A little Christmas spirit

And because I will never get how to do that internet thing right I will share the Christmas special I made this year a week after Christmas. First things first, the video:

It was a whole lot of fun working with this little one. Fun stuff. And to link the whole think with the previous post - I used a soft filtration and all of the directors loved what that did the fairy lights in the background. But here I will talk how I light it.

I had some soft lights laying around the studio and I needed to find a way to put overhead. So I had to get some super clamps and magic arms (with the lightweight fixtures that are being made now I think that super clamp and a magic arm will be getting even more popular combo).

I want to point out that in the studio we have a whole lot of photo lights and softboxes that were left from a photographer before us. I put snoots on them and use them as shafts on very specific places when I need one. So here is the lighting plan on the scene:

Now, the two soft boxes are the ones that I hug overhead straight down the big one (500w Photoflood) had to be top and frontal on the talent to get the light in hew face not only on top of her head cause that started to mimic too much Marlon Brando's lighting from The Godfather and as much as I kinda wanted to do that lighting it's a story about a little kid that tells you a story and not going to kill ya... I hope. The other light was a smaller box with a smaller bulb(90w incandescent) but had the similar implication, I used is for some room tone and light on the dining table. Now those soft boxes had to be taken down from the walls cause we need to keep some contrast in there that's why I got some black draping material, crock clips and skirted those lights. Have a look at the finished setup, not super pretty but it worked like a charm:

Now the window. I love windows but when people put those white sheets on them to hide the studio something kills me. What we did is: 4 stands with black drapes to box up the window, we got to the near by park and got a nice big fallen branch and put it on "stand" (chair with more black curtain) and we put some "outside" fairy lights to make the feeling that there is more decoration of the house from the outside. Nice little touch that made the whole set feel bigger (windows do that, use them) and I put a 650 with 1/2 CTB for something in the window.

Everything else is are little touches where something had to brought up a bit. I did some work on the practical light that is behind her. Gladly I was able to take sections out of the light so I can make it shorter and I really wanted a warm feel to it so i got some of the full orange that I had and cut a little piece to fit right in the light using some bluetac to keep it in place with a small light bulb in it. And that small little 150w was just a small bounce in to the whole set to rise the whole thing in the background just a bit to get some more detail and those lights are like an open-face light and have nice warm color temp.

Just one more thing before I go now. I had a fireplace effect on set if you look closely it is camera left and it is flickering all of the time on her. Here is a little picture of that little rig. If you want me I can get in detail of it in a different post: