Tungsten Lights?

[hmc4me]

Hi
Is a light kit worth the investment or do the low cost options I see here do just as good of a job with super8. I know when you shoot 16 and 35 that you almost have to have a dedicated light kit.

Thanks
Anthony collins

[studiocarter]

ftp://ftp.filmshooting.com/upload/video ... HLIGHT.MPG
This clip was made with a Cannon 814 xle Super 8 camera using K40 indoors on a gray rainy day in front of a TV set. Back lit was supplimented with a tiny pencil flashlight. Also, it was only shot at 9fps and used the 220 degree shutter.
In my old house I changed all the lamp sockets to high wattage 3 way lights in order to try using available light. It almost works, but was grainy as H. Also, I tried ektachrome 125(?) R8mm pushed one stop faster, but I had to use the slow speed again and the lens wide open anyway.
Industrial lights on tripods were used by members of the Bristol Cine Club, and still are; they are much cheaper and were fitted with barn doors.
My movie called, The Find, here on this site was complimented on the use of lights indoors. There were two banks of many lights and a couple of spots in reflectors, whatever I had; it is a huge collection of old home movie lights.
Conclusion, there is almost no way to get control of lighting in any way approaching artistic quality without the proper tools. Close, yes, almost, yes, pretty good, yes; in control? no. Lighting rations and various styles will be out of reach, and just forget about really lighting up the room in the background.
A couple movies could be made without them. After that, a good lighting person and a sound person will be much in demand.
I have a LOT of available light sample clips that I have made. Many different films and formats were used. I'd like to see other film makers' available light clips posted here that use much faster films, even negative film. It just may be possible to get some good and even better results.

[hmc4me]

I have one short scene in my upcoming short that will be inside and the rest will be outside shots.
Do you have a pic or video of the ektachrome?

I am going to do some test shots and see what I come up with in the next few weeks but I don't want to waste any more film than I have to. Im on film budget of $500 for film and transfer. The short is going to be about 10min long and I guess I will shoot 4:1 and just have all it transfered at one time and pick the best parts. Im going to have a lot of cuts in the film so it will be better that way instead of tring to pick out clips I like offhand.

I have a budget for a light kit but I would rather use that money on something else right now. I don't want to purchase a light kit and only use it for 30seconds of this movie.
Im going to shoot at the end of april and I will be doing another short around July and want to shoot 16mm on it and I want to wait till then to purchase the light kit.

I do have some old stage lights that I can setup and they put out a lot of light. I may do some test with them to see what I can come up with.
I will post pics as soon as I can get the test shots done.
Thanks
Anthony Collins

[jobes]

these are the best lights ive used for indoor situations
if you need something for one shoot just find a tv hire place i paid about £50 for a DIVA kit for the day,but if you can splash out go for it
http://www.kinoflo.com/

[Guest]

Yea, but it is in Div-X form and I can't edit from the clip in Premiere as a result. The image is very grainy and not quite light enough, orangish. It is not a good option in my opinion. It almost looks like smokey int with candle lights and that is pretty neat if that is what you want.
Better results were always had with at least old home movie lights and pleanty of them.

[sunrise]

I second the Kinoflo, THIS MUSICVIDEO was shot using existing lights from windows, powerfull bulbs in existing lamps and a small kinoflo for filler.

Mind, this was shot on tri-x to be able to say: Where you can see you can shoot. With a slower film you might want a larger setup.

sunrise

[studiocarter]

ftp://ftp.filmshooting.com/upload/video ... rytime.avi

This one was NOT pushed one stop, another was and it was brighter.

ektachrome storytime has music, is 2 minutes and 27 seconds long, and has 3.72MB in it, reincoded from a DivX into a MS-WMV9. 304x228, 15fps, audio by a relative: Microsoft ADPCM,22,050 Hz, 4 Bit, Mono.

Regular 8 mm Ektachrome film was shot in available light only. It was processed by hand. It was a telecini transfer. TC-20.

Melita and James in the living room on the green chair. Melita reads James a story after dinner 1-16-99.

Cine color 125 Ektachrome. Regular 8mm, VNF, The film was one month out of date. It had been in the frig most of the time.

The light meter was set on close ups of heads only, then backed out to frame up the shot.

All the shots were underexposed and too dark. Why? The film was old. The meter may be off cause of the (zink air) battery. From now on, overexpose a little and keep it fresh. Bracket for at least one correct lighting exposure per shot! Room lighting for the live action was existing upgraded room lamps: 5 x 60w bulbs in the ceiling light, 3 x 150w floor lamps, one 300w floor lamp by the chair. Most shots were F2.8 at 18 fps with the Bolex P1 hand held, figured 1/30 sec at 1.6 foot candles.

