Thursday, December 13, 2007

Lightshow

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
I promised to show the effects of my nifty focusing mini-spotlights, and here they are. It's hard to believe the tremendous difference it makes in the atmosphere and overall look of the shots I can get now. You also get a sneak peek of how the puppets are looking, thanks to iron-on tansfer paper that works with a standard bubblejet printer. For the lighting here I only used two lights.... the Logo 75 as a tight spotlight aimed down at his face/shirt, spilling a little onto his arms, and the Solux framing art light on the background. And as always, I strategically placed some paper just out of shot on the table beneath Tom to get a little diffuse reflected light onto the dark shadow areas and soften the blackness there.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Just so you can see the differences, here's essentially the same shot, framed differently, and without the reflected light. That blackness is so harsh - those reflectors are lifesavers!!!! I also didn't desaturate this one in Photoshop..... the above shot was this crazy-brightly colored till I desaturated it!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
I'm not real happy with this shot... it's a compromise so I could show Ronnie full length.... she wanted to show off her newly refurbished Emostyle. The lighting setup was the same as for Tommy above, but with the addition of one of my Blackbirdies aimed at the table in front of her feet, where it was looking awful dark. That also casts a stronger relfected light onto her. I left the bottles sitting in darkness for all these shots. Oh, and I kinda went nuts with Photoshop on this one, that's why it looks pretty weird colorwise.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
And here are two shots demonstrating the versatility of the Logo 75 projector. It's the only light used for these shots, and the only difference between them is a slight change in the light's focus.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Ok, enough for now. Sorry for the lack of recent updates, it's the crazy season.

6 comments:

Paul (Vortex42) said...

If these sample shots are anything to go by, this film is going to look stunning. You are a master of light and a demon of fright!

Darkmatters said...

Hah hah! Thanks Paul! Words to live by.....

FleaCircusDirector said...

I'm thinking that Ronnie's arms are a ta long making her look a little less feminine (but that might be the intention??)

Anonymous said...

Excellent lighting in the top picture!
The one without the fill looks kind of good too, but the mouth gets hidden in the shadow so the fill light works for me. Not so good on the full-length Ronnie shot though, too bright and even and loses all the atmosphere - but you knew that.
She's perfectly feminine in her own Radke world, where minimalist legs are standard issue! Short arms on a puppet can easily limit the animation, they just can't reach to perform some common actions. Legs, however short, always seem to reach the ground! They will dictate a certain character to the walks though, which will probably help the unreal feel.
Oh, nice backlit bottles too.

I can see that this film is going to look fantastic.
Nick H

Darkmatters said...

Yeah, her arms are just as long as everyone's in this little world.... just long enough to reach over the top of their gigantic heads!

jriggity said...

excellent Visuals strider!

really really stunning .

jriggity