EXT. NEW YORK CITY – NIGHT New York City has an estimated 300,000 streetlights. Most of them are sodium vapor. Filming night exteriors, standard practice was often to augment the available light with HMI or Tungsten. “Fighting” the available light would provide good skin tones on talent, but “unlit” backgrounds would have a different color. Among the lights shown at… read more…

An elegant lady dressed in white tapped me on the shoulder in the lobby at Cinec. “Nice article,” she said. It was Francesca Storaro, above, author of that article in the September issue of FDTimes. Francesca is a prominent Lighting Designer, recently recognized by “Mondo Arc” as one of the top 50 lighting designers in the world. Read the article online: FrancescaStoraro_Domes150

You’ll recognize the Audis here from the previous post, where they were under the hot lights of a stage display. Here, they are mirroring the reflected sky and surroundings of magic hour–a far more desirable environment. While magic hour in tropical latitudes lasts a few minutes and quickly become happy hour early in the evening, magic hour in northern Europe… read more…

In all fairness, this lighting setup is not for a commercial. It’s a manufacturer’s demo display. But it graphically shows how cars reflect the sources lighting them. Maybe you want hot spots from the fresnels above. Probably not. A long gridcloth glowing from above would create a beautiful source for the cars below. Look at a car in the midday… read more…

Space Lights are an efficient way to light large studio sets with relatively even “sky light” from above. They hang like giant lanterns from the studio grid. Spaced roughly every 10 feet apart, they are helpful for lighting floor space in front of white cycs and blue or green screen setups. A traditional tungsten Space Light consists of six 1000… read more…

Here’s a clever piece of Gripology. Instead of Condors or Parallels, suspend your lights from the roof or an upstairs window with a Matthews Max. The “boom-like” stand positions lights up to 75 pounds, extending 16 feet from the base. More often seen to position a back-light, this is an innovative application by key grip John Janusek on the 2010 Liongate… read more…