Elephant + Studio Setup

[Kodiak Qc]

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This was an exercise for my son Olivier.

The task I came up with for him was to "create" a studio take completely of the wall!
It is not an easy thing to cook up a scene from a pure invention setup. He had no idea
after an hour or so and when I when to the studio to see his progress, he was sitting
in despear: "I don't know what to do!"
Ok I said, my next student comes in 45 min so let's get cracking. I looked around in
the props room and saw a dusty elephant. He had to clean it: Let's make a savanna
setup…
He had to collect wood shreds from my wood workshop and cut some wild weeds
and setup about everything… I was suggesting some tweaking here and there…

 

[sirch]

I am in no way qualified to comment on the photo but thanks for showing the set up.

 

[Broric]

The background (lightning?) doesn't work at all for me and detracts from the rest of it

 

[Nionyn]

I've long enjoyed making little tabletop setups of this nature. It's fun.

I really like the backlit wood-shavings and grasses, that's very nice.
Not keen on the gobo-projected lightning, personally. Not fine, sharp or bright enough to work well here. Also it does not motivate the rest of the lighting - no other light comes from that direction, as it would with real lightning.
It's a matter of individual preference, naturally, (and I do realise that this was a quick exercise) but I'd have preferred a two or even three colour graduated background. Since you're using a blue background this would have been easy to achieve using just one gelled light (or maybe two, if you had time and wanted more variety in the background).

This is the kind of thing I mean. It's obviously a very different mood from the kind of thing you were going for here but it will show you clearly what I'm talking about and might give Olivier some ideas for future projects:

It''s lit using just four little Vivitar 283 hotshoe flashes.
Blue (softbox) from above on the wall, red (softbox) from below on the wall, orange (grid) for the 'sun' again on the wall, and orange (grid) from just out of frame on camera-right to simulate the light of the sun on the vehicle and sand.

There's a bit more info on the photo's page on Flickr ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/8969481@N04/3524452334/in/dateposted/ ), and here's a link to the setup diagram (I'll be happy to post it here if that would be a better way of doing it): https://www.flickr.com/photos/8969481@N04/3524477970/in/photostream/

 

[cargo]

I am in no way qualified to comment on the photo but thanks for showing the set up.

Ditto !

I've long enjoyed making little tabletop setups of this nature. It's fun.

Just followed the link to Flickr stream. Gtreat stuff loving the lighting set ups.Soooooo clever. I really am just playing at this malarky ;-)

Gaz

 

[Cannyekerslike]

Just followed the link to Flickr stream. Gtreat stuff loving the lighting set ups.Soooooo clever. I really am just playing at this malarky ;-)

...........sigh

 

[paul williams]

Anyone fancy trying it with real elephants came across this when I was researching Briese lighting

Paul