efpia | the spark
Shot on Alexa Mini with Zeiss Superspeeds. A wonderful creative challenge. The glowing spark itself would be created in post but we wanted the lighting effect to be real in camera so the light source we used would have to fit in our actors hand and be small enough point source to not pose too big a problem for painting out in post.
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We decided to use Litegear Literibbon and hide the small thin cable connecting the LED ribbon to dimmer and battery pack inside the actors costume. The literibbon has a subtle flicker effect which helped sell the spark. Michael, the director then deviced a hand brace so the light itself would sit above the hand on a small podium that could then be painted out.
Carefull light placement, angle, direction and diffusion choice was necessary to get the right kind of quality of light on the actors face while not casting a too distracting glow from the LED that would be hard to paint out. Careful blocking of our actors and location light ingwas crucial too to make sure the small warm LED stood out against the backdrop. The Literibbon was set to 2700K and most location lighting was 5200-5500K. I set the camera to 4400K so there would be a lovely colour contrast too.
director | michael sherrington
dop | david liddell
producer | beth allen
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production company | forest of black