Large-Scale Sun Simulation Through church Vitraux – Feature Film Setup

[Chop13]

Hello everyone,

I’m prepping a feature and facing a rather tricky lighting setup in a very unforgiving location.

We’re shooting about a quarter of the film inside a church that we’re transforming into an art gallery. The key character – the artist – walks from one painting to another throughout the sequence, so we need a consistent yet cinematic ambient design.

We’ll be shooting with two ARRI Mini LF cameras and a set of Leica R lenses.

Here’s what we have in terms of lighting gear:

12 × 4K HMI
3 × 9K HMI
1 × 12K HMI
1 × 18K HMI

We also have access to a 100m telescopic crane.
The idea is to create a sunlight simulation through the central stained-glass window using a grid rig on the crane: 6 × 4K, 2 × 9K, and 1 × 18K aimed through that main window.

Inside, we’re integrating Astera Titan tubes (hidden in the art installation walls) for large paintings and Helios tubes for smaller pieces. We’ll also use Kino Celebs, Diva-Lites, and Lightmates for gentle fill and sculpting.

Now, the issue: the stained glass is quite dense, which might reduce the impact of our exterior rig.

The goal is to design one big lighting setup, with the option to erase rigs or mounts in post, as we’ll keep the camera mostly floating around the space.

Any suggestions on how to handle the density of the glass?

And if you’ve tackled similar “artificial sun through stained glass” setups, I’d love to hear about your approach (especially with haze, light loss, or pre-diffusion).

Link to the scouting and model

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Hamza

Topic

[Roger Deakins]

I once projected a Wendy light through a dense, leaded window. It worked well but we were lucky the lead didn’t melt! But you shouldn’t have a similar problem with HMIs.

The rig of lights you propose would seem to have to occupy a large space, rather than form a point source like the sun. A single ArriMax 18K would give a more defined beam and the lamp could be rigged further from the window. If you wanted even more light, given an LF can be rated at 1600 without noticeable loss, you could overlap two of these lamps and still have a sharp beam. I would have one above the other so the beam is sharpest in the horizontal axis where it would be more apparent.

[Chop13]

Thank you Sir for your feedback.

I will Go with the Arrimax 18K !

[Author]

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