Lighting

I was thinking a lot about the Quay brothers lighting being "verging on the corpuscular" and wanted my lighting to take something from this in order to be as dramatic as possible. In order to achieve this I blocked out all natural light in the room using cardboard sello-taped over the windows so that i would have maximum control. I set up a somewhat complicated lighting "rig" using a desk lamp (partially shielded with thin card to direct the light a bit) and two small battery powered torches suspended on a second desk, a block of wood and an old picture frame above the set.

I wanted to give the appearance of a fire burning in the fireplace so I developed the idea below to achieve this:

I have to say, i was feeling pretty damn chuffed with myself when i thought of doing this. I cut holes in the back of the "fire-place" leaving small flaps that could hold different coloured cartridge paper. I shone a light on this from behind and changed the colour of the paper between every shot. To be honest, this started out as a little ambient idea that might add a little extra something but turned out to be very time consuming and just kind of frustrating. And i didn't realise this until i had already shot 50 or so frames by which time there was no turning back and i had to keep changing the damn things between every frame just for continuity's sake. Sigh.

I made the starry sky by cutting small holes into an old bedsheet, poked a couple of pairs of battery christmas tree lights through then taped them in place.