
As such, we’ve not only extended our booking for our room by another week, we also started preparing the room by cleaning it out and double-checking the functionality of all the wall plugs. Whilst I already scouted Room 64 all the way back last November, checking on the plugs, the sound environment, and the lighting situation and finding it all in more than satisfactory condition, it was now high time that I double-checked these findings before the commencement of our shoot.
We furthermore conducted rehearsals on Monday!
Rehearsing Pillars - Monday, 9 March 2020
For Monday, we collectively scheduled a rehearsal with our main lead so that all of us would not only get used to one another, but also gain a better feeling of what working together would be like; in my case, how our main lead would behave on camera and how I need to react to him to capture the best footage possible.
And without much ado, here are the rehearsal clips as recorded on Monday!
Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 1
Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 2
Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 3
Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 4
Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 5
Prepping Pillars – Wednesday, 11 March 2020
In order to get all the preparations done in the most efficient way possible, we planned a total of three days for our setup time with about seven people (our entire crew plus a member of staff from Production Design) helping out.
Thus, we collectively cleared out the room, cleaned it, measured the final position of the set build and taped it down for reference, carried and rolled the set flats, props, tools, etc. from the new campus all the way back to the old campus and carried everything up the stairs, through the halls and round the corners.
This proved to be a helpful strategy as we were not only able to put up the set relatively quickly (we managed to be done with it even before lunch), but we were also able to take out the heavier pieces of equipment a day prior to our initial booking and setting them up in our newfound studio.
And whilst we were really effective on our first day of the setup, and during the course of the following days, we realised that set-dressing would take way longer than expected from everyone involved.
And this is where the real work began.
Prepping Pillars – Thursday and Friday, 12 and 13 March 2020
Following our previous loan of equipment on the Wednesday prior, we took out the rest of the missing equipment on Thursday and set it up in our unit base. And whilst the rest of our crew helped our production designer and art director Eline with preparing and distressing the set, I set out to get started on the realisation of my lighting plans.
As such, I prepared the basic layout for my lighting rig, which included the light board, the washers on their supports (American stands in our case), and the main power infrastructure. But since I needed other elements of my setup (like the green screen and the blocking out of windows) to be prepped first before I could reasonably begin to get my lighting settings done, I moved onto these aspects first.
Together with Nathan and Hannah, I then proceeded to collectively rigging our green screen for the windshield, which required support from the portable green screen and two double-wind ups. Since our windshield was so massive in size, and since we could not film in the studio, our portable green screen was just too small to begin with.
However, since we were aware of that fact ever since we settled of the measurements of our windshield, I booked out additional green screen fabric that has not been in use and simply collected dust in the studio/gallery. With this additional fabric pinched and with the help of Hannah and Nathan, we raised it hung over the portable setup and spread it across, pinning the ends to the set itself to guarantee that it would cover the entirety of the windshield.
Following that endeavour, Has and I then blocked out the windows in the room using black cardboard, which took us a solid three hours to accomplish, since the windows were rather high up and spread across three sides of the room, meaning that we would have to climb ladders constantly.
After having finished the preparation for all the other elements that would influence or be reliant on correct lighting, I was finally able to move into setting up the individual settings of my lighting according to my lighting plans:
Or so I thought.
Of Lighting Setups and Lighting Issues - An Odyssey
Following the Health and Safety guidelines in lighting that are prevalent in the UK film industry and additionally following the tips and guidelines that are presented in David E. Elkin's book "The Camera Assistant's Manual", I then proceeded onto rigging the lighting setup for "The Pillars of Creation".
What I estimated to be the work of roughly a day in setting up lights, finally turned out to cost me two full days and the assistance of our technician demonstrator in order to make the lighting work.
So what had happened? Let me walk you through my Odyssey of problems:
As I’ve already blogged about in my blog entry ”Creating an Artificial Sunrise: Of Lighting Workshops and Research on LED Strip Lights” and throughout the remainder of this module until now, I tested and experimented with our lighting equipment – and especially with our washers – on multiple occasions.
And even though I tested it only a few weeks ago, I was confronted with the fact that some of the lighting equipment had stopped working in the meantime. That in and of itself is no big news as we share our equipment across the years, and the occasional blown bulb is an expected occurrence, but this problem turned out to be of a bigger magnitude.
Out of the six washers that I took out in total, two of them had stopped working between me testing them and now. Out of these two lights, one simply did not turn on and this light should remain fried, as it could not even be revived by our technician demonstrator later down the line.
The other light however turned out to having an issue with its settings (it later turned out to be a motherboard issue), causing strobe-light effects whenever it was put onto the light board.
