Occasionally I get the opportunity to try something new (it's always useful to add a new skill under your belt), and today it was the opportunity to get involved in some lighting.
Today's TIGI S-Factor shoot was centred around a paparazzi theme. There were 3 looks and 3 scenarios. The aim. To capture a moment of beauty and glamour amongst the chaotic environment created by the surrounding paparazzi.
To capture these "moments", DOP Brendan McGinty would be shooting on the Phantom 4K provided by Love High Speed. The additional footage would be shot on the RED Dragon.
High speed photography requires a lot of light and this can usually be a challenge in itself, but not the challenge we were facing this time around. Director Michael Lindsay was more concerned with timing as this would be key to capturing that frozen moment in time.
Professional film lighting has an interface called DMX that allows the lighting head to be controlled and manipulated remotely traditionally via a lighting desk. Having researched in to various solutions, I was confident I could put together a solution that would allow for the control, precision and repeatability of the lighting that Michael was looking for.
The solution I settled on involved a combination of the Vista v2 software and Vista M1 Control Surface from Jands Lighting.
Having a short time frame to get myself up to speed on quite a complex area of filming (respect to all you gaffers out there), I appreciated the familiar approach that the Vista software adopted:
"Like modern video and audio software, the Vista displays your designs as a series of ’events‘ laid out across the screen over time. This ’timeline‘ approach means that you can see everything that‘s happening in relation to time: when lights come on, when they go off, when they change colour, when they move. " (http://jands.com/vista/about/)
I was able to very quickly put together and adjust as required, quite complicated lighting scenarios, triggering multiple lights within milliseconds of each other.
The M1 control surface itself is completely customisable and has no real function until it is assigned one. I used it as a method of manually manipulating key fixtures in the lighting rig (i.e. to create paparazzi style lighting flashes), as well as triggering pre-programmed lighting events.
Have a look at the video below to see the results of one of the looks.
Shot on: Phantom Flex4K and RED Dragon
The lights used in the DMX setup were:
4x Cineo TruColor HS, 2x Cineo Maverick, K5600 Joker 1600, 2x Arri L7-C, Licht Technik DarkVader Dimmer/Shutter.
