An experimental short directed by Shaun Dozier
We shot five rolls of Vision3 7219. About half the film was set around a pool which is apparently heated by jet exhaust, one of the loudest rooms I've ever been in. Fortunately there was no dialog. Mikel Barton gripped for us the first day at the pool, when we were still figuring out how to light both the actors and the pool with one HMI, which involved many laps around the perimeter (thanks Mikel). We ditched the 85 filter to get the extra stop, and timed it out in the telecine.
The two other locations were a tiny white-walled apartment and a black box theater which we fogged mercilessly. I wanted to avoid back-lighting entirely in this project, to create frames where it was difficult to tell where the light was coming from but without feeling unnatural. It didn't always work out that way. Shots like the first above were hard to resist, and in the black box we set up the Jokers at a 3:1 ratio and wound up shooting in every direction but mostly from the darker side. Elsewhere I would light for 360 degrees to accommodate blocking, and it didn't make sense to tear down a perfectly good setup to adhere to the philosophical point. I knew I was being conservative, lighting with less contrast than I usually do. When we got the telecine back I saw how much further I could have pushed things. The only blown highlights are from aiming the lens straight at a spotlight--seven stops over is no exaggeration. There's plenty of shadow detail too. I'd be comfortable lighting to a much higher ratio and opening it up a stop over incident next time.
Shaun knew exactly what he wanted from each shot, and the actors (Derrick Ivey, Claire Florian, and Davis Hasty) came very well prepared. Almost all angles were done in one take.