RHUL
Royal Holloway Commercial - DOP
This project was a TV commercial for the Royal Holloway University. Shot in silvertown studios in east london.
In pre production the director explained to me that he wanted to see the whole warehouse around the screen and wanted a 'behind the scenes' feel where we would be seeing the production set up and the lights. As the director of photography on the shoot, this immediately faced me with a number of challenges. I had to light the set as well as light 'the behind the scenes' i.e I had to make the warehouse look aesthetically pleasing on camera as well as make sure that I lit the subject.
The plan for this was a one day shoot with a one day pre-light. The pre-light turned out to be essential, see below. I knew the large screen would be doing a lot of the lighting of the subject but also knew that it wouldn't allow me to create 'shape' on the subject. so I opted for 4 x S60 Skypanels to be rigged above. These would be synced via a skybridge so that the pixel colour of the screens could be matched to the skypanels. If I had not done this, then the light on the subjects faces would not match the screens. Would have probably gotten away with some of the shots but if the screen was full green and the light on subject yellow then it would have been really obvious. I had a great gaffer on the shoot and he worked out with the technician how to sync everything up using the skybridge and hey presto
We shot this on an Alexa LF with Sigma cine primes. We had a scissor lift for the high angle shots and the rest of the shooting was a combination of handheld and slider work. Really enjoyable shoot!