Total Confidence -- Zero Ego (Take 1)

I want to start this article off with a big thanks to Celeste Olds and the CreativeLIVE crew and to Vincent Laforet and his crew of Marcus Del Negro and Justin (sorry, I never got your last name).

This all started a little over a week ago. I was in Las Vegas at a Scott Bourne and Bambi Cantrell workshop and I received a message from Celeste that she wanted me to come in as a gaffer on the Laforet workshop. My initial reaction was panic. Gaffer? I'm a still photographer. Yes, I can light things. But I don't know all the technical terms that the film industry uses. I use extension cords, not stingers. I called Celeste on a break and expressed my doubt. She kindly ignored it. So I told her, OK, I'll call Vince and talk to him and see what he thinks. Celeste told me to go ahead and call, but don't sell myself short. At this point I'm still thinking that Vince is going to ask me some questions and say, "Next!" But I moved ahead with it.

I called Vince. I told him I was a "stills guy" but had done some work on a 48-hour film and some other set lighting. He asked for my website and said he would call back in a few minutes. He did. He mentioned that we'd be going for a film noir shadowy look in one of the pieces for the weekend, he liked the lighting on some of my figure photography. And then he  asked to have Marcus call me back to go over the gear list. Uh, Oh! Sounds like I'm in.

I worked with Celeste and Adam at CreativeLIVE to assemble their gear and some extra equipment rented from Glazer's Camera in Seattle (just a few blocks from the CL studio). We were able to get some of the things that Vince and Markus requested. We also had some equipment similar to their requests. Not quite everything, so still a little nervous.

Vince and I got to meet for the first time on Wednesday evening. We looked at the spaces available and decided on the daylight side (Chase Jarvis's studio) for the documentary and on the CreativeLIVE side for the narrative. A little relief! The lighting for Saturday was going to be relatively easy. But the narrative...

As Vince mentioned on Sunday, there were a number of challenges. We had a 20' foot ceiling and no lift or tall ladder. We wanted to light directly from above with a spot and some diffusion. But that just wasn't going to happen considering time and budget. What to do. We will light from off to the side and high up. We had light stands that could go up high enough. But what about adjusting the light? This is where it got scary. CreativeLIVE has a balcony in the studio. So I mounted a heavy ellipsoidal spot light that I brought from home on a Hi-Hi stand with a heavy duty boom arm. Loaded the base with sand bags, enlisted a couple of other folks from the crew and hoisted the light up to the height we wanted. I then rolled the still top heavy stand over to the balcony. Made adjustments, rolled it back to the set. Changed my mind. Rolled it to the balcony, final adjustments, back to the set. Standing on the balcony was OK, but holding onto the light as it swayed back and forth way up there was disconcerting. It was just as bad on Sunday night when we disassembled the set. It wasn't a paralyzing height fear. I was able to do what I needed to do. It was just plain uncomfortable. Even more appreciation now for all my aerial artist and rigging friends. You are all amazing.

Anyway, I've now gone totally off my original topic/theme for this post. I started with thanking the crew and wanted to talk about being on a crew and how different it can be from still photography working on your own. I guess another post is coming up later today. But I do want to reiterate my thanks to Vince, Justin, and Marcus for making me feel totally a valuable part of the crew. Thanks, guys!!!

Sure wish I had taken some photos of us setting up. But we were on a tight schedule, staying around til after 11pm on both Friday and Saturday nights to get the sets constructed and lit, while anticipating an 8am call time the next day. So I appologize for all this text.

Creative Live and Vincent Laforet day three - cutaway shot

I almost forget to go over one more set we had for the workshop. We had another female actor in to play the part of the wife on the phone and we filmed some cutaway scenes of her talking on a telephone.

I only got a chance to take a quick phone camera photo of one of the in-studio monitors:

For this scene we set up a black duvateen flag as the background and lit the actor with a 400w Bron HMI light (see the documentary post for info about this light) directly from the the front of her (camera left). We also added a Litepanel (see the narrative post for info about this light) directly behind her to add a little fill to her ear and the telephone she was holding.

Pretty simple, but very powerful look. Thanks so much to Shyn Midili at Freakishly Beautiful for the makeup and to Lorraine ONeal for the wardrobe.

Creative Live and Vincent Laforet day three - narrative drama

On Sunday, March 6, I was the gaffer on a CreativeLive workshop with film maker Vincent Laforet. If you read my last post you know that on Saturday we filmed a short documentary that we lit with a mixture of window light and daylight balanced lighting units.

On Sunday we moved over to another set and worked with tungsten lights. I didn't get to take many photos (just the one above) on this set because it was much more complicated and I had to keep on my toes during set up and filming. But I've drawn out a diagram of the set here:

You can see that we had three walls. The back wall was a bank of windows that we covered up with sheets of foam core to keep out the daylight as it would have overpowered our set lights and gave everything a blue cast because we were color balanced for the much yellower tungsten lights.

What Vincent really wanted was to have an overhead spot light over the desk. But we had 20+ foot ceilings with no access to a power lift or a giant ladder. So we used a 1000 watt ellipsoidal spotlight (#5 in the diagram) on a very tall C-stand pointing over the wall we had built on the left side of the set. This was probably the scariest part of the workshop. We had this heavy light raised about 18 feet into the air. Moving that light stand around to position it was tricky. We had three of four sandbags on the base to lower the center of gravity. I'm glad we've taken that light down and don't have to deal with it any longer.

We then added 4 650-watt DeSisti Fresnel spots with barn doors for accents. I wasn't able to find the DeSisti lights to show, but they are very similar to these Arri Fresnel Lamps that I have used on other projects. #1 pointed at and skimmed the brick wall behind the desk, illuminating the side of the clock on the wall. That still left the clock face dark, so #2 was added to light up the clock. #3 provided a pool of light on the packages on the desk and filled in some shadows on the front of the desk. #4 added a slash of light diagonally on the wall and was aimed at the door handle.  You can see two of these 650s in the photo at the top of this post above the crew members.

As one of the actors was going to be filmed at the door, we added a 1000 watt light in a 12"x50" strip light (a narrow softbox) above the door, pointing down to his position. The lamp head was a Photoflex Starlight QL in a Westcott strip bank.

This was our basic set up for the establishing shots and the action shots taken looking towards the desk. When we turned the camera around to to the reverse angles (seeing the female actor's face, and the male actor going to and from the door) we added a Litepanels Bi-Color light in beauty light position (almost directly over the camera) for the female and re-purposed light #2 from the diagram to point towards the door in the wall, being diffused by the 4'x4' opal diffusion screen that we used yesterday with the 800w HMI light for the male to light his face and separate him from the background wall and door. The Litepanels Bi-Color allowed us to dial in the warmer color temperature we needed to balance with all the tungsten lamps on set.

We then finished up detail shots, such as a closeup of the male actor's hand going to the telephone and a close up of the packages on the desk using the Litepanels and moving them around as needed to give the light we wanted.

At this point, I don't know if the narrative will get edited and uploaded. If it does, I will be sure to post a link to it in a future blog. But in the meantime, I have a couple of YouTube videos showing the crew blocking the scene and the actors in place: