Large-Scale 158’x100′ Sound Stage lighting

[schaefferdop]

Hello, everyone.

I am working in India on a feature film that is heavy on VFX; we are doing large-scale war scenes with 200-300 extras at times to be extended to 1000s. The stage has a full blue screen wrap curtain.

Looks I need to create:

DAY- EXT/INT overcast (war scene), twilight, dawn/sunrise, blue hour, full sun 9am-ish angle.

Night – EXT/INT Moonlight, large Fire, explosions flash

I will be shooting @ 800 ISO ARRI LF. I want to light to 5.6 for the option of high speed. The directors have asked for 100FPS at times. I have explosions and fire ball that I want to create dynamic lighting with DMX and Pixel mapping. LED and DMX lighting is a must.

I have multiple large sound stages to light: 2 x (158 ft x 100 ft x 48 ft) and another 2x 100 ft x 70 ft x 40 ft).

My local gaffer has offered up a plan that I am NOT in love with:

Baselight: from above with 6 differnt  20′ x 20′ x 7′ soft boxes distributed overhead. with 12 x CreamSource Vortex Space X lighting each box.

Cross Key Light:  24x of 12 bank Maxibrute: FilmGear®’s RGB LED in different positions around the stage rigged at 35-40 ft. with diffusion in front.

Blue screen wash: with a cheaper light. that I am having trouble finding a good solution for. I want to use Kinos, but finding a good vendor to get the number of lights that is needed is tricky. Plus, I have been warned that the tubes will be fake and the light will be inconsistent. I need to test this theory. We have a quote to do it with ECL LED 1ftx2ft, but it seems a waste of $$ plus I need 170x for each stage.

My question is, why build those softboxes? if it means we have to light the blue separately, so why not just use 120x Vortex Space X build as a spacelite @ 10ft spacing and use the outside line of spacelites to light the blue screen? What is the downside to this thinking? What am I not thinking of?

This is the 1st time I have done this kind of lighting at this scale; please give me guidance.

I am coming to this conclusion. After reading the post by Rodger for BLADERUNNER 2049 – VEGAS EXT & ANNA’S LAB. I really want something simple, and the lighting plan that Roger did for that stage seems like something similar will work for me. He is not using Blue Screen, so I want to know if it would work for that as well.

I will have a working package of lights and can bring in extras for special scenes.

What do you think?

cheers

Joel

Topic

[Roger Deakins]

I don’t want to give specific advice for something I am not familiar with. Your gaffer obviously has something specific in mind.

An array of Spacelites is an option that has worked on a great many films over the years and with LEDs can be even more versatile. Not sure the blue screen would need additional light either.

[Author]

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