Since my lighting plan required one strong washer that would help light the green screen with the help of a green colour to make it pop on camera and especially for post and since I could not redistribute the remaining washers on set due to the sheer size of it, this posed to be a problem for my meticulous planning that required all six of the washers working.
In addition to all this, a different distribution of the LED washers would have caused lighting inconsistencies and would have ultimate rendered the lighting of the set itself a lot darker than it already was (depending on my lighting setup, we would sometimes drop at an correct exposure as low as 1.4, sometimes even 0.7, with the average exposure being 2 for our project).
As such, whilst it was obvious that the first of the afore-mentioned washers would need replacing with red heads or blonde floods instead (the only other lighting equipment that we would have at our disposal), I dedicated my time to finding a solution for the second one that seemed to be having a fit. Thus, I singled it out for testing.
Following the very trusty method of process of elimination, I conducted a couple of lighting tests on that washer. As such, I was able to find out that it was fine on its own whenever it was set to be a Master light in any chain and on its own. However, when it was set to be a Slave, will say receive and apply the information distributed by another washer, it would freak out and start strobing or fading.
After a couple of rounds of testing, it was obvious to me that two different settings were constantly overruling each other, causing the issue. As such, and since I had the most promising results this way, I figured that I would put this particular light as a Master and the rest as Slaves.
Whilst this intermediate solution worked better, it did not alleviate the problem completely as the order of how I daisy-chained the lights and turned them on sometimes cancelled the previous Master setting on the afflicted washer, undoing my previous work.
Furthermore, due to the fact of how much power one main lead could and of how they had to be wired and plugged into the power supply due to the layout of the room itself, my experiment was short-ended once I moved to the opposite side of the room and had to set the lighting of the other three washers as well.
Since the power supply for one washer can provide power for up to two more washers before the capacity is gone, it was obvious that I had to put three of my washers onto one circuit and the (initially) other three to another circuit to make this work. However, that created a different problem as the entire system only ever followed the washer that was being set first from the power outlet, automatically rendering it a Master itself.
And since there can never be two masters in the same house, their individual information overrode each other. Whilst this should technically not become a problem if both Masters are set to the exact same setting, it turned into a whole different problem with the confused washer from the beginning.
This issue was further enhanced when taking the light board into account to which I feed everything into. With the confused washer, the settings on the light board did not seem to be the same compared to the last time I tested it.
All in all, and after systematically and individually going through each and every setting on the washer as well as on the light board, I realised that I required assistance from our technician demonstrator in order to not only narrow down the issue with the washer, but also to understand the concept of the light board setup.
The Odyssey Continues – More Lighting Issues
But if you think that this was the end of the lighting issues encountered on these two days, you’re wrong. Whilst bringing in our technician demonstrator clearly upped the level of knowledge on set, it still took us a lot of effort to find out what the issue could be.
After finding out that this washer furthermore operated with a slightly different setup than the others (its colours were slightly redder than the rest due to a difference in its pre-sets), we tried sorting this issue. Although the difference wasn’t massive and only ever visible to the naked eye if you pointed it out, we did not want to leave it to chance just to find out in post that it doesn't work.
But even though our technician and I tried many different settings and tried offsetting the internal setup by just as much information that the washer would match up perfectly with the rest, the confused light remained confused.
As such, and after another long round of experimentation, we lastly managed to put the confused washer onto a setting that allowed it to go on the light board without freaking out too much. It was at this point that we knew that the motherboard must have taken a hit, and it was at this point that I had to take different measures.
As such, and for anything that required light effects to change mid-take, I disconnected the light from the light board and let it sit on its own, being turned off, whilst for every other lighting scenario I decided to let it sit on the system as another Master (cause, remember, it only ever freaked out if it was enslaved. It did not like to be enslaved, it was pretty much stubborn in its approach to sentience. Remember where you heard it first when the Rise of the Machines begins).
Since we only had limited control over this light but also could not replace it with any other solution to the same satisfying degree, I decided to place it at a position in the set where we planned to only rarely film to, disguising the difference in lighting for that particular area.
Furthermore, and due to its stubbornness, it remained obvious that this light would not be fit for use in the artificial sunrise that I planned early on in the script (and that I’ve already talked about in my previous blog entry “Creating an Artificial Sunrise: Of Lighting Workshops and Research on LED Strip Lights”. Back then, I only ruled out the option of achieving the artificial sunrise with the help of our LED strips, referring it further to the setup as described above. Now, and especially with the issues at hand, it was obvious that we would not be able to manage that artificial sunrise to the same degree and might forfeit it altogether.
