Modding a mic stand for swing-arm action -- Shelley, this one's for you!

 Shelley really got me thinking about this the other day.

Well, I finally unpacked enough stuff in my new house that I can begin animating! I set up a shot (I want to get a little more practice in with Skulkin before I start in on the actual film itself) and discovered that even with my upgraded lighting grid, I just can't get lights to all the places I really want them. I had already built a pair of extensions I can clamp to the ceiling joists to clamp lights to, because I wanted some lights lower than my original grid would allow. But still I was too limited... I needed some way to attach a swing arm boom to them. I spent the evening cogitatin' on this problem, and slowly but surely ground out a solution using a couple of mic stands I already had on hand.




They're just cheap stands from Musician's Friend, similar to this one.

Mine aren't that tall though... I got some kind of shorties. I'm sure either will work just fine... a longer one might reach down lower than mine. 

One problem I had to overcome - the tubing used for the mic stands is too small in diameter... the C-clamps I have won't close down small enough to get a grip on it. I solved that with two pieces of wood and a little electrician's tape (I haven't unpacked far enough to find my gaffer's tape, or I'd use that instead).

This kind of C-clamp can be bought from a music store or a lighting supplier who handles disco type lights. If you walk into a hardware store and ask for a C clamp, they won't have this kind.









Here you see it all taped up. Now it can get a tight grip on the mic stand.








I had to use 2 C-clamps... one to attach it to the ceiling joist and one to attach the lighting unit. Notice I removed the bolt from the clamp that will attach to the ceiling.








Here's the whole assembly. Oh, I didn't get pics of this, but I had to cut off the bottom of the stand to remove the tripod legs. A hacksaw is essential equipment!








Here's the ceiling attachment. Now you can see why I had to remove the bolt... though I suppose you could substitute a big wood screw and mount it permanently, or drill through the joist and use a coach bolt. I like the ability to move it wherever I want though.








Another shot of the mount... plus the big knob that tightens the swing arm boom.








It can swing from here too.








The business end, bearing one of my modded Blackbird PAR 16's. Oh, I finally managed to find a US site that sells barndoors for them! Here it is: Stage Spot.







I wanted to post this one to show how I attached the tracklight unit into the snout of a PAR 16. The older PAR units I bought from Musician's Friend were made a little differently, and you could just jam them together for a perfect pressure fit, but the newer models have thicker rivets inside that prevent that, so I just busted out the FastSteel epoxy putty and packed a ring of it inside. First I coated the end of the tracklight unit itself with dishwashing liquid as a release, and before the putty fully cured I gently rotated it to break the bond... now the putty will stay inside the PAR snout and I can remove the track light if I want.

A Forest Grows

I've been honing my photography skills, getting ready to start shooting soon on the bar flick. A lot has happened lately around here that all contributes to why my images are looking better... I'll summarize in this post what the main factors are.





First, I've installed some boom arms, one type of which I detailed in my last post. I got pretty frustrated with the flimsy mic stands though, so I went looking for something better that wouldn't cost as much as a professional C stand and grip equipment.

Man - I'll tell ya what... I love all the posters surrounding me here in the Darkstudio, but it sure does make it hard to take pictures of the studio itself or anything in it! All that busy, colorful imagery tends to overwhelm the pics. I hope you can see the forest of rods and extensions coming down from the ceiling. Click on the image to see it at Flickr, then click Actions > View All Sizes to see it larger. Or actually, once you get there, just click on the pic itself to see it enlarged against a grey background... looks much better to me.




Hope you can make it out against Kong's flank here, but I found these awesome little extension rods made for mic stands that clamp onto any rod up to maybe 2" diameter. They're pretty short, only 7 inches long, but they're sturdy and have a big toothed clamp wheel, very much like an actual grip clamp. It seems quite strong... a heck of a lot more secure than any joint on those mic stands I put up the other day! And as you can see in the pic, you can link them together if you want to get lights exactly where you need them. These are clamped onto one of the simple wood dowel extensions I made some time go (I painted all the wooden parts black... makes everything look all shiny and professional). These are called OnStage Stands Mini Boom Arms and will only set you back $12.99 each. Mmmm... you know what... they were $11.99 when I bought mine about a week ago...


Next, the really BIG addition to the studio, which just came in today...



