Trounce Alley Lighting Company

Our new Modern Studio Equipment “hostess tray” style side mount in action on a Dodge Viper Powered SRT-10 Ram. We’re in beautiful Kelowna, BC at the moment on our third feature with the ever popular Vancouver based independent cinematographer Norm Li. It stars up and coming english actor Luke Goss previously known as part of the brit pop duo Bros. It is directed by Justin Donnelly from TV The Troop.

Modern Studio Deluxe Hostess Tray on "Pressed" set with Norm Li

… yes we are way behind on our posts — !

Contact us if you’d like to rent our car mounts or find out more about flying Norm’s lighting balloon.

This time lapse from the first portion of a 6 day film shoot at VFS with director Michael Chayse — Head of Production for VFS Entertainment — shows what can be done with TALCO’s 5-ton lighting and grip package truck out of the box.

Vancouver Film School’s equipment was booked by multiple graduation projects from the cinematography program. Michael was leading an inter-department collaboration between the school of business and post production code named Project Space Squid, which involved students, faculty, and alumni. The project was based on the sci-fi cosmic horror writing of HP Lovecraft, an american writer from the turn of the century.

Michael needed professional lighting to bring Lovecraft’s surreal Cthulhu Mythos to life.

VFS Entertainment turned to our grip truck to convert an unused space which had no lighting grid into a functioning green screen studio with lights and equipment. We performed lighting services while business management students oversaw the shooting of 5 short films. They were titled: C’Thulhu, Dagon, Dunwich, Erich Zahn, and Rats.

The students are maintaining a comprehensive blog of their progress in post production.

The project was overseen by VFS head of the Entertainment Business Management department, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, who also produced a 7-minute behinds the scenes documentary of the production titled, The Interactive Lovecraft.

Further there are some photos taken by a student here.

The VFS press department seems to be on a roll with this project…more will follow.

TALCO returns from 3 weeks filming a movie in Edson, Alberta!

The feature film, BELOW ZERO — starring Terminator 2′s Edward Furlong, horror legend Michael Berryman, and supporting actress Kristin Booth – takes place in a butcher shop where a captive writer (Furlong) gets twisted into dementia when confronted with a deadline he cannot face by his agent (Kristin). Blurring the lines between a depressing reality and a beautiful macabre, the writer’s angst manifests in a gruesome character of his own creation (Berryman) while the writer himself explores a sick fascination with the butcher’s son, a pecular little boy named Golem.

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We filmed in a small highway town far from infrastructure which challenged us to improvise. We originally built extended hood rigs on our vintage picture trucks using scaffold pipe and sliding cheese plates, but the gravel roads proved to be too shaky with the old truck suspensions. We had no stabalizers so we ended up building our own process trailer from a flatdeck base, ground up. The night exteriors ended up being a simple task done in a minimalist way using cinematographer Norm Li’s 4k Airstar Helium Balloon Light. A photo of which from us even ended up on Norm Li’s website.

UPDATE: Final video has been posted above.

The band Faber Drive posted a behind the scenes sneak peak of their recent music video shoot “You And I Tonight”. We worked with cinematographer Danny Nowak C.S.C on this one doing the lighting along with Key Grip Mike Branham of Best Film Services. The video was directed by Colin Minihan of Digital Interference and produced by Shawn Angeleski.

It was a wet night at Terminal City outdoor set in Vancouver, the rain towers and SPFX were done by our friends BrantFX, coincidently the same people and the same film set we collaborated on several years ago for the highly controversial CTV docudrama Pickton, by Academy Award winning director Malcom Clarke.

Factoring in 41 years of inflation since Woodstock ’69 LOVE has somehow managed to stay free in Canada suggests, The Higgins, in their first single from their second album, Dreamers Like us, which is scheduled for release in Spring 2010.

Official music video for “Free Like Love” by The Higgin.
Directed by multiple award-winner Stephano Barberis and produced by Arkadia Pictures Inc.

Scroll down for a technical lighting summary of the setup.