The entire thing was posted because of some of the close ups. The exit shot at the end has solorization in it that is very cool looking but doesn't show on this transfer. I should do it again with a 3ccd camera and my WorkPrinter full sized.

[calgodot]

I second the Kinoflo, THIS MUSICVIDEO was shot using existing lights from windows, powerfull bulbs in existing lamps and a small kinoflo for filler.

I really dig that video. All the Nouvelle Vague homage really makes me smile. That is one sweet Caddy. Early 70s model?

Q: Those arcs of light on the wall as she walks down the hallway: did you place practicals or something in those fixtures, or use the available bulbs?

Q: How did you deal with sync issues with vocals or instruments? Crystal or wild?

I've stumbled into shooting a music video for a signed band to coincide with their first CD release. Which is ironic because you'd have to look pretty hard to find someone who hates music videos more than I do (which is why I got tagged for this, I'm told: the band hates videos too, and they dig S8).

At first the "technical issues" seemed overwhelming. Especially regarding the "live performance" segment: time code, playback, etc. You seem to have just winged it and gotten excellent results. (They love your video by the way. I showed it to them to convince them to use B&W. We are instead shooting in color neg [50D and 100T] because the agency would prefer it. But the band liked your Tri-X so much they want to shoot a second video in all B&W.)

That's a good song, too. The tune is stuck in my head, going round and round!

[sunrise]

That is one sweet Caddy. Early 70s model?

That is a nice car. Even with the sides down it's still warm on the front seats, but not on the back seats where we sat. And it was freezing that day! I don't know how old it is, but it turned out to be to most expensive part of the filming, which is more ore less typical of me. For 'Blue Balloon' we managed to borrow a 1958 camping trailer but the transport to and from the studio was troublesome. One of my future projects involves an old Lodon bus...

Q: Those arcs of light on the wall as she walks down the hallway: did you place practicals or something in those fixtures, or use the available bulbs?

Existing lights. I can't remember if was 40W or 60W but most likely the latter. That shot was not planned from the beginning. After doing all the planned shots we had about half a roll left, so we did a few thinghs that would act as filler. We were not shure how it would turn out, but it ended up being the first shot in the finished video.

Q: How did you deal with sync issues with vocals or instruments? Crystal or wild?

Wild. Synching up the band was easy. It's not that many performance shots, so it wasn't a big task. But it does limit the editing a bit having to keep synch.
For the dialogue we clapped and recorded reference sound on a mp3 recorder. The recorder messed up, so we ended up with only a few lines of dialogue. The girls dialogue was recorded after editing while watching the scene. She did this rather well, I think.

Thanks for your nice comments. I think it's great when somebody who doesn't normally do music videos make one. It can show something different about the genre.

For a future project I'm going to shoot K-40, but will most likely make it b/w in post. This is for budget reasons, it cuts the expenses of film down to half. You could try the same thing, go along with the colour and then just remove colours in post.
We talked about doing it for 'Nowhere near alright' to get that 50's look. Seems that colour film act the same way as b/w films in the 50's-60's when having colour removed. This was the way 'The man who wasn't there' was done.

Looking forward to hear your experiences in the music video genre. Any chance of seing it when it's done?

cheers,
sunrise

[matt5791]

I have one short scene in my upcoming short that will be inside and the rest will be outside shots.
Do you have a pic or video of the ektachrome?

I am going to do some test shots and see what I come up with in the next few weeks but I don't want to waste any more film than I have to. Im on film budget of $500 for film and transfer. The short is going to be about 10min long and I guess I will shoot 4:1 and just have all it transfered at one time and pick the best parts. Im going to have a lot of cuts in the film so it will be better that way instead of tring to pick out clips I like offhand.

I have a budget for a light kit but I would rather use that money on something else right now. I don't want to purchase a light kit and only use it for 30seconds of this movie.
Im going to shoot at the end of april and I will be doing another short around July and want to shoot 16mm on it and I want to wait till then to purchase the light kit.

I do have some old stage lights that I can setup and they put out a lot of light. I may do some test with them to see what I can come up with.
I will post pics as soon as I can get the test shots done.
Thanks
Anthony Collins

Obviously you are on a tight budget, but I would honestly try to shoot in Vision 200T. It is so much easier - and it will help your budget in that you will need less lighting. It has a much finer grain than ektachrome, and, I think personally, has a much nicer colour saturation.

Also, whilst it is rated not that much faster than Ektachrome, the vastly extended latitude it offers makes it practically a lot more versatile than the 1 (ish) stop it really is.

