HLP Day Seven :: Bowden Creative Space

Oops - another midnight blog session - and this one's after a 4am start to the day! So, I'll make it quick. We starterd out with the amazing Pete Hall from Urban Cine dropping off a carload of lighting equipment. My fabulous assistant Nick Spiker was there to assist with lighting setup. So, after a filmset-strength coffee, we got to work.

Nick Spiker setting up some continuous lightingI should say that I have been shooting with flash for the past week. So even considering continuous is freaking me out! I love the flexibility of flash which gives me the ability to control the heavy window backlight exposure independently of the lighting on Lisa. I am now at the mercy of the lighting outdoors to see what the ratio of subject to background exposure will be. I can't make the tungsten & Kino's any brighter so I am pretty much stuck. So with trepidation we did our best to block out much of the window light using big black curtains. Now, these have been loaned by Justin at Vitalstatistix - and I promised I would promote their wonderful exhibition at Waterside in exchange. More info about that to follow. We also borrowed some flat blacks from Cirkidz down the road - thanks to Glen R Johns for that!!

Anyway, the lighting seemed to work out OK, even with a full sun environement in the background. So we tested the lighting for our next shoot (on our Washer Woman with the incorporated signature etc) and I think it's OK..(she says nervously). We didn't colour balance the lights, but I will probably be desaturating the work so it's OK for now.

So, we shot video on a 5D Mark II for the first time (thanks Nick for helping with that), to see how it integrates with the timelapse. We also shot a closer angle on Lisa for some of the Vermeer-esque details. I have done a quick edit of these 3 cameras to get a feeling for how it could work. The signature is shown here in video - you can see how slow Lisa's delivery is (this facilitates the timelapse capture).

We also shot a section on what will probably be the Tennis Lady piece (without Marilyn). We shot video and a low angle along with the usual centred frame (on the rig). I haven't had a chance to edit this so will need to post this piece later. One difference in this piece (besides the signature etc) is the extension of the checkerboard background to the second level.

I will be creating a few more tiles for the upper windowsTomorrow - starting to work on setting up the array to prepare for a test shoot (Bullet time - yay!) on Friday..