Words of the Gaffer « Journal Zero

Words of the Gaffer

Posted: 2nd July 2010 by Eric Thomas
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Guest Posts, On Location

Eric Thomas on his experiences as gaffer with the Night Zero team

I met the Night Zero Crew at the Emerald City Comicon back in 2009. We chatted and discussed my potential involvement in the series, although it was not until September (when they needed to shoot the courthouse) scene that I got an email from Anthony asking if I could help.

As a gaffer who really only works on narrative films, I was amazed at the difference in workflow and the speed with which they were able to work through all the required shots.

When dealing with full-motion action and dialog there are many moving parts, where failure in any one of these parts will render the take unusable. The camera can bump or fall out of focus on a dolly or a pan. An actor can stumble over a line or start laughing. A light or stand can wind up in the shot, or have to be fiddled with to prevent that. The list of things that can ruin a take is long, and the workflow is such that it can take a couple of hours to light a scene before the first shot is in the can.

Since the shutter speed and the relative ISO for an HD Camera (or actual ISO for film) are both constant, as gaffer I have to light to the f-stop. The camera needs this at a 5.6 and the film is 125 ASA so I need the light to give me an x amount of foot candles. Period.

With the still camera you can change the ISO and the shutter speed to adjust for any deficiencies in the lighting, and the nature of HDR photography corrects for the range. Every shot is perfect—we just need to add light for color or to highlight some action.

The two days at the courthouse were bright and sunny. We knew we were going to be there over several hours, and in that time the sun (which was our key source of light) was going to march across the sky, shifting the shadows as it moved. To keep the look consistent we used a 12′ x 12′ silk on a frame that was mounted on stands. The silk is moved around and angled such that it flattens out the direct sunlight and allows us to add our own “sun”. We do this with a 1200 watt HMI Par lamp, which burns closer to the ultraviolet blue of the sun as opposed to the standard tungsten lights, which (uncorrected) burn much redder. Now we are able to control our “sun” light and move it around as needed by the director of photography. Add to this mix a couple of tungsten heads with color-correcting blue on them and the scene is pretty much lit. Repeat as necessary over the course of the two days for each setup, and we have a wrap.

The next time I worked with Night Zero was for the “trap the scratchers in the back of the truck with live bait” scene in episode three, and on the same day, the vignette Special Delivery. In this huge container storage yard down on the Duwamish, just as at the courthouse (and most outdoor shoots), we needed to use my generator to get power but in this case the fact that it rained all day made for a very miserable time. I did construct a tent (of sorts) with tarps and C-stands but by the end of the day it was just dark, noisy, and we were splashing around in puddles everywhere. I think I used only the 1200 Par HMI for the back of the truck along with a 650 watt Tweenie to highlight the gunshot, and the 2000 watt Junior to pick up Jezebel when she stepped around the truck. For the vignette we just followed the action around with the 1200 Par on a narrow lens, eventually ending with me on top of a container to shoot the single light source down on the final fight scene. We wrapped in the dark and got lost trying to get to the main gate of the location, but a warm shower and a beer soon wiped away the cold and wet.

Most recently I was asked to come in and light the scenes for the warehouse fire in the current episode. This was in the back of an old aircraft hanger at the former US Naval Air Station on Sand Point. So we were inside, it was not raining, and we had building power so no noisy generator. Since Night Zero is not concerned with audio I was also able to play music off of the truck the whole time. Huzzah! Basically we wanted to light the conflict and, as the fire grew, intensify the lights from the soft orange glow of tungsten up to the theatrical red of the fire.. The crew also brought in a smoke machine, which would fill the scene with thicker and thicker smoke over time.

For this scene, we blocked off the extraneous daylight spilling in through the windows with a 12 x 12 solid. We then added our own daylight with the 1200 PAR HMI and keyed the actors with the tungstens. A 2000 watt and a couple of 1000 watt fresnel lights would evolve into the inferno, starting with their basic orange color. As the fire progressed I added to the lights some “rock and roll” red gels, one at a time, until all the lights were red and the room was filled with smoke. The raw shots alone looked amazing, to say nothing of them rendered in HDR.