Scary 31 October Shoot Planning ~ A question

[wilgk]

Halloween is not big yet in Australia, but it is growing in popularity every year. For the arachnophobe it is getting quite scary in the retail displays at the moment let me tell you!
Our school has a yr 10 fancy dress social at this time every year & the theme for this year is 'Scary' they have stopped short of calling it Halloween, but the idea is the same.
A dear friend of mine who is currently battling cancer treatment, has a daughter in the yr level, so I am doing a photo shoot for her & her friend before they go to the social.
They are going as the Grady Twins/sisters from "The Shining" twins in the movie, but sisters in the book I think.

I thought this would be a great chance to use the fog machine & if by some fluke it is nota windy evening, I hope to have them walking along planks across the swimming pool with the fog around their feet.
Failing that or as well as that, I haveset up our sons bedroom as a scary space, hopefully with some extra touches to resemble the Hotel.

The first step was to build a chiller box for the fog machine, to keep it low to the ground.
This involved a trip to the local hardware chain, a bit of sawing & attaching of pipe & bingo....



If anyone wants more detail on the box & construction sing out. Otherwise its on to the Photography set up.
I have wrapped 2 wire temporary fence frames in black sheet & 2 in white. These are quite heavy & not transportable, as they don't fold down or collapse, but can be brought indoors. The sheets are clipped onto the gridded frame just with bulldog clips. These keep the backdrop fabric tight.

My plan is to hang some pictures of the characters on the black behind the girls &then take some 'before' shots when they don't have blood all over their dresses.
I want to have some gel light behind them on the black as in the eg's below & I think with using a portrait lens, I know how to do this in practice. We may want to use the fog here as well, not that there was fog in the passageway of the hotel, but if I can light it, we will have a different scene from others photos.

I practiced with our son & the dog a while ago for these green & amber attempts at off camera flash with gels




So I followed the same set up this week with our daughter & a red gel backdrop, here is what I can get with the portrait prime lens.


I am using the flash on a manual power setting & I read in Syl Arena's that if you want to saturate the background more with the colour then to decrease the power,but what I want to do is to spread the colour more, so that it looks more like my earlier attempts and more like these Internet e.g's (credit to original photographers)








I actually want if possible to be able to use a wide angle lens to include the 'bloody' shower curtains at the side & still light the background in what will be my 'after' shots.




We have spray on fake blood & I have made fake blood dripped candles & painted candlesticks black for them to hold, along with 'Come & play with us Danny' chalkboard signs.
So it should be a lot of fun, any advice on how to spread the gelled flashlight will be gratefully received.
I hope others can learn from any replies as well, so thanks to anyone who has a moment to post an answer.

[Shadowman]

Nice series and great opportunity, looking forward to seeing more.

[IzzieK]

Is the shadow at the back of your subject on #4 and 7 intentional? I think you should move her a little bit more away from the curtain if you do not want that...don't you think? Your set up is very good... Bunnings will have love you a lot for going their way for your project...

And oh, by the way, girl on shot #6 -- her pose is great but ask her not to put her finger on the trigger yet if she is just posing...google the right way to hold a gun and you'd get what I mean...

Just my opinion...

[rpcrowe]

How about a green girl?



I used NIK Viveza and placed control points on her skin and hair. I grouped the control points. I then placed control points on the shirt, background and jeans to eliminate those areas from the original selection. I increased the green channel and increased the saturation for the selected areas...

BTW: even with green skin and hair, your daughter is quite a beauty...

[wilgk]

Thanks John, Izzy & Richard for your comments.
The images with a watermark are e.gs from clever people who have done what I want to do.
I think yes moving subject further from background will help, but my aim is to spread the colour further on the background from the hell flash, to fit in with the wider angle in the scene.
& yes a spooky green girl looks great! - she is a pretty wee thing, I tell her as long as she uses her powers for good & not evil, then it's ok

[Loose Canon]

Hi Kay!

Love the concept! Spooks me just contemplating it!

If I’m reading your inquiry right, and not knowing what type or how much lighting gear you are working with, I might toss out a couple of thoughts. And I suspect you are already going to know what I’m going to say.

In order to spread your BG light, you are going to have to get your light further away from the BG. Of course then you will probably have to ramp up the power, especially firing it through the gel. If you had two BG lights it would be even better. Also, if you haven’t already, and the light has the capability make sure it is zoomed out.

Another thought I had is to fog the background and light that. That will help disperse/diffuse the light as it bounces all over the fog. Of course this theory will not give you a light “vignette” as such but can make for kind of a spooky atmosphere.

A couple of examples of BG fog lit with gels. Two side (and slightly back) lights (one on each side) with a red and violet gel. Shot against a black BG.







Also an example of a shot done using this kind of atmosphere. The wizard was lit with four lights as seen in the bts shot. Two side (and slightly back) gelled lights and one non-gelled directly behind the Wizard firing straight up and tilted slightly forward for the BG. These serve a dual purpose as rim lighting for the Wizard as well. One overhead in a strip box keys the Wizard himself with a gold reflector below and directly in front him for a bit of fill.



Lighting setup:



Don’t know if this is what you are looking for but maybe give some ideas?

Have fun and Happy Halloween!

[Loose Canon]

Something else occurred...

Have you thought about putting your light (if just one light) at the bottom of the BG and raking it straight up the BG instead of hitting the BG straight on?

[wilgk]

Oh wow Terry, that is exactly what I am hoping for!
I should have been more clear on the gear, I have available for the day 4 speedlights & they can be zoomed & yes it is the fog in front of the black background that I want to light.
I had another try today, getting a bit frustrated, as I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong.
I did find this try worked ok, this was with slowing the time down to let more of the ambient background/gel light into the shot & also turning the light on Douglas (the stand in model) down & putting a grid on that light, so it didn't blast the rest of the scene.
Such a shame you're not next door, to help me as that wizard shot is awesome!
My other hope is that if it is a night with no wind, that I can push the fog across the top of the swimming pool & have the Grady twins walk on water...


This is with 1 light, 2 gels not top of each other, manual power/full power, but not manually zoomed at all.
I tried with the wee plastic diffuser down hoping that might aid the spread, but nope that didn't work.

Thanks so much for any/all advice, most gratefully received.

[Loose Canon]

A couple more thoughts then...

I have found that I like fog to be side lit if I can arrange it. Helps avoid hot spots and shadows and I think shows the “swirls” a little better. The light will actually take on the shape of the fog bank at the time the lights are fired if you side light it. So if side lighting look at shaping the fog rather than the light. The fog becomes the BG and the black backdrop will just “peek” through in the thin spots of the colored fog without being affected by direct colored lighting.

I shot the Wizard from a low angle to (hopefully) give it larger (scarier?) than life look.

I shot several BG shots with no subject for the archive and in case I wanted to composite or composite in the future. (Not to mention I was having fun fogging the place up!)

I sure wish I was next door to assist your shoot too Kay. This looks like a very cool shoot you are setting up and I would love to watch you do it. I know when I shot the Wizard I really could have used an extra hand to work the fog machine. Four lights sound good. The more the merrier!

I got Faith in you! If anyone can pull this off it would be you! Hope we get to see the results!