The Cowboy Studio Pro Light Stand and Boom. Looking at the pics on Amazon, I thought it was about the same size as the little lightweight camera tripods I'm used to, but NO!!!! This thing is HUGE!! As you can see, I've got it practically up against the ceiling, and it could go a bit higher. The tubing is thick and sturdy... the fittings are plastic, but solid and made very much like the fittings on real pro grip gear. It's basically a lightweight budget version of a professional C stand. The extending boom arm is so long, it can reach all the way across my set table, and can be height adjusted to anywhere from table height to ceiling. This thing is so beefy and sturdy compared to any other lightbearing arm here in the studio, I think I might just get another one and retire the frustrating mic stands. It cost about $60... just about twice what one of the mic stand rigs costs if you include the price of the 3 clamps needed to make them work.

Ok, but enough about grip equipment or cheap knockoffs thereof.

The other main factor in improving my shots is three books I bought. I'll give my thoughts on each below...



The Filmmaker's Eye: learning (and breaking) the rules of cinematic composition Gustavo Mercado

THE best book I've encountered about cinematic composition.

Buy it.

No, really... what are you waiting for? BUY IT!!!

DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video Kurt Lancaster

I can't rate this one nearly as high as the last - large parts of it feel more like infommercials for specific products and glowing praise for a small group of people associated with the early advent of DSLR Cinema that hatched with the release of the Canon 5D Mk2 (1st DSLR with full HD video). 

However, that said, I was immensely inspired by it, and by the videos I sought out on youtube such as Vincent LaForet's seminal DSLR video tour-de-force Reverie:

... And the Making-of for it:







Also, loads of good info about how to get the best image quality from a DSLR camera that I was unaware of (and most of which also works with a DSLR-like camera such as my Lumix DMC-FZ50). 


and finally, there's 

Motion Picture and Video Lighting, Second Edition Blaine Brown

I bought this one hoping to find another good book about general lighting techniques that I can recommend, because my former choice, Matters of Light and Depth by Ross Lowell is now a textbook and has increased significantly in price. I was rather disappointed though... this book isn't nearly as good as far as I'm concerned. The main emphasis seems to be on lighting equipment and on the breakdown of jobs on a professional lighting crew, with very little useful information about how to actually create good lighting. There is some such info, but not as much as I'd like. I'd say pass on this one and just shell out for Matters of Light and Depth. Or pick another highly recommended lighting book on Amazon... it'll probably be just as good if not better.

Whew! This has turned into a massive post! I'll close out with another of my recent pics inspired by these books and made thanks to the newfound ability to place lights wherever I want:

Let there be (more) Light!!!

This, my friends, is what I call the Lightcannon.


It's a further refinement/ modification to the Solux Framing Art Light. I detailed my first round of mods to it in these posts. It worked, but with some issues - namely, due to its rather rickety construction and pressure-fit components, it had a tendency to sag and droop like a Dr. Seuss Spyglass, making it very hard to get precise accuracy, plus once you did get it aimed where you wanted, it could slowly droop... impercieptibe except when played back in your animation, when it becomes VERY noticeable. In fact, I have an example posted. Check out the background lighting in One Good Yank. This is unacceptable... in stopmotion everything must stay exactly where you put it until you move it yourself. 


I partially solved the problems with this makeshift brace made from a turkey skewer:

It did snug up the assembly nicely, countering all that cartoonish sagging, but it's bulky and dangerous -- those chromed points sticking out right at eye level. Also, the yoke attaching it to my lighting grid was weak and couldn't be secured very well. I tried using a piece of folded-up paper jammed behind it, which helped somewhat but not enough. 

So today I set about to improve it. 

I started with one of my tinkered-together Blackbirds:

... based on the discovery that the snout/ yoke assembly from a cheap PAR16 (known as a Birdie) pressure-fits perfectly onto an ordinary track lighting unit. As so:

Here's one of my Blackbirds, with the Framing Optic Assembly of a Solux Framing Art Light laying next to it: 

I tried fitting the Adapter Ring into the snout:

Success!! It fits, nice and tight!! 

So I fitted the rest of the Solux assembly in place...

So far, so good... but when I plugged it in to test it, a problem:

A LOT of light leaks out as you can see. All this spill light sprays out onto the set where you don't want it. Wish I would have got a picture of that. But then, this tut is already ridiculously long and filled with too many pictures. Anyway, my first attempted solution was to jam some Blackwrap in there:

It's designed for use with lights to block out unwanted spill. But it was impossible to arrange it right in there, too many compound curves to deal with. I could have just wrapped it around the outside of the fixure, but I wanted a clean permanent solution, not an ugly blob of black foil hanging from my grid! 

