Part IV: Camera and Lighting

The short was filmed with a Canon 7D digital SLR, using a vintage Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens and a modern Canon 60mm f/2.8 macro lens. The Pentax worked great, but its minimum focus distance was just barely on the edge of workable; you see it in all shots that are wide to medium, and the Canon 60mm is used for all close-ups. Camera support was a heavy old Manfrotto studio tripod I got for free from a friend’s mother many years ago, with a cruddy pan-tilt head. Of course, every camera setting was fully manual.

I decided to shoot all high quality JPGs rather than RAW, since I didn’t find that I needed much post-processing latitude. The key to that strategy was dialing in the lighting correctly in-camera. I only used two lights: a CoolLights 128-element LED flood and a Lowel Pro Light; each was placed to either be the fill or the kicker depending on camera position, one warmer and one cooler. Each light source was modified by barn doors, diffusion, gels, and a white foam core bounce card just below the camera lens as a fill source, angled off and below the front lip of the set. Camera white balance was set to 4500° K.

The most notable quote during shooting: “That light smells bad. Like, ‘it’s giving me cancer’ bad.” I don’t think I’ll be shooting with that light anymore. Time to retire that old Lowel and upgrade to an Arri, I think.