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We shot that sequence at dawn and at dusk, scheduling some of the shots to follow a day scene or before a night scene. Some shots were nowhere near the location where the drug deal takes place so we had to connect them to other work.
You post three very different lighting setups. A fresnel lamp projects a sharp beam of light but that is relative to how close to the lamp the subject is. Similarly, any cut between the lamp and the subject will will never produce a sharp shadow if it is close to the lamp, as in the case of a barn door. The further away the cut the sharper the shadow will be. For the effect in that Skyfall reference, I was not attempting to create a very sharp shadow and had, in fact, used a Hampshire diffusion on the opening that is the cut. Shadow sharpness is all about distance and diffusion.
I think the best advice is be prepared. Storyboard your wish list and keep it simple. You can always embellish your shots if you find you have time. If you have storyboards you can break down what can be shot at dawn and what it dusk. There might also be some you could shoot during the day as long as there is cloud cover.
The camera was mounted at 90º to a rod that extended out from the side of a dolly. It was a kind of ‘spit’, as if you were rotating a hog over a fire. The rod was long enough that the dolly never entered frame.
I would like to point out that one shot in 2001, the scene in which they discover the obelisks, involved the compositing of some 28 separate elements onto a single piece of negative. Imagine passing that same negative through an optical printer 28 times to overlay these elements in perfect registration. And you don’t think Kubrick would have loved to use CGI?
To comment on the first post from Stefano. Protection from a bare bulb is tricky. You can cover the bulb with a wire mesh but that will interfere a little with the sharpness of the emitted light. That was a compromise we used for whenever an actor was below or close to a source. However, for the one corridor shot with the vertical slashes of light we felt there was no need for protection as the bulbs were a ways away from an actor.
As far as lighting a stadium for a 400 meter track race, I couldn’t say. Presumably, the existing location has built in lighting. Whether I would use it or not would depend on many factors: the script, the shots required, budget, the length of the shoot, whether slow motion is involved. I’m sure there are a few more. However, I would suggest that it is most common to augment existing light sources rather than start from scratch. I did light one stadium for a night shoot and I just was not allowed enough units to do justice to the scene – regardless that I had three 96K Musco lights!
The bleach bypass was originally done on all the prints rather than the camera negative. Consequently, as neither Mike nor I were involved in the transfers, none of the previous digital versions of 1984 truly reflected the original. I did oversee the Criterion version so I would say it is more faithful to our original intent.
So many ways to shoot these kinds of shots today but in 1966, what James Wong Howe achieved in Seconds was quite striking. The why of it is beside the point.
The key fob was just what is was whereas the oil lamp was rigged with a small quartz bulb. I could film by the light of the key fob but, for Jesse Jesse and shooting on film, I needed more light than what the real oil lamp would have given me.
For color temperature the oil lamp was rigged with a high wattage bulb than I strictly needed so that it could be dimmed down and appear as the color of a flame.
You choose the practical source bearing in mind how its light will play in the scene. In neither of the situations you refer to would it have been possible to add additional light, whether to dummy the practical or as a totally separate source, without changing the feel of the scene. Inside the hole there was, by definition, no other source. And a moonlight for the train sequence? A very different scene.
I’m sure you could calculate it. Simply use as a reference a series of household bulbs on a batten strip. Relate the distance between the bulbs to the distance to the subject at which the multiple shadows appear negligible and then scale up. I’m sure you could make the definitive graph in this way but I just make a guess based on my past use of multiples.
The numbers of lamps and the distance towards the subject were calculated to minimize the multiple shadow issue. If you looked at the light on your hand you could see every shadow but when there is movement etc. that is not noticeable in the frame.
The doubles, singles etc. referred to scrims, or wires, that act as an ND in front of a lamp and which I used to reduce the light at the ends of each row. The middle of the row was always at full intensity and slightly spotted in. The outsides were slightly more flooded out and contained progressively more dense wires. I felt this technique softened the shadows, while the length of the rows ‘wrapped’ the light around the subject.
Most of the close shots of Mattie were lit using a bounce source closer in. The lights set for the main action would not have reached her as we shot her at a different spot which was easier to access. Some close shots were made later in a studio.
The fight in Vegas was shot to be a little longer and there were many more lighting changes during the “show” but slapstick? I don’t think so. And I have no memory of a “magnificent aerial sequence” in the rain. I will have to ask Joe when I see him.