It didn't get rid of all the spill:

So I decided to try some Epoxy Putty:

... And Voila!! No more spill!! And not only is it fully functional now, but it looks a heck of a lot like a high-tech Ellipsoidal fixture...

... Which is exactly what it is really. 

I've also ordered another 3-unit Tracklight kit from Lamps Plus, a couple pairs of the cheap PAR 16's from Musician's Friend,  and another Solux Framing Optic Assembly. I'm glad I detailed out exactly how I did all that modding, because I'll need to go back and check my notes for specifics. But when I'm done, I'll have two more Blackbirdies (for a total of 4) and another Lightcannon (to make a pair) to add to my lighting grid... that should be enough for just about any lighting situation. 

*** EDIT***

I came up with a better name than Lightcannon. I'm calling it the Ellipsis. An ellipsis is those three little dots that represent missing text... 


Yeah. THOSE three little dots. Essentially it's an edit used to shorten something. It's also used in filmmaking, with the same meaning. It's an edit used to cut out unnecessary action or time... example you see someone go to bed, then cut to them waking up in the morning. It edits out the 8 hours of them sleeping.  So, an Ellipsis is an abbreviation. In this case, MY ellipsis is an abbreviation of an Ellipsoidal spotlight! 


Heh... I tried a lot of names for it... Mini Ellipsoidal, Micro-Ellipsoidal etc... too much of a mouthful!! But now that I've ABBREVIATED it, it works! so...


ellipsis it is!! 

New additions to the lighting grid -- fine tuning the Movie Making Machine

I've been running into some frustrating limitations in my lighting grid.... lights can only be directly over the table or a couple of feet in front of it. I wanted to be able to get lights lower, and to position them farther from the table in any direction. So I got a few accessories from the hardware store and rigged up a pair of these nifty ceiling-mounted light posts.

A 4 foot length of hardwood dowel, a couple of pipe clips, and some big hefty C clamps is all it took. I can clamp the posts wherever I want to the ceiling joists (incidentally, the clamps ensure that I don't permanently mar the joists). I always have to laugh at sizing conventions in the hardware world... a 1" diameter dowel fits into a 1" diameter hose clip with about 1/4" of clearance all the way around. I had to jam pieces of wood into the gap and fill the chinks with hotglue. But I guess the pipe clips weren't made to fit real snug anyway. Oh well, it works.

The other day as I was setting up for one of the Skulkin animation sessions I was struck by a thought....

The stopmotion studio is all one machine. All of it... every part.... the table with the holes drilled in it, the little puppets that can be secured to it, the lighting grid, the camera positioning apparatus, the camera and the capture device (computer, software). It's all made to work together in perfect harmony, like clockwork with you as the operator - nothing moving or changing until you want it to.

The really cool part is when I get the puppets set up and get ready to do a shot.... I position and plug in the set lights I'll be using one by one, and then switch off the normal overhead light. This process is a gradual transition from the ordinary basement surroundings into the Stopmotion World. Now only the set is lit, and it takes on a special look... far more attractive than under ordinary household lighting. The mess that is the rest of my basement fades into darkness behind me, and now my attention is focused completely on those little puppets that I labored so hard to make, and will now labor to bring to life.

Welcome to the Stopmotion World!!!

In fact, now that I think about it, you could extend the machine metaphor to include the shelves full of books that feed my knowledgebase... the DVDs and tapes that provide invaluable inspiration... even the computer that connects me to the internet... to other animators and friends all around the world. Wow... it means my machine is connected to Shelleys, and Svens, and Jeffreys... and to YOURS if you're a stopmoe!!! Insprirational!!!! 

Lightshow

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.


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!


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.


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.


Ok, enough for now. Sorry for the lack of recent updates, it's the crazy season.

Another point of light in the Darkstudio

There's a new addition to the Darkstudio.... the Logo 75 Gobo Projector sold by Starlight and Magic. I've had my eye on this little beauty for some time, and finally decided to get one, mostly because of the lack of accuracy from my (otherwise fantastic) Solux Framing Art Light {which as I've mentioned before, has a tendency to sag like a Dr. Seuss Spyglass - very difficult to get exact placement}. Most of the specs for my new toy are listed on the web page, but I wanted to bring up a few things I've discovered about it.



It's easy to insert a Gobo - here's one of the freebies they included. Notice it goes in upside-down and backwards.


