Yesterday we went out to shoot promo material for Milan Zappack, a musician represented by Favoured Nations Entertainment. The location was an abandoned facility of the town’s water supply built around 1900. The place is drained now and we shot in the main reservoir. Really cool place, a few thousand square feet, pitch black with echoes and everything… Below is a first shot, no processing done on it:

I lit the background with Elinchrom 1200 RX heads with wide angle reflectors on either side of the place. Full power on both of them. Milan was lit with a Ranger Speed AS unit and two heads. Quadra softbox high on camera right and a backlight behind the subject camera left. I used a bunch of Skyports to trigger the lights and I really got those working at their limit. With all the Stone (and possibly metal built within) I couldn’t get every head to trigger every time from certain positions. I wonder whether Pocket Wizards would have done better. Most of the time it as enough to move myself a few inches or just try a second time.

I could have definately used more light though. The place is vast and the walls suprisingly non-reflective. Plus all of the those columns really swallow up the light. I was a little hesitant about using the equipment down there. The humidity was insane. While it was really cold in there everything was clammy and wet after a few minutes. Plus the floor and walls were wet as well. But thnakfully nothing arched or blew up - sometimes you just need a little faith

After five hours we emerged to what turned into a rainy sunday evening…

More on this shoot (incl. a little making of video) coming up soon…

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Posted by nicolashenri on May 19th, 2008 :: Filed under Lighting, Making Of, Underground
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