Ren: Lighting the Prison Cell

After a month of shooting exteriors, yesterday we shot the first interior set for Ren. Which was just as well since a tropical storm was raging outside and blowing down parts of the exterior village set.

It was a classic prison cell scene, one of those shaft-of-light-through-the-barred-window jobbies. Amanda Stekly and her team did a great job of creating a two-walled set with moss, wet stone and even real snails. Outside the window was a platform to sell the illusion that the cell was below ground level.

Here are some frames from the scene:

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2.5K HMI
2.5K HMI

If you’re going for this shaft-of-light-piercing-the-gloom look, you need three things. Firstly, a powerful, focusable light; I used a 2.5K HMI fresnel. Secondly, you need to accept over-exposure. The only way you will get any detail in the shadows is by exposing bright enough that the highlights – anyone standing in the direct beam of light – will clip. If you don’t like the highlight roll-off characteristics of your camera, stay away from this type of lighting. The cool thing about having a keylight this hot is that when a character moves around in the light, especially if they’re wearing light-coloured clothing, they bounce the light around in interesting and often unpredictable ways.

I shot the scene on Richard Roberts’ Blackmagic Cinema Camera, partly because of ongoing problems getting a monitor signal out of my Production Camera, and partly because of the extra stop of dynamic range the BMCC would give me to milk this high contrast lighting scenario.

The third and very important thing you need is a smoke machine to volumise the shaft of light. (More about using smoke in a future post.)

In this view of the platform behind the set, the fluorescent fixture providing indirect "daylight" can be seen on the left, gelled with Quarter Minus Green to remove the green spike in the lamp's output.
In this view from behind the set, the fluorescent fixture providing indirect “daylight” can be seen on the left, gelled with Quarter Minus Green to remove the green spike in the lamp’s output.

In order to give the sense of indirect “sky” light also coming in through the window, I placed a fluorescent outside the window so as to catch some of the side wall of the set. When I first tested the lighting set-up the previous night, I placed a second fluorescent fixture directly above the window to get some edging on the tops of the stones underneath. But I found that the more sources I set up, the less definition I got in the shaft of HMI light, so I dropped the toplight.

The door gobo
The door gobo

Although the script called for guards to drag Hunter (Duran Fulton Brown) into the cell and shut him in, the two-walled set had no door. So with help from the art department I constructed a ridiculous-looking door in roughly one-third scale, simply to cast the shadow of the door. Behind it I placed a redhead gelled with half CTO, which Richard wiggled during takes to suggest firelight.

The LED hidden behind the bucket
The LED hidden behind the bucket

I set the camera to a white balance of 4,500K so that the “daylight” of the HMI would go a little cold and the “firelight” would go really warm.

Our first shot involved Hunter washing his face at a bucket of water, then slumping back into the “sunlight”. We positioned the bucket out of the “sunlight”, in the small patch of light coming through the window of our fake door. But Hunter was still too dark by the bucket. I didn’t want to flood the set with fill and ruin the mood, so I hid a small LED light behind the bucket and diffed it down. This lights Hunter’s face when he leans over it, and hopefully suggests a reflection off the water.

A fluorescent toplight rigged over the bucket for the face-washing close-up
A fluorescent toplight rigged over the bucket for the face-washing close-up. Note the black cloth hanging from one side to reduce spill.

When we moved to a close-up of Hunter washing his face (below), I rigged a fluorescent toplight, suggestive of indirect daylight from the window, and placed a circle of foil at the bottom of the bucket. The idea was that the toplight would reflect off the foil and the surface of the water and light Hunter’s face. It didn’t work, but the toplight itself really made the shot for me. The more you work with an actor, the more you learn the best ways to light them, and I’ve learnt that Duran looks great with toplight.

Foil in the bucket for added bounce
Foil in the bucket for added bounce

Screen grabs (C) 2014 Mythica Entertainment. Visit www.rentheseries.com for more info.

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Ren: Lighting the Prison Cell

Ren Teaser Trailer Released

The first teaser trailer for Ren has been released today. This is the ambitious fantasy web series I’ve been photographing for the last four weeks. (I also cut this trailer.)