I made a quick Hobo (Home-made Gobo) by tracing one of theirs and cutting it out from an advertising card they included - how's that for getting full use of things! I wanted just a tight spotlight beam, so I tried to cut a small circle (using an X-Acto knife). Wow, is that hard!!! You can see 2 problems with it below....


First and most obvious, every irregularity in my hand cut circle shows up plain as day! And twice as big, to make it really stand out. But also, (and I didn't notice this until I shot these pics for the blog) you can see the advertising from the back of the card coming right through! Since this pic I've covered that with some gaffer tape - it doesn't show anymore. Oh, and actually a third problem.... the 3 bars of light off to the left. Can't get rid of those - they seem to actually be coming through the hole itself! They're images of the scalloped reflector built into the halogen lamp - see below where I slightly defocused the beam to show them in all their glory....


Like a sunburst.


The best solution is to defocus until everything looks good... the sharp edges of my crude cut blur to apparent smoothness and the bars disappear into a faint halo all around. Good enough for a spotlight effect anyway, and that's one of the main reasons I wanted this thing. As for cutting circles, I've read you can use Blu-Tac on a sheet of glass to make gobos - need to try that. It shouldn't be too hard to cut a nice round hole in blu-tac (end of a brass tube or whatever).

One final problem I'd like to bring up.... the light from this unit is a little greenish. The lenses themselves have a distinct green coloring. It can be a bit distracting, so I've cut an amber gel to correct it which does a pretty good job, but dims the light a bit. I thought it would need a red gel, and I tried a few, but they didn't work right. Pink also didn't look right, but as soon as I placed some amber gel in front, it cancelled the green nicely.

Oh, and one even more final problem (didn't realize there were so many....) - the unit has a built in fan, and when you switch it on it makes everything bounce up and down slowly for a long time.... like 2 or 3 minutes at least. You just have to wait till it stops before you can start animating I suppose. But then, I doubt I'd be ready to shoot frame 1 within 3 minutes of shouting "Lights!". It's because of the cheap plastik yoke - I should make a steel one, I think that would be much sturdier.

Just to point out the differences, the Solux Framing Art Light gives a nice white light, doesn't bounce around, and I haven't noticed it projecting any sunburst rays. But it does have that Dr. Seuss problem, which is very frustrating, and it's a lot harder to make and insert gobos for it - you have to make them on a round piece of glass and take apart the unit to insert them.


****

Ok, a little more experimenting and I solved the 3 bars of light problem. You can adjust the three lenses in various configurations.... they say to push the first one all the way up against the machine (I do keep that one there) and pull the last one all the way to the ends of the posts, then use the middle one for focus. So I tried putting the end one a little farther back and adjusting the middle one for focus again, and voila - no bars of light!

I'll post some actual pics of what it can do on-set soon, those pics of it aimed a a blank white sheet of posterboard are pretty dull and really don't show what it's capable of.

I'm ready for my closeup Mr. von Sternberg

A little experimenting, all thanks to Matters of Light & Depth by Ross Lowell.

Upgrading the grid

I just added about 20 pounds of steel to my grid, in the form of extension pipes attached by galvanized elbows. Now I can hang lights a good deal lower than I could before, and farther off the edges of the set. I've been wanting to get some way of putting those edge lights way off in the backfield. You can also see my "early americana" plastic window drapes....


I also whipped up a quick prototype Gobo/flag holder. This is about as simple as it gets - just a corner clamp (used for gluing picture frames together or making mitered cuts), a piece of 3/16" aluminum armature wire, and a small el-cheapo clamp. And I'm sure I could do without the corner clam (either clamp actually) if I bent the wire around the pipe sufficiently and taped the hell out of it!


I hope you can make out in this pic, the kind of corner clamp I have isn't deep enough to get a good solid grip on my 3/4" OD pipe - it only reaches the midpoint. Not secure at all! One slight nudge and it pops off, ruining the entire shot as well as my day.


Once again, gaffer tape to the rescue!!! I'd like to see it pop off now!!!


Here's a detail shot of the other end. Look closely - I've hammered the end of the armature wire flat so it can nestle nicely into the clamp and hold a piece of cardboard or thin plywood or whatever material I end up making gobos from. I'll need to experiment - some materials might tend to warp under the intense heat from my new lights.

Ridin' the Lightwave!!!

