- We're out here at the SKB Case factory and we're going to show you how to do an
industrial image without destroying your equipment from falling BBs
We better get started. See what we can do.
♪ [music] ♪
Hi. This is Jay P. Morgan. Today on the
Slanted Lens we're shooting out of the SKB factory. I was not kidding about the.
We're shooting in a spray booth where they blast the case molds with BBs to make them
just rough enough to let go of the plastic when the mold comes apart. I'm going get
my camera right in the spray booth and get a really cool shot. The first thing you do
when you arrive at a place like this, you're going to do an industrial shot, is
to get a good idea of what's going to happen inside when they turn that machine
on. I wanted to know that before I bring my camera into the spray booth. Before I
bring my equipment into the spray booth I want to see what's going to happen when
those BBs start flying everywhere so I have a good idea of how to protect my
equipment. So I put on face protection and headed in to see what's going on. The
spray master put on his Jules Verne deep sea diving mask and gloves and started
blasting away. I was covered in BBs at once. It was just BBs everywhere. This is
going to be very difficult to protect this equipment. The first thing that I do know
is that I'm going to want to back-light all these BBs so I can see them just a
little bit better. So I placed our first light from behind,
to back-light the BBs and to rim light our guy. It was up just enough to back-light
the BBs but not up so high that it would reveal itself from behind him. So he's
going to hide it for us. To protect our lights we take a one foot square Plexiglas
sheet in front of the lights to protect the flash tube and the modeling light. We
also taped Gaff tape over the top of the vents to make sure the vents are
completely covered. We left just a little bit of space so it'll breathe, but kind of
covered it over the top. The last thing we did is we taped plastic around the heads
to keep the BBs out. I was concerned the heads were going to overheat, but it
didn't. It worked out really well. I was so thrilled to have the Baja B4's in this
situation because they're battery portable. They also give us the ability to
dial them up and down at the camera. That's a dream.
You got a remote that sits on top of the hot shoot of the camera. You can isolate
them one or two and dial that head up or down. It gives you the ability to change
the power setting on these Baja's without having to crawl up there and look on the
back and I mean that just would've been a disaster in this situation. You know
that's really the future. The Monoblock doesn't have that feature. I would not buy
it at this point. I mean that's why packing heads was so popular because the
head's up in the air and you can ratio the power on the ground where the pack is at.
Now the good Monoblock's set up like the B4's. You've got the ability to control
that right from the camera any one of your lights on set. That's fabulous.
Our second light is for his face and the front of his body. I saw an L-bracket
hanging from the roof and it gave me an idea of how we could hang this light in
this very tight space. Using a super clamp, you can get these at Samys.com.
They're made by Manfrotto, by Avenger, Kupo. There's a couple companies that made
a super clamp. So using a super clamp, I clamped the magic arm, that's made by
Manfrotto, into it's jaws. Then I take the head from a C stand and tightened the end
that goes on the stand to the spread on the super clamp. I then used the C stand
head to tighten into the L-bracket coming out of the ceiling. The light attaches to
the spread on the end of the magic arm and voila. With a C stand head, a magic arm
and a super clamp, we got our light hanging from the ceiling. I put a 40
degree grid on this light to control it a little bit so it won't spill all over the
room. Again we've used that 12 inch piece of Plexiglas, taped to the front, to
protect the flash tube and the modeling light. We then put gaff tape on the top to
protect the vents and last of all, we wrapped in plastic. I did add a little
CTB, just the rim light of the back-light to kind of cool off everything off and
make it look interesting. I put Spencer in to test the lights before
starting. He looked great. Using a C stand to hold up a one foot square Plexi shield
on the camera side of the blast booth, I was ready to start. It's a massive one
foot square piece of Plexi to protect me and the camera. If I push the camera close
enough to the Plexiglas I'll not see my reflection any longer. If I pull away a
little bit I see my reflection in the Plexiglas. So I have to get the camera
right on the Plexiglas and that gets rid of all the reflections around me.
Okay, when the BBs started they were going everywhere. They were going down the back
of my neck. They're bouncing up from the floor, underneath my mask, into my face. I
could only stick in there so long then I'd have to stop and take a break. We'd make
some adjustments, change the lights a little bit, look at the images, change
some lights, and then I'd go for a another round. All the crew dove outside and
closed the door. I don't know what I expected. Maybe a little back bone or
something. But, no. I got my shot and it looked great. At one point I did lower the
light in the background down a little bit so its emphasis was more on the spray of
the BBs coming out of the nozzle and less on the back-light of the person and that
helped it look a little bit better. It was a spray of BBs. It was pretty intense but
pretty cool looking. I did go into camera raw and up the contrast and lower the blue
here just a little bit to give me my final image before Jillian retouches. This was a
lot of fun. It was dirty and I was ready for a shower when we finished but it was
worth it. There were BBs everywhere. Even the way we put plastic on the lights and
taped the lights, when we took them apart, BBs were falling out of the tape, out of
the plastic. There were BBs everywhere but we had a great shoot, a great image, very
pleased with what we got here, and our equipment survived without any problems.
So keep those cameras rolling. Keep on clickin'.
♪ [music] ♪
So there's a look at how
to do an industrial shot without destroying your equipment from
falling BBs. Don't forget to subscribe.