Michael Hudson has produced a series of behind-the-scenes podcasts about Ren. You can listen to me talking about the cinematography, along with all the other talented HoDs talking about the hard work and genius they have brought to bear, at http://www.rentheseries.com/news/ren-podcasts/

Ren Teaser Trailer Released

Ode to Ren

Setting up for one of the crowd scenes
Setting up for one of the crowd scenes

A year after lensing season one of Harriet Sams’ ambitious period web series The First Musketeer, I’ve jumped on board Kate Madison’s equally epic series Ren. Coming from the woman who made Born of the Hope, the incredibly popular Lord of the Rings fan film, it’s no surprise that Ren is a fantasy of Jacksonian proportions. Marked by a powerful ancient spirit and feared by all who see her, the title character starts a journey and discovers that all she thought she knew may have been a lie.

I’ve already posted several blogs about lighting Ren, but now I want to talk more about the project as a whole and the unique experience I’m having on it. Ren is one of those landmark shoots which is so tough but so much fun, where the crew become like family and you hate the idea of it ever ending. As I write this I’m on a train which is taking me away from Cambridgeshire and the drafty studio I’ve come to think of as home, towards a far less exciting shoot. This weekend away on a paid job seems strange and wrong, and I can’t wait to get back to my Ren family on Sunday night.

The studio is an old factory, its workshops filled with sets, props and costumes. For the last three weeks I’ve been sleeping on an air bed in what was probably once a meeting room. Directly above that is the make-up room, and next to that is the production office from which Kate and associate producer Michelle Golder battle daily against a dwindling budget and scheduling headaches to keep this epic web series shooting.

Ronin Traynor choreographs a fight scene with Richard Zeman (left) and Duran Fulton Brown (right)
Ronin Traynor (left) choreographs a fight scene with Richard Zeman (centre) and Duran Fulton Brown (right)

And in the car park is the set, which you may have seen in my video blog. Chris Dane and a team of volunteers spent three months fashioning the medieval village. Miriam Spring Davies has spent countless hours crafting the costumes to beautifully clothe each of the principals, plus a village full of extras and fifteen imposing Kah’nath soldiers. Hans Goosen, who flew over from Germany (I think) to be involved in the project, lived and worked in the studio for weeks while making stunning hero props. And these are just a few of the ridiculously talented and dedicated people who are bringing Ren’s world to life.

Ever since a damp weekend in autumn 2008, which I spent holding an umbrella over a steadicam operator on Born of Hope, I’ve wanted to work properly with Kate. As a maker of ambitious fantasy projects myself, I feel she’s a kindred spirit. When I learnt she was looking for a DP for Ren, I gave her the hard sell, knowing that I couldn’t bear to let anyone else photograph this series. My experiences on The First Musketeer – which shares several cast and crew members with Ren – stood me in excellent stead to approach the fantasy period settings of Kate’s script. I learnt so much on Musketeer about creating texture to sell the period, ageing scenes with smoke, and simulating firelight.

Actor Duran Fulton Brown, director Kate Madison and gaffer Richard Roberts warm their hands over a prop braziere.
Actor Duran Fulton Brown, director Kate Madison and gaffer Richard Roberts warm their hands over a prop braziere.

When Kate finally picked me, it was too late for me to rearrange other commitments that clashed with the first three days of shooting. I arrived at the studio on a Saturday night with my regular assistant Colin Smith. It was packed with crew and extras who were in the middle of a busy weekend of shooting crowd scenes. The next morning I was launched into Ren, and real life faded like a dream. That was three weeks ago.

Since then the crew has grown and shrunk (mostly shrunk!) with the passing days, as people give up what time they can and then return to their normal lives. For a project so unique and wonderful, we have struggled enormously to attract crew. By the second week I found myself regularly in the production office, gradually taking over scheduling and sometimes attempting to AD the shoot. Lately I’ve been cutting sizzle reels and teaser trailers to help Kate and Michelle sell the project to potential sponsors. It’s a far cry from the promises I made myself earlier this year not to do unpaid work any more, not to edit any more and not to work on anything where I don’t get a proper bed. But somehow Ren has gone beyond being a job, even beyond being an unpaid collaborative project. It’s my life now, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. So roll on Monday and the next day of adventure on this crazy, beautiful thing we call Ren: Season One.