Ah, my magic package arrived today.... my Solux Framing Art Light Projector kit!!! First step in assembly is to remove the front glass and retaining ring from my Lamps Plus tracklight (oddly there were no instructions with the framing light kit - but it's not hard to figure out). At this point I need to determine if the snout will fit securely on this light unit. It looks identical to the Solux unit, but you never know.


Here's the snout and its retaining ring. I tried it, but it didn't want to fit right - it kept trying to fall out of the Lamps Plus fixture. So I decided to try it with the Lamps Plus retaining ring instead.


They're designed very differently - the LP design actually looks a lot better to me.


.... But it won't quite fit!!!


So I flattened out the.... um.......... little bendy part.


Which opened up the ring some more, causing the ends to overlap - and making it too thick there.


So I snipped off one of the.... um..... handle pieces (???) and bent the other one a bit flatter same as I did the... um.... bendy thing at the bottom. That worked perfectly!!! Success!!! That means I'm in business. I can now create a Frankenstein Framing Art Light from my Lamps Plus (el-cheapo) track lighting unit!!!


This is an inside view of the framing shutters inside the front assembly. Very simple economical design. You can shift them around to a wide variety of positions, creating all sorts of rectangles and parallelograms (and... um... un-parallelograms).


Here's the screw thread that allows you to adjust the focus. It's stamped from sheet metal, so like all parts of this nifty (but somewhat flimsy) little device, it's a little wonky. But it's service-able, and so small and lightweight!!! Perfect for hanging from the lighting grid (unlike my hefty and extrmeely bulky slide projector!!!)


And see these tiny little (slightly out-of-focus) screws? These are important. It took me a while to figure it out, but you can tighten them to snug up the tension on the framing shutters. At first it was all really loose and they would just flop around - I thought I was going to have to jam something in there to wedge them in place, till I saw the screws. Good screws!!!


Now we start to get to the fun stuff! Just a quick example of what it can do. Or if I was to unfocus it the edges would get fuzzy. The weird part is everything is upside-down and backwards..... when you move the left framing shutter it changes the right edge. Hard to get used to.

This device is not advertised as a gobo projector - but I was hoping I might be able to use it as one anyway. It seems like since the framing shutters will focus so sweetly and give a good crisp image, I should be able to put some kind of slide or gobo in there at the same place and it should work. At first I thought it meant removing a shutter or two, or something equally ill-advised. But then it occurred to me - there's no need for anything so drastic when the whole fixture just slides apart! It's all pressure-fit together! I opened it up and started thinking about what I might be able to use as a gobo/slide.... should prefferably be round, the right size, and made of glass.


Hey!!! How about the glass I removed from the fixture right at the beginning? And sure enough - it fits perfectly! Kind of small, but I could see making designs on it with black tape or something. Or making Photoshop images and printing them on transparencies that I could sandwich between two pieces of the glass. Or something. Anyway, this is starting to get really exciting now!!!


One of the accessories I ordered to try out was the "Neutral Density Screen Kit". It cost $15. What they sent me were three discs cut from a screen door!!! Ripoff!!!


But I noticed they were also the right size to fit in the gobo slot, so rather than mess with making some tape design on the tiny piece of glass, I just popped a screen in there to try it out and see if it will focus properly and give a good image.....


Voila!!! Folks, we have an actual Gobo projector!!! But notice, when it's focused on the screen the shutters that create the outer edge are fuzzy. (not that that's a deal-breaker or anything)


And in fact, I took this close-up detail shot to try to show the weird rainbow/prism effect you get. Can you see the reds and blues along all the edges? I assume it's because the bulb isn't glass - it's made of quartz. If I understand right it's because the halogen gas inside is under too much pressure and heat - glass would shatter. I wonder if anything can be done about that? (meaning the weird prismatic color effect, not shattering light bulbs)


Of course there is another way to use gobos. They don't need to fit inside the projector unit itself - here's just a quick little demonstration of the more traditional way - you just cut out a shape and place it in front of the beam somewhere near the set. This way doesn't seem to cause the rainbow effect, so it might be the way to go.

Actually what I'm using here would more properly be called a flag (or a cutter - I'm not up on all the terminology). Just a straight edge to cut off light where you don't want it. It would be supported by some kind of flexible arm - something I'll be covering soon in my ever-growing Lighting Department upgrade. It's exciting times around the Darkstudio folks..... all my lighting purchases have been golden (and I don't mean color temperature-wise) - it's really a huge thrill to see everything working out better than I had planned or expected. August 2007 will be remembered for a massive heat wave - but I'll remember it for riding the light-wave!!!