So it was never going to be easy to replicate 'Dali Atomicus' - We've gone
to a lot of work to create this set that you can see behind me let me talk you
through a little bit about what we've done the first problem to overcome was
building the background the walls using the original Philippe Halsman image as a
reference we created the wall to match so in the corner there was a pillar with
the dado rail which we've applied here then there was a length of straight wall
and then angled wall as you can see one of the complicated parts was it looked
like there was a staircase landing we don't know what it was in the shot we
couldn't find any history about whether it was a landing or what it was but we
built something to replicate that part of the shop that position of the shot
then we have the actual painting itself Leda Atomica by Salvador Dali this
features in the Dali Atomicas photograph and it was actually Philippe
Halsman's inspiration for creating the photograph because in Leda Atomica
everything is floating nothing is touching which is why the same happens
in the actual photograph then we have things like the picture frame which was
left empty and Dali painted the picture into that afterwards and the easel which
as you can see we have hanging suspended on wires we have these two strange
sheets of plastic on the floor that are in the original photograph that we had
to match the shape based on the perspective of the camera now the
perspective of the camera was an interesting one because we didn't know
the distance away from the set that the original picture was taken it wasn't
possible for us to understand that distance there was no record of it we
don't know which lens so we had to work with a preset distance and build the set
based on that in the original picture there was also some wooden flooring what
looked like wooden flooring but with a border so we created that wooden
flooring using this lino patterned wooden style floor here then
the objects themselves we have the hanging chair or the chair that was
suspended in the shot so you can see we've got that on wires now we couldn't
obviously use flying cats in the shot so I decided to change those for a couple
of other items here I used a it's a replica of the melting clock which is a
feature of one of Dali's other paintings The Persistence of Memory
where we have the melting clock and I've actually set I think the clock to the
right time as it was in the painting and then here I wanted something with a bit
of energy so I used a toaster with toast popping out of it but instead of toast I
included a couple of my own pictures and I also did a version with a couple of
Life magazine covers to pay homage to Philippe Halsman. Let's move on to how we
got all this in position here well we used monofilament line strong line three
point connections going up to our ceiling rig which we had to rig up to
our main girders of our studio and that allowed us to get the overhead light the
main light in position where we needed the light to create
exactly the same type of shadows and lighting as them as the main shot each
item is suspended as you can see and it was carefully positioned until we found
the exact right position to match the original photo so that was done very
precisely and very accurately now the lighting itself is quite complex first
of all we had the main light which we had to calculate the position that main
light to match the lighting on Dali and to match the lighting of the shadows on
the floor and importantly this shadow on the wall down here was absolutely
crucial as was the shadow on the floor because these are the clues the visual
clues that we were given from the original picture and we used a single
light source with a large reflector dish from up high above
to recreate that lighting but the lighting is far more complex than that
throughout the rest of the set to see that we'll have to go over here so for
example the lighting on the toaster it's highly reflective metal now to catch a
reflection on the metal here and on the metal here required lighting on the
white floor so this patch of light coming from this flute here illuminating
down onto the floor is the lighting that's giving me the lighting in the
side of the toaster here here the lighting that we're seeing is coming
from a light patch on the floor over here if we move on to the toast popping
out of the toaster this is lit by a very tight gridded light here directing the
light making sure that it runs out of the main shot so it's not going to
affect anything in the shop here on the clock I've just got a subtle amount of
light from a tight Fresnel beam on this Pico light running to hit the clock but
then it's dissolving away so it's not affecting anything further beyond that.
Only a subtle amount of light we didn't want any light on the chair at all
because in the main shot the chair is silhouetted so that had to remain
silhouetted as it does more light was needed on the toaster that's created by
a subtle patch of light on the cove wall in the background illuminating an area
there only very subtly just enough to be picked up in the reflection in the
metalwork now in my shot in my version the shot I wanted to add a little bit
more than the original so I've got the original picture but I'm shooting on a
high res Hasselblad camera and it's allowing me to shoot more wide angle to
capture more of the set so that I'm creating something a little bit more
unique now to do that I also wanted to capture the person throwing the water
because I'm going to have someone here throwing the water into the shot as in
the original a lot of people the misconception is that the water is
thrown from the right hand side of the camera in but actually it's thrown from
the left so I'm using this gridded spotlight here to capture a little bit
of detail on the purse and throwing here so at the moment
although the main light for the main shot was probably only a single light
setup and that single light is our main light in addition for the extra sort of
details that I've added into the shot we have the main light is 1 light,
2 lights, 3 lights, 4 lights, 5 lights, 6 lights, 7 light setup!
however as I say the main Dalí Atomicus picture was probably accomplished with
one or two lights having analyzed the the the shot the difference with my shot
is that I needed to bring detail onto this and onto this in several areas and
because it's chrome metal that required a lot of lighting patches on the floor
to do that. Now to freeze the action because we will have our actor jumping
in the air to represent Salvador Dali and we've also got the liquid flying
through the air I needed fast flash duration so again
I'm using my broncolor scoro packs which will give me the fast flash
durations to freeze that liquid and freeze that motion the Atomicus means
basically everything in suspended animation so it would be no good if I
wasn't able to freeze the liquid and freeze the actor in the air because
obviously the whole idea of the shot is all of these items suspended in
animation including Dali in the air and including the water in the shot so from
my main camera position I'm able to determine my composition to match the
original shot and you can see very faintly the wires here which actually in
the final Philippe Halsman shot they were retouched out in using traditional
retouching methods of painting on the print here we can see that all my
objects match up in terms of the pedestal the painting the easel frame
and the chair and the landing but what I'm going to do is slightly different
I've gone to a wider angle lens and my test shot on the wider angle lens
reveals more of the set so I'm able to retain a portion of the image that will
be exactly the same perspective and match the original shot but I'm also
able to include more of the studio set more of the whole setup
and more of the other people that are going to be in the shot contributing
such as throwing the water cleaning up helping with lighting etc that sort of
thing so I want to create my own version of the shot that we can zoom in on that
matches the original picture
so here are two of my final results and I must say I'm very very excited with
what the team and I have achieved here here you can see the wider angle version
of the shot but if I bring up the overlay of the original Phillipe
Halsman and Dali image we can see that the position of the pedestal their
panels on the floor and the extension of our floor itself even joins perfectly
into our picture into the original the corner position of our wall on our set
matches the corner position on the original as does the angle of the lines
of the back wall and the position of the easel and then we very closely match
Dali's position and the clock with the position of the cat and also this
landing in the top right hand corner of the shot but most importantly and most
difficult was getting our actor to jump at the right moment and have the water
thrown through the air at the right moment and captured in the right shape
at the right time this was always going to be the biggest challenge and
fortunately we've achieved it we have a similar position to the water
interesting refraction of light running through the water here on that
particular shot and the breakup of the water over the Salvador Dali painting of
Leda Atomica in the background so I'm extremely happy with that version and we
also have another version where we achieve a similar result if we zoom in
on the picture and I bring it in and we study the detail you can see how our
chair is silhouetted how our actor has invoked that emotion of Salvador Dali we
have the flow of the liquid running through the shop and tailing off here
the panels on the floor everything working really really well to match the
original or picture so I'm very very pleased with
what we've achieved in accomplishing this very very challenging reproduction
of this famous historical image.