Lighting for Ben

Well, what a week I have had. The editing of my project has been neglected somewhat since I have come on board to Ben?s project Aloha as dop, featuring a love sick Elvis meets the Devil, 'Hellvis' character who inhabits a hellish island, see Ben's blog for full details of the project. The lighting side of this is proving to be a lot more fun than my project since I get to play with shadows and filters rather than just creating a sterile white environment. As with my project I?m still using a basic three point set-up; the main light source coming from stage high right as the spot, a softer red light from the bottom left and a gold reflector above the stage provide the fill. The reflector also provides as a bit of a backlight, along with a light positioned behind the stage which is aimed at the backdrop. I am using Deido's to provide most of the light as they can cover a reasonably large area, the LED lights are occasionally bought out to light bits of foliage in the foreground or in some shots light Hellvis from below with an ere red light. I have also put a blue gel in front of the camera, not conventional practice, granted, but it was the result of a happy accident in which I discovered the gel subdued the greens of the jungle props making it look a bit less artificial, it also helps to make the entire thing look like it is set during the night, which it is.
Ben wanted the entire film to be shot in quite a smell depth of field, so I am using a macro lens on the majority of the shots, I have also used a wider angled lens on some shots to show off more the set but with a large aperture to keep a small depth of field. Ben has pretty much given me free reign over how the shots are composed, which is great, and I am really enjoying arranging the scenery to try and give a real depth to the set. I don?t think we will get all of the animation done by Friday but I am going through the storyboard to find similar shots to try and make the shooting schedule as economical as possible so that hopefully we will have broken the back of it. I am also looking to delegate a lot of the post-production on my project allowing me to hopefully do some animation also, fingers-crossed.
On my project, progress has been a bit slower, I do have a new edit and have a big long list of changes recommended by Derrick which I can hopefully implement by the end of the week. Georg did suggest a completely new edit, which I quite like and have had a go at putting it together but I think it would require such a massive re-shoot to keep continuity that I would essentially have to start again.Jake is making a start on the sound and has also volunteered to help out with the editing which will be really good since I am pants at it. Over the coming weeks I am also going to be scooping up any second years who don't look busy enough and persuading them that what they really want to be doing is painting out lots of little lines in Photoshop.

Well there you have it, more next week sports fans!