31 DEC 2012The EOLight and Blackbird
EOLight was used to generate both the soft keylight and the image on the practical monitor that is reflected in the actor's glasses.
During the shooting of The Third Act there were quite a number of situations in which we needed a soft little portrait light but didn't like the effect we achieved with what we had available. Sometimes, too, due to the restrictions of practical locations, we didn't have the room
to bounce and diffuse the way we would have liked.
At some point this led to a discussion with Russell Jurgensen, Technical Director of Effective Objects, a Seattle-area software developer. Russell was familar with the LED panels I had designed and built a couple of years before and I put the problem to him in that context.
"The LED panels are great for their size and power consumption but getting them properly diffused and gelled for a particular shot is a trial. And once we get an intensity set, if we have to change it the color changes and we have to re-gel. And shooting digitally often we don't need that much light."
What if, I mused, we could use the increasingly large, increasingly inexpensive flat panel TVs and computer monitors available? All we needed was some software to let us dial in the color we needed. More advanced options would create fire effects and other types of motion.
By the time Blackbird Bye Bye began shooting we were running beta EOLight software. In the shots of The Engineer working on his computer in a darkened motel room we used a 46" monitor with EOLight's 1/8 CTB preset as a soft key. The reflection on the Engineer's glasses (photo) is a series of EOLight generated frames on the Engineer's practical monitor. Later, EOLight running a 24" monitor was used to generate the passing car headlights that appeared to be shining into the room.
If you want a lot of light, an LCD display, whether backlit with fluorescent tubes or LEDs, can't compete with a bank of Kino-Flos or something similar. But for small amounts of soft light that can be used close to the subject and gelled from software, EOLight driving a surplus monitor or TV from a small notebook computer makes a very cheap, lightweight, and easily set up way to go.
TL