Ode to Ren

Lighting Techniques #4: Health Bounce

This is a really simple technique but incredibly effective. All you do is put a reflector or a piece of polyboard under the talent’s face. Here’s an example frame from Ren starring Sophie Skelton. This was shot on an overcast day using a 2.5K HMI as backlight.

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Sophie is very beautiful and the make-up (by Becca Youngs) is great, but the icing on the cake is a simple piece of polyboard out of the bottom of frame. It subtly lifts the shadows on her face and puts a ‘sparkle’ in her eye. That sparkle is actually the poly’s reflection, but it’s amazing how much life and energy that gives. I’m calling this technique the Health Bounce because it’s used a lot in ads for health and beauty products.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison without (left) and with (right) the poly.

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The human brow has evolved to protect our eyes from sunlight, amongst other things. In an exterior scene, particularly on an overcast day, the light comes predominantly from above, rendering the forehead and the nose the brightest areas, and throwing the eye sockets into shadow. This is a challenge for cinematographers. So much of an actor’s performance is in the eyes – it’s essential to get light into the eye sockets to capture every nuance of that performance. A bounce board underneath the face helps do that.

Colin Smith holds the polyboard for the above shot of Sophie
Colin Smith holds the polyboard for the above shot of Sophie
Lighting Techniques #4: Health Bounce

Ren: Night for Day

The 2.5K HMI can be seen here in the lower right, and the fake sky on the top right.
The 2.5K HMI can be seen here in the lower right, and the fake sky on the top right.

It had to happen sooner or later. On an ambitious series like Ren, with a tight schedule, it was inevitable that we would at some point have to shoot a daylight shot after dark. So I’d given it some thought beforehand. It seemed to me like soft toplight, simulating sky, was what was needed. I figured that a 2.5K HMI fired into an overhead 6×6 silk would do the job, and that’s one of the reasons I pushed production to hire a 2.5 despite the very limited budget.

The moment came yesterday when we got into a time crunch with one of our lead actors (Duran Fulton Brown) and had to complete a scene despite the natural light running out. Fortunately the scene was scripted as evening and we had shot coverage at magic hour and in twilight with an HMI “sunset”. So we weren’t trying to match full-on daytime.

Colin (left) helps hold up the roof. Rich (right) does not. Duran Fulton Brown (centre) plays Hunter.
Colin (left) helps hold up the roof. Rich (right) does not. Duran Fulton Brown (centre) plays Hunter.

We used a redhead for the direct “setting sun” light. We had a silk but no sturdy stands to rig it on, so we built a quick roof out of poly and Celotex (matte silver bounce), holding it up with lightweight stands and crew members! We put the 2.5K on the floor in the corner and fired it into this ceiling. The final touch was to fire an LED panel at the back wall to fill in the black shadows that the redhead was casting.

Check out the final shot below. It looks a lot less convincing to me now than it did at the time, but I believe the concept was sound. We just needed more stands to rig the poly at a better angle to get the maximum bounce, including some behind Duran to give a general “sky” backlight. Lessons learnt for the next time!

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Ren: Night for Day

Ren: Shooting the Exterior Set

Here’s a little video blog about the challenges of shooting on the amazing medieval village set that Chris Dane and others have built for Ren.

I’ve been using the Artemis app a lot to test out lens choices and compositions for “seeing off the set” issues. That way if I’m set up for a shot and we’re waiting on costume or an actor, I can preview the next shot on Artemis and warn Chris that he’ll need to move a wall to hide the car park.

More soon from the set of Ren.

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Ren: Shooting the Exterior Set

Ren: Masculine & Feminine Lighting

A few days into my tenure as DP on Kate Madison’s ambitious fantasy series, Ren, we filmed a shot/reverse for one of the opening scenes. The scene introduced us to the eponymous Ren (Sophie Skelton) and her friend Karn (Christopher Dane).

Kate described Ren to me as “pure innonence”, while Karn is an older, more worldly character with a difficult past. It seemed to me like classic femine and masculine lighting were called for. Classic feminine lighting is designed to create a soft, flawless, often shadowless face. Classic masculine lighting enhances jaw definition, embraces lines and skin texture and generally creates a rugged look.

Clearly you have to start by casting actors with the right physical characteristics for these roles, which Kate had certainly done, and make-up plays a huge role. The DP is the third part of the triumvirate determining the look of the cast’s faces.

The shot/reverse in question took place under trees in a valley on a cloudy day, so the natural light was very top-lighty (rendering eye sockets dark), with a bit of green bounce here and there.

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We shot Ren’s close-up first. We had already established in the wide that she was looking towards the sun, albeit a very cloud-obscured one.

There are two ways to create the shadowless look of classic feminine lighting. One is to use a lot of bounce to fill in the shadows. The other is to put the key light directly above the lens, like a flash, so that the shadows are all hidden from the camera’s point of view. Since we’d established Ren was looking in the direction of the sun, I chose the latter method, rigging a small LED panel right above the lens.

Backlighting the hair is another common component of classic feminine lighting, so I had gaffer Richard Roberts hand-bash a second panel as a three-quarter backlight. We had to keep this very subtle since we had established that direct sunlight could not be coming from behind her.

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I lit Karn’s close-up very differently. His orientation to the sun justified a strong three-quarter backlight from an LED panel off frame left. This picks out Chris’s stubble and jawline nicely.

I decided that his key would be motivated as sunlight reflecting off the river (off camera right). This could jusifiably be coming in from the side, again adding texture and definition to his face. It was achieved by Richard holding a silver-sided collapsible reflector just out of frame. We initially tried wobbling it to suggest the movement of the water, but ended up shooting a safety take without the wobble in case it proved too distracting.

I know that this degree of manipulation and augmentation of natural light is not to every cinematographer’s taste, but I feel it fits perfectly with the show’s fantasy world. My view is that in this world where magic exists, the light is a little bit magical too. Hopefully it will subconsciously help the audience pick up on Ren and Karn’s essential characteristics in this, their first scene.

Find out more about Ren at facebook.com/rentheseries

 

Ren: Masculine & Feminine Lighting

Ren Launch Event

Kate Madison’s live launch event for her web series Ren is happening right now. (See my previous post for more info.)

Update: if you missed the live version you can watch a recording of it by clicking the play button above. I was meant to make a guest appearance in it but they ran out of time.

Visit the website and support the project at www.rentheseries.com/crowdfunding

P.S. My puppet film The One That Got Away is released online on Monday – watch this space.

Ren Launch Event

An Evening of Entertainment from the Makers of Born of Hope

Back in 2008 I helped out briefly on a feature-length Lord of the Rings fan film called Born of Hope. Directing this epic production, producing it, financing most of it, and even acting in it, was the extremely tenacious Kate Madison. “It’s incredible to see what craftsmanship, sensitivity and attention to detail is being brought to bear on this ambitious project,” said Weta Workshop chief Richard Taylor. Check the film out below – it’s an impressive achievement. And it’s had a staggering 23 million views.

Kate is now embarking on a new project, a fantasy web series called Ren, and to mark the launch of its crowdfunding campaign she’s hosting a special webcast this Saturday night. The evening of entertainment will start at 8pm with a Born of Hope screening with live commentary from cast members. There will also be a live Q&A where they’ll answer your questions about BoH or Ren or whatever you’d like to ask. There will also be fun giveaways, live link-ups, special guests (including Yours Truly), and much more.

Ren encounters the Masked Man, the leader of the Kah'Nath - Concept art by Max von Vier
Ren encounters the Masked Man, the leader of the Kah’Nath – Concept art by Max von Vier

“I’ve been keen to get another project on the go and have been contemplating various formats,” Kate says. “Web series have become a popular medium for independent filmmakers and I find that the potential for shaping an ongoing storyline for, and with, the fans is very appealing”.

The series is named after its lead character, who lives a quiet life in a small village until dramatic events, involving an ancient powerful spirit and the ruling warrior order of the Ka’Nath, force Ren to leave her safe existence and find the truth behind the web of lies she’s believed in all her life.

“The inspiration for the show is very much rooted in great fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings, but epic books and TV series like Game of Thrones and the more lighthearted Legend of the Seeker have also influenced me in the creation of Ren,” says Kate. She adds that one of the most important features of Born of Hope was the fan base that helped finance, design and even act in the film and that she is keen to involve the fans even more in this project. “The series is in the very early stages, with only the first season written, so we will look to the online fan community to influence what happens… and yes, even be in it!”

To watch the live event and to support Ren visit www.rentheseries.com/crowdfunding
An Evening of Entertainment from the Makers of Born of Hope