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Not so many takes on any scene. The scene with Ron eating the chips was quite a few and I felt for that actor.
We had tested the fireworks before the shoot as well as their positioning. We needed a low tide so that they could be set off from the beach and they were just off the shelf fireworks. I metered the scene in the foreground and let the fireworks fell where they might. It was just the same as on ‘Skyfall’ though some on that film were added in post whereas everything in ‘Empire’ was in camera.
Interesting comments. I would have said a 32mm but I see the trend is towards wider lenses. Shooting a close up on a 25mm or a 27mm is something I have done in. the past and would do again in the right circumstances but I doubt that often.
I was shooting film and I used a regular shutter opening.
A plate shot on an 18mm, for instance, from the same camera position as the main camera shot, if that is a 40mm, will not match. Both the perspective and the lens distortion will be different. If you are shooting a wide background and selecting a part of that background to match with your main camera shot then it is viable and only what is done on the ‘volume’. But shooting a specific plate for a specific background is different.
I used branches on a revolving pipe rig to mimic the trees that were in the plate. We had the plate playing on a small screen so we could judge the speed and timing with the background.
That was about it. We also shot our plates at a specific time of day to justify the sunlight playing on the car interor..
We never had any color references of Dreamland so I was not aware of that. The balroom was done out in an Asian style, with lots of gold etc., so the yellow would have made sense.
For ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ we chose the shots we would be shooting in the car and recorded the angle to the car, height off the ground and lens length. When we shot our plates we used these references.
The times I have used projection we also shot with the same lens length that we would use for the main action. If you shoot a 360º then it follows that you have more flexibility with your actual shots but you might still want to be careful with what lenses you use.
There is a lot more involved than dynamic range when it comes to a camera’s performance but wider dynamic range does have a substantial impact on the image. Now, whether your particular scene needs that kind of range is another question and one only you can answer.
Yes, the space faced North East and we shot on two evenings. Luckily for us the weather matched pretty well. I did have extra lighting outside the window on two scissors lifts. This was very low level bounce light using simply 8′ x 4′ sheets of polystyrene. The lights running along the promenade are ones we had rigged and were set to dimmers between each set of lamp posts. And, yes, I chose the yellow window gel with our Production Designer.
I do. Although I like a film to feel naturalistic I have still used inspiration from films of the 40s and 50s. Some of the lighting in films from ‘Homicide’ to ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ is not exactly natural but, hopefully, appears natural. I feel the same when watching ‘Kiss me Deadly’, one of my all time favorite ‘B’ movies, the lighting was part of the whole and in that sense felt completely ‘natural’.
There were LED tubes in those ceiling panels and no additional sources. The lamps I used to bounce were Geminis 2′ x 1′ panels, or an equivalent style of LED to make up the number.
The rest area was part of the composite set that included the lobby and staircase to the screening rooms. The whole thing was built on location in an empty lot, where a prior building had been demolished. These particular scenes were the most difficult for me as there was only a few feet of clearance outside the windows and, although I wanted to make daylight the primary light source that was impossible. The ‘fluorescent’ fixtures were a compromise but I felt they would make the area look like a work space and make a contrast with the more elaborate lobby. About five feet from the windows there was a ‘stage wall’ and I had this painted white with some texture on the area we woudl see in picture. Then I used the higher part as a bounce.
The practical lighting would really depend on the kind of club it was. If its an old place a bare bulb could work or a simple fluorescent tube. If you use a tube you could justify it being an odd color, which may or may not work for the scene. As for the club other than its toilet, I would always look at what exists and then decide if I want to use it or not. That really is a personal choice and a financial one as well.
Your idea of using mirrors to lessen the falloff should help. You might want to try silver stipple and a lighter diffusion, such as a brush silk, which will make the source a little softer but somewhat directional. A heavy diffusion near the window will tend to spread the light wider.
The light level imbalance can be reduced by pulling stop but it could also be nice that things fall off into deep shadow away from the windows. That really depends on the scene and the location and impossible to make a judgement from here!