If you want to continue to use K40 for outside shots that would probably be fine as the Vision 200 has a similar colour saturation to K40, and should intercut reasonably well. This, however, can not be said for Ektachrome 125 which has a comletely different colour rendition than K40, and if you used the Ektachrome for indoors, you would want to use it for everything else aswell.

Infact I think that if you shot K40 for outside and Vision200T for inside you would probably save money on processing compared to using Ektachrome for the whole thing (if you get the processing included with the K40 that is)

Matt
Birmingham UK

[Guest]

Thanks for your nice comments. I think it's great when somebody who doesn't normally do music videos make one. It can show something different about the genre.

I mostly accepted this gig because I actually like the band's music (a rare thing for me, as I'm mostly into jazz and old punk rock). My partner had photographed the band and I met them at a dinner one night. The lead singer is a funny and vibrant guy, the guitar player an intensely focused jazz fiend, and the bass player a shy but somewhat cool bookish sort. The band has no steady drummer, a joke that was supposed to be in the video but was eliminated during editing do to shooting problems.

For a future project I'm going to shoot K-40, but will most likely make it b/w in post. This is for budget reasons, it cuts the expenses of film down to half. You could try the same thing, go along with the colour and then just remove colours in post.

That's a neat idea. I've seen some K40 that was lab processed as B&W - very dark blacks, almost muddy image.

Looking forward to hear your experiences in the music video genre. Any chance of seing it when it's done?

I just showed the rough cut to the band & producer last night (& the producer showed it to some people - everyone is a critic in LA, y'know). I've got some tightening to do for the final cut. The AVI file is huge so I will have to reduce the size for downloading. (Any tips in this area?)

My overall take on the music video form is: a interesting short form to work with, provided there are not a lot of external constraints regarding content ("we have to have this cool shot" thinking, which mostly derives from watching MTV, which makes it nuclear waste to my sentiment).

At first I was resistant to the inclusion of the de rigeur performance footage, then agreed that I would do it (music video is a marketing tool as much as, if not more than, a medium of artistic expression) provided I could "motivate" the performance footage within the storyline. In the end I abandoned even that conceit, simply editing in some of the performance with the main "storyline" (which is not much of a story, but footage of the band hanging out and wooing a young woman). I found something I had viewed as foolish and indulgent before to be somewhat liberating, though I agree that having to sync the performance to the song ties you up in editing - especially if you have very little footage to sync!

Here's a still I just exported. The film stock used was 50D from Pro8mm. This shot was indoors at about f4/5.6, sunlight from a window to frame right.



Here's a snap from the performance. This was shot at f1.9 under standard stage lighting (red-green-blue mix with some white spot for fill) on 100T film from Pro8mm.



When I get the video done, I'll post a link. Now I must immerse myself in the dark waters of editing - tweaking, hacking, pasting, crying, pulling hair, gnashing teeth.... you know the drill.

[calgodot]

That was me as Guest above.

[sunrise]

The AVI file is huge so I will have to reduce the size for downloading. (Any tips in this area?)

Quicktime export using the Sorensen codec is best for performance AND compabilty. Mattias posted some info on that a while ago in the techi forum

My overall take on the music video form is: a interesting short form to work with, provided there are not a lot of external constraints regarding content ("we have to have this cool shot" thinking, which mostly derives from watching MTV, which makes it nuclear waste to my sentiment) [...] (music video is a marketing tool as much as, if not more than, a medium of artistic expression).

Do you get MTV2 in the US or is it a British thing? We only get once in a while here, but when we do I watch it all the time. There also used to be some quite good late night shows (120minutes and Postmodern) on MTV, but it's all crap with only a few good clips.

I grew up watching the alternative shows and something that got me interested in music videos in the first place was the look of Anton Corbijns videos for Front 242, Depeche Mode etc. Most of which were Super8.

I think many of the *new* hip directors like Jonze and Cunningham does a very good job at experimenting within the commercial format (and more experimental stuff like Aphex Twin's Windowlicker). You have to be aware of the commercial aspect when doing a music shot since you'd want your stuff to be seen, and stations that show this are commercial.


Those stills look good. I'm looking forward to seeing the clip.

sunrise

[calgodot]

This is my first attempt at a downloadable version. (Believe it or not, I've never actually webalized any video! I always had the luxury of handing it off to someone who knows about codecs, etc.)

Any advice/recommends on other versions I should make?

Windows Video (WMV) - right click to download
14.1 Mb file - is that big for a 4:10 video?

http://www.calgodot.com/fizzies/fizzies.wmv

RealMedia
12.3 Mb file
http://www.calgodot.com/fizzies/fizzies.rm