- Stick around at the end of the video, we're giving away an XP800.
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- Today on The Sliding Lens we're shooting a commercial for a client called Minibini.
They make an air freshener for your trash can that really does work. We're
going to show how well it works by shooting a woman laying in a bed of
garbage. Literally laying on her bed that is covered in garbage. We want a very
dreamy look as she recites her prose, laying in a bed of garbage. So we're going
to use a combination of LED's, daylight and tungsten lights to create that dreamy
look. Jill Ackerman from Ackerman Creative is the genius behind the concept today,
Jill is an incredible writer and director. The staging was a bit challenging, Julene
worked for several days creating garbage, you know, big chunks of oatmeal, old steak
and vegetables. She's a master at this type of thing and did a great job. I'm
going to put the camera overhead on a boom and tether it back to the computer with a
USB cable. We will now look at the image and make all adjustments in camera
utilities on the laptop. I have used this a lot and just find it very easy to work
with this application. I will set my color balance to tungsten, even though we're
shooting with LED's and tungsten lights. I will shoot at one fifteenth of a second
and 320 ISO, an aperture of 5.6. I want a bit of depth of field so focus is going to
be a big problem on this. To solve that focus problem I had my assistant magnify
the image on the computer and I would focus while he is looking at the enlarged
image. Let's take a look at our lighting, we're working in a virtually dark room.
Here's our first image, there is no light in here. That means it's a clean canvas we
can do whatever we want. Our first light is a source four tungsten light on her
face. I really do love this light because it has shutters on four sides that will
allow you to cut the pool of light down to whatever shape you want. Now I added a 1-K
that I'm going to bounce into the ceiling just to open up the shadows.
We want smoke coming out form under the bed as part of the dream like setting. I'm
going to use a Rasco 1900 smoker as our smoke source. I'm using the stage and
studio smoke that will dissipate much quicker so we can set up and kind a go
from shot to shot much quicker. It's much easier to work with this, especially in a
confined space. To light that smoke I will put a series of North Star Lights under
the bed. Here's our First North Star LED under the bed just above her head. Now I'm
going to place another North Star just to the right under the bed. Now I added a
second North Star Light on the right side. These I'm laying on the side on a sand bag
as they point out away from the middle of the bed. I only have two more North Star
lights, I'm going to place one of the left side of the bed, my last North Star light
is coming in from camera left, it's just a reflector on it and it's just going to
give me nice highlights on the garbage. I'm using that smaller reflector that
kicks off a little more light and gives us a little more of a highlight. You know
without this light this scene would seem very flat to me. It gives just the little
highlights dancing around on the garbage, it's very cool I think. My last adjustment
was to rub Vaseline on the corners of the lens. We want this to be a dreamy world
that she's living in so the Vaseline will blur out the edges and make it look a
little more dreamy. Here's her opening dialog and her lighting set up. I punched
in for a close up and cut with that long shot and pick up some tight shots
to the trash to cut with the opening scene. So let's listen to her
prose as she lays in a bed of garbage. - Why am I laying in this bed of garbage?
Forgotten dishes and chicken carcasses, oily corn cobs, left over fish kebabs,
soggy cereal, spongy material. How can I stand laying on this divine of debris,
well this trash smells great. - Shooting on tungsten gave the background
a nice blue look. It's those LED's that are shining out from underneath the bed,
the daylight balance, those North Star look really blue as they come up from
under the bed. But I kept her face neutral with the source four tungsten light, gives
us a nice color juxtaposition between the two I thought it looked very nice and very
dreamy. I love working with LED's and tungsten lights on set, it shows you can
get some interesting looks when you combine these two different light color
sources. It's just important that you know what each of them will do and then work
with them accordingly. So I hope this has been as educational for you as it was for
me, so don't be afraid to mix two different light sources and keep those
cameras rolling and keep on clicking.
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- Remember, the giveaway for September is a Dynalite XP800 battery pack that powers
your strobes on location. The person who gets the closest to the number of times
this XP800 will fire a 400W second power pack on fold wins.
If you guessed 100 or below, you are way off,
got to be a lot higher than that. Better go back and guess again.
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