Did you like this video? If so, what other filmmaking techniques do you want to learn about? If no, how can we improve? We would love to hear your thoughts! - David
would it make sense to use a spotlight mount on the apurture 300 to mimic the overhead lighting? or do you think the parabolic dome is the best way of approaching this type of lighting scenario?
Depends on the look you want. We were after a softer look on the face and wanted to minimise hard shadows, so thats why we chose the parabolic. They also used soft lighting in the original stranger things setup as well. If you want a hard light, spotlight look, then I see no reason why it wouldn’t work, you may just have to be more aware of ripple reflections hitting your background when shining a hard light into your pool.
@@CreativePathFilms very helpful thanks! yeah i think my friend n i will rent out both the spotlight attachment and the dome softbox, and from there see what we think fits our plan better!
It’s certainly possible, but you would have to shoot from a higher angle. However then you run the risk of over-shooting the top of your backdrop and revealing the roof in your reflection. The angle of incidence = the angle of reflection. The reason we settled on 4m was we wanted to shoot low in that opening shot and we knew we had a fixed max height for our backdrops. Something I didn’t include in this video was how I worked out how big the pool needed to be in prep. It was really rudimentary, I setup up the background at its max height and placed a household mirror on the floor in-front of the talents chair. I moved both the chair and the mirror back and forth to test different angles and distances from the background until I found the sweet spot for the shot I wanted. This helped me determine how big the pool needed to be, the position of the talent in relation to the BG, as well as the angle of the opening shot. Had I needed the talent to be standing (ie. he would be a lot taller both in reality and in the reflection) I would have needed an even longer pool then what we had. If you don’t need a full-body wide shot, this exercise becomes a lot easier and you can get away with a smaller setup. Hope that answers your question! ~Dave (Edit: spelling)
Thanks for the tips. But I wonder...why does the water pool have to be so big? If he is just sitting in one place, than the water only has to be large enough to accommodate his reflection.
Hey Doug, thanks for stopping by! Coverage, more than anything else. We wanted to make sure we could cover a variety of different angles and shot sizes, so we aired on the side of safety. A larger pool just allowed us to do more things. Even with the pool as big as our was, there was still quite a bit of masking that had to be done in post.
You certainly should be able to. I’m not very familiar with the software, but it should translate to almost any piece of software that gives you basic color grading controls where you can crush down your blacks. Being able to mask out any problem areas also helps as well. We could have done this in premiere as well, which had all the required features. If for some reason kinemaster or Filmora doesn’t have these tool, Resolve has a free version you can use :)
You could, if you’re shooting tight shots. They won’t be as easy to overlap as fabric. The main reasons I would probably choose fabric, is they’re going to get wet, no matter what you do to avoid it! So fabric will hold out where as paper will deteriorate. And I’ve noticed paper backdrops are more reflective when it comes to ambient light.
@@ShotByTMP these are the ones i bought for this video here in Australia. I’m not sure who would make something equivalent over the US. They’re definitely white labelled, but I haven’t been able to work out who the supplier is. Which is a shame, because they have been out of stock since the beginning of covid. What I would look for is a decent gsm rating. These are 170 so they’re decently thick. You want as much as possible to avoid a thin Muslin to avoid light leaking through. These were the thickest I could source at the time locally. Hope that helps! www.fotogenic.com.au/photo-background-100-cotton-muslin-3m-x-6m-seamles~326
Did you like this video? If so, what other filmmaking techniques do you want to learn about? If no, how can we improve? We would love to hear your thoughts! - David
Wow 😂😂😂 I realized there’s a lot of work into this ! But the results are phenomenal !!! 😗
Yeah it was a big setup! But we’re pretty stoked with the results! Thank you for your kind words ❤️
would it make sense to use a spotlight mount on the apurture 300 to mimic the overhead lighting? or do you think the parabolic dome is the best way of approaching this type of lighting scenario?
Depends on the look you want. We were after a softer look on the face and wanted to minimise hard shadows, so thats why we chose the parabolic. They also used soft lighting in the original stranger things setup as well.
If you want a hard light, spotlight look, then I see no reason why it wouldn’t work, you may just have to be more aware of ripple reflections hitting your background when shining a hard light into your pool.
@@CreativePathFilms very helpful thanks! yeah i think my friend n i will rent out both the spotlight attachment and the dome softbox, and from there see what we think fits our plan better!
Awesome, please check back in with the results! We’d love to see how it turns out!
@@CreativePathFilms most definitely!
Why 4 meters to get full reflection? Is it possible to get full reflection with 8ft at slightly different angle?
It’s certainly possible, but you would have to shoot from a higher angle. However then you run the risk of over-shooting the top of your backdrop and revealing the roof in your reflection. The angle of incidence = the angle of reflection.
The reason we settled on 4m was we wanted to shoot low in that opening shot and we knew we had a fixed max height for our backdrops.
Something I didn’t include in this video was how I worked out how big the pool needed to be in prep. It was really rudimentary, I setup up the background at its max height and placed a household mirror on the floor in-front of the talents chair. I moved both the chair and the mirror back and forth to test different angles and distances from the background until I found the sweet spot for the shot I wanted. This helped me determine how big the pool needed to be, the position of the talent in relation to the BG, as well as the angle of the opening shot.
Had I needed the talent to be standing (ie. he would be a lot taller both in reality and in the reflection) I would have needed an even longer pool then what we had.
If you don’t need a full-body wide shot, this exercise becomes a lot easier and you can get away with a smaller setup.
Hope that answers your question!
~Dave
(Edit: spelling)
Just out of curiosity. What was the budget like for a shoot like this and all of this fairly unique equipment?
Whilst I contractually can’t give you the specifics, it was 5 figure video in Australian dollars.
Thanks for the tips. But I wonder...why does the water pool have to be so big? If he is just sitting in one place, than the water only has to be large enough to accommodate his reflection.
Hey Doug, thanks for stopping by! Coverage, more than anything else. We wanted to make sure we could cover a variety of different angles and shot sizes, so we aired on the side of safety. A larger pool just allowed us to do more things. Even with the pool as big as our was, there was still quite a bit of masking that had to be done in post.
Bro can you make this in kinemaster or filmora
You certainly should be able to. I’m not very familiar with the software, but it should translate to almost any piece of software that gives you basic color grading controls where you can crush down your blacks. Being able to mask out any problem areas also helps as well. We could have done this in premiere as well, which had all the required features.
If for some reason kinemaster or Filmora doesn’t have these tool, Resolve has a free version you can use :)
Do you think I could get away with black paper backdrops?
You could, if you’re shooting tight shots. They won’t be as easy to overlap as fabric. The main reasons I would probably choose fabric, is they’re going to get wet, no matter what you do to avoid it! So fabric will hold out where as paper will deteriorate. And I’ve noticed paper backdrops are more reflective when it comes to ambient light.
@@CreativePathFilms any recommendation on where to find not super expensive muslin thank you for the reply
@@ShotByTMP these are the ones i bought for this video here in Australia. I’m not sure who would make something equivalent over the US.
They’re definitely white labelled, but I haven’t been able to work out who the supplier is. Which is a shame, because they have been out of stock since the beginning of covid.
What I would look for is a decent gsm rating. These are 170 so they’re decently thick. You want as much as possible to avoid a thin Muslin to avoid light leaking through. These were the thickest I could source at the time locally.
Hope that helps!
www.fotogenic.com.au/photo-background-100-cotton-muslin-3m-x-6m-seamles~326