Background

Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome to this episode of the Godox Production series. 

Today we are filming at this amazing, nostalgic skating rink. What we're going to do is we're going to basically use the practical lights that are already at the skating rink, but we're going to use Godox lights to help enhance the rest of the space.

So we're going to shoot a couple of different scenarios. We're going to use a lot of RGB. We're going to use a lot of tube lights and panel lights. You name it. 

We're just going to have a lot of fun. So let's get in here and do our thing.

The Location

We are here at the location right now. It's this really cool, nostalgic skating rink, all kinds of character. Right now we just have the house lights on and what we're going to do is end up turning off most of those house lights, only using a couple of the practicals. 

But we're going to bring in a lot of Godox lights, mainly tube lights and panel lights, just to really enhance the overall character of our entire environment.

The challenge is that we're lighting a very large space, so we're going to need a lot of accent lights in a lot of different areas throughout the skating rink. And that's just going to make our our set look a lot larger than it really is. 

We've closed down the set and brought in all kinds of background extras just to make it look like the skating rink is happening and this is live and is basically open since we've closed down the set. And we're going to do from there is we have our talent that's going to have a good time at a skating rink.

It's just a night out with very cinematic lighting and we're going to play with some Godox Lights and try to make something really cool. So that's the whole premise of this.

The 1st Scene

Here we are in our first scene. We wanted to do a really cool movement with the camera. Basically, when she's renting the skates and taking them and sitting down with their friends. So we wanted to use a gimbal and a ready rig, and that's going to basically keep that camera stable and allow me to kind of float the camera to where we want the action to take place.

For our camera setup today, we're using the red Komodo. We have our 21 millimeter lens, 1.5. We do have an indie that's on the back of the camera. And we do have a subtle dream effects filter on the front of it, so it's giving us a nice haze for the light and we're wirelessly pulling focus on these shots so that we make sure that whoever's operating the camera doesn't really have to worry about the focus.

Let's take a tour of our set real quick. I kind of show you some of the lights that we are working with. 

Back here, we wanted to kind of throw a really fun RGB color and we really like the blue cyan kind of color. So what we have is a P600Bi Hard and it's right over here and this is basically cascading across all of these skates right here.

We put a blue gel in front of it, just to give it a little bit more of a blue tint and also cool the light down as much as possible. This is a bi-color light. So we're at the 8500K temperature on that light.

And if we just keep moving this way, I'll just kind of show you what we have back here is our backlight, and this is kind of lighting up just this general area right here.

What we have way back here is a KNOWLED F400Bi. It's a flex panel light. It's got the softbox on it. And that's basically illuminating this entire back area and giving us kind of a cool little illumination of these trophy's right here. 

Moving over here, we have some TP4R tube lights. 

These are cool because these are the KNOWLED tube lights, which are pixel lights. So they're allowing us to give it this really cool light chase motion. We did a pink and a blue just because we like that color palette. We kind of went with that and we gave it motion just to kind of give something, you know, kind of dynamic in the background. 

We set a couple of these up on one of the lockers right here and also cascading across the locker. 

If you can kind of see we have a spotlight with the MG1200Bi, and that light is hitting right across here. It's just kind of illuminating the more the trophies and more of this blue locker area right here. 

Moving over this direction. All this come stand right over here. This is a flex panel F400Bi. This is the new flex panel. 

These are great because you can easily mount them overhead and get a really nice key light and there's a soft box and a grid attached to it. That softbox and the grid actually came with the light, which is another awesome thing.

So we had this boomed over our talent when our talent was sitting right here, just gave us a nice soft light and really allowed skin tones to really glow. And it just, you know, we liked what the highlight was doing there. 

So we want to go further back here. There are so many lights here because we're lighting a very, very vest space. We actually went and replaced a lot of the light bulbs that were in these fixtures of top these little lamps. What's in those is the C7R RGB lamp light. That's a smaller fixture lamp.

And they actually come in a kit that you can charge all of them together. They're all RGB. You can control them with Godox Light app along with all the other lights as well. But those we set to a nice warmer tone like a 2800K just because we wanted it to be a little bit warmer in this background over here.

Also we added more tube lights to the wall and so we just did some Velcro and also some duct tape. I mean, that's basically how we got them mounted to the wall. We played with some of the RGB colors. 

And that's pretty much our world in a nutshell here. 

Gaffer: The cool thing about Godox is the app. It makes it really easy for me to control every single one of the lights on our set right now and do some really cool things, like for instance, our effects that are going on and our tube lights over here too. Even when my director or my DP calls for me to change any light, that just needs a little tweaking.

We can be standing right next to each other and I can be tweaking it with him right next to them. I can also group all of lights together. For instance, all of my hanging bulbs up there. I instantly can take them off and put them on whenever I need to, and we can do very minor tweaks standing right next to each other and not having to keep running and yelling at each other or talking on a walkie. It's quite nice. 

The 2nd Scene

Here we are in our second setup. We actually are on the floor at this time doing a little bit of skating, a little bit of dancing, just a bunch of fun stuff. So we need it to light up this entire area behind me. 

We really wanted to highlight that PIZZA sign that Wally just had to have, he had to incorporate that into it. Glad that we got it thrown in there. It really helps out that background right there. 

Over here on this side, we've got some TP4Rs and these are the pixel lights. So we put them on a nice little purple, pink and blue effect, just kind of giving that light and motion just to kind of balance out everything that we had in our scene before this one.

For our key lights, we have a couple of F400Bi panel lights. We've got one set up right here with the diffusion silk on it just to soften that feel a little bit more. And then we have one boomed over here with a diffusion silk and a grid, and that's basically containing that light a little bit more. It's also diffusing it just to give us nice soft atmospheric light just within this general area.

Further back behind me is the P600Bi Hard light. That's a really, really bright panel. And what we had there is we put a blue gel on there just to kind of give us a little bit of accent color. 

That light's great because in lights up a large area and the light actually carries a long distance. So we're able to carry it throughout our entire environment, which is great. 

The other thing we did was we took an MG1200Bi with a spotlight attachment. We actually had Eric on it and he was able to maneuver that light around as if it was a spotlight. So we were basically making our own practical looking source, but with a really large light.

It was really cool just because you're kind of paying off the lens from time to time or just highlight the background, it really this gave us a lot more lights and motion and that's exactly what we're going for here. 

All right. If you want to find out an easy way to film skating or a lot of moving rickshaw cart is the way to do it, because I'm not putting any effort right now. It's all Wally and it's a great way just to maneuver around and get your shot and dial it in.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Godox production series. We'll see you next time. Until then, happy filmmaking.