Tour De France - Grand Départ

3 Jun

Brief:

We were brought on board by Maybe Media, to create and setup two lighting scenes at Manchester Velodrome. The first scene was a dark, low-key, ‘Drive to Survive’ style interview, and the second was a high-key, open and bright scene.

Scene 1:

The first challenge was how to overcome the venue lighting in a velodrome where we couldn’t control or turn off any house lighting. We decided to go with a large blackout cube setup using a 12ft frame kit on twin double windup stands. This created a large controlled black box interior with a backdrop where we could tailor the lighting to the brief.

The second challenge was how to get sufficient distance from the light source to the subject to get even falloff while inside the constraints of the 12ft black box. We opted to go with our favourite lighting system, the Lightbridge CRLS 100cm mirror with diffusion 3. This allowed us to double the distance from source to subject, creating a natural falloff across the subject's face.

We used a 600D light with a spotlight on the mirror for the key light and then added a 300x onto the backdrop to create a soft gradient. The overhead hair light was a 2ft tube light with egg crates and finally an 80c light as an eyelight. We used a small amount of haze to create some atmosphere.

Scene 2:

The second scene was a high-key setup, showing the environment around the backdrop to give context to the cycling content. Therefore, we had to work with the venue lighting while not trying to outcompete them.

We moved the black box away from the backdrop while retaining enough of it to create some negative fill. We then changed the CRLS mirror to diffusion 2, which strengthened the light and created a slightly harder light to motivate the harsher venue lighting.

We then added the 80c on a stand behind the subject but in frame. This created a nice edge light on the right of the subject, and it also worked as a practical light in shot to lean into the obvious ‘studio’ setup.