Lastly, with the fried washer (that was finally taken out of commission) left to sort out, I had to additionally book out two more Flo lights and a red head kit as a replacement to ensure that the green screen is evenly lit. This required me to rig two Flo lights close to the floor and one redhead (prepped with an 1.2 ND filter and scrim) further away from the green screen to manage as even a spread and exposure as possible.
Whilst the extensive replacement of green screen lighting initially seemed to have sorted all this issues, it caused another string of problems: One of the light bulbs in the red head kit was already fried upon testing and needed to be returned to have the bulb replaced.
This process was repeated once more when the bulb of the second red head blew a few hours later, requiring replacement as well. Since I still planned to have at least another red head on standby in case we required it as a key light for our main lead, it was obvious that we would need to have it replaced.
More on Lighting – The Odyssey Coming to An End
However, my job as DoP was not done yet. Since our scripted cryotank needed lighting, and a kicker light needed rigging in the middle of the set, as well as the lighting panels being lined, I set about finishing the rest of my job.
As such, I continued by lighting and lining the cryotank, which back currently consists of a polyboard (that has been covered and lined with fire-resistant white table cloth to disguise the fact that it is a polyboard) and using a Felloni2 in the bottom as a light source.
Last but not least, I proceeded to rigging our kicker light, which needed to go above head and that was to be used for most of the scenes. Since the set needed support beams on the top anyways, I asked a member of staff from Production Design whether it would be possible to rig a Felloni 2 with a maximum of 3kg onto the rig itself, which was confirmed by him.
Thus I rigged the Felloni2 using two clamps, a magic arm and three safety chains, ensuring that the weight was not only evenly distributed across the two beams and its connecting point, but also that gravity would help keep everything locked in place. Using three safety chains, I thus ensured that they were connected onto three different areas on the beams and that the light itself, the magic arm, and the clamps itself were secured.
With this setup, we not only had our own splendid kicker light ready, we also had a lot of versatility as it could still be twisted and turned to accustom any lighting requirements on my part. With a battery rigged to its back end, it was furthermore flexible to swap out, making it the most versatile Felloni2 setup I’ve hitherto created.
Putting sheets of heat resistant scrim in front of the openings of the light panels to allow for a more unified design, I was able to diffuse the light coming from the washers that were set up 1.5m away from them, whilst simultaneously hiding the lights behind them.
After that was done, and all the relevant lights set up, appropriately plugged in (no more than 2KW per circuit), and all the cables tied down, we were one massive step closer to starting principle photography on Monday.
These lighting issues ended up costing me two full days to amend despite extensive testing in the course of this module. Who would have thought of the struggles of the lighting department, huh? And although there is still a fair bit of work left to do and we will need to push our shooting schedule for Monday a bit behind, I am convinced that we will be able to commence principal photography without too much of a delay.
Just goes to show that you can be as prepared as possible, issues still might arise. Let’s just hope that the rumours surrounding Covid-19 won’t fulfil themselves.
References:
Box, H. (2010) The Set Lighting Technician's Handbook. Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution. Fourth Edition. Routledge Press: Abingdon.
Elkins, D. (2013) The Camera Assistant's Manual. Sixth Edition. Focal Press: New York and London.
Hartle, S. (2020) Creating an Artificial Sunrise: Of Lighting Workshops and Research on LED Strip Lights. [online] Available at: https://sveahartle.wixsite.com/sveaexmachina/single-post/2020/01/26/Creating-an-Artificial-Sunrise-Of-Lighting-Workshops-and-Research-on-LED-Strip-Lights [Accessed on 14 March 2020].
Health and Safety Executive (n.d.) Film, TV and broadcasting. [online] Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/entertainment/theatre-tv/film.htm [Accessed on 14 March 2020].
Health and Safety Executive (n.d.) Health and Safety in Audio-visual Production. Your Legal Duties. [PDF] Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg360.pdf [Accessed on 14 March 2020].
Svea Hartle. (2020) Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 1. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/hKoU2GpTaaE [Accessed on 24 May 2020].
Svea Hartle. (2020) Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 2. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/PPK3qYUz4kc [Accessed on 24 May 2020].
Svea Hartle. (2020) Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 3. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/oLcMz2cQY3g [Accessed on 24 May 2020].
Svea Hartle. (2020) Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 4. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/XUFGb3rTfAk [Accessed on 24 May 2020].
Svea Hartle. (2020) Rehearsals for "The Pillars of Creation", Pt. 5. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/UJHbq067_UQ [Accessed on 24 May 2020].