The Higgins are John, Eileen, and Kathleen Higgins, brother and sisters, from Delta, BC, Canada.

Lighting Summary:

We rigged the stage for cinematographer Ron Williams C.S.C with a 4×8′ softbox above the band.

The rig consisted of 3 blondes and a frame of 216 diffusion. It was built with pipe and burtons from a goalpost allowing it to “pendulum” down so the angle of light would be less overhead and more in the eyes of our talent. Due to the weight of the rig our goalpost consisted of three 20′ schedule 40 pipes (1 1/2″ Aluminum) joined together into a triangle formation using Modern Studio Equipment mini-truss brackets. We cranked the rig up in super-crank roller stands (12.6′ max height). The wheels on the stand allowed us to roll the entire rig closer to the camera to make the lighting more frontal for the closeups.

Of primary concern to Ron was beauty lighting for the band’s two female musicians.

In addition tot he softbox over the stage we filled from over the heads of the crowd using a 10k fresnel through a 6×6 frame of half grid cloth. We used solid blades and flops to cut most of the spill off the crowd so it would project over their heads into the eyes of our band. There was also two tungsten units on the ground through diffusion frames to fill from below the stage in front of the band because that was the direction they would look down at the crowd. These units were hidden from camera between the crowd and the stage on the ground.

TALCO built a 4x8' softbox with pipe & burtons and suspended it over the band with a makeshift 20' truss on super cranks. A 10k key through a 6x6 frame cut off the crowd provided fill.

Technical Notes:

If doing a similar rig consider using a specialized truss lifting support from the theatre/live event industry in place of super-crank stands. They are usually load rated much higher then super-cranks and some of them can go upwards of 20′ in height which would be a huge asset if the stage was any higher (compared to 12.6′ for a super-crank stand).

Also consider using real truss for less sag across the span. We used ropes and pulleys from the truss of the studio to safety our rig but if you didn’t have access to a lift to get up there you’d certainly want to make your truss more rigid.

We provided additional fill from tungsten units on the ground through 24'x36' Diffusion Frames hidden from camera between the crowd and the stage.

We have discovered two more videos by premiere 35mm country music video production company — yes this is probably our 15th one with them – Arkadia Pictures the collaborative duo, director Stephano Barberis / producer Alex Galanis.

As with all of Arkadia Picture’s beautiful country videos, much of the magic in the cinema is brought out by senior Technicolor Creative Services colorist Gary Shaw in a 2K film to digital transfer session. The details are extracted from the 35mm work print. The end result is delivered digitally to the TV networks. The film latitude and the extensive digital timing allows us to get by during the shoot with more available light and less time consuming setups then typically on a feature film shoot. This helps offset the huge time constraints of trying to cram an entire narrative story and live performances into a single days shoot.

Above: The charming (dare I say sweet) “If I Fall” by Doc Walker – cinematographer Ron “Rocket” Williams presiding.
Below: Another timeless combination…girl’s and power tools!  Greg Hanna – “It’s a Man’s Job”:

The first was filmed with an Arri 435 by Rocket and lit with a 6k HMI Par and some custom string lights. The background was a 20×20 painted backdrop suspended on location in a barn. The second video was filmed by producer Alex Galanis himself using an antique Arriflex 35 film camera with a rotating turret of prime lenses. We shaped available light with grip gear and did not require a movie generator or HMI for our interiors to produce a quality video on a tight budget

We filmed extensively in the forest out on Pipeline Road with a few scenes around downtown Vancouver.

Shot on RED Camera by DOP Randy Che we had to maximize our production value with minimal equipment for what was predominantly a night exteriors shoot.

The production was self-funded by the director. We couldn’t afford condors or use any of the typical large area lighting we would have wanted. Instead, we pulled it off with a 12k honda diesel “hog” generator, a couple of 2.5k HMI PAR, 1k JEM BALLS, and some 750 watt SOURCE FOUR PARS.

The heavy fog was accentuated by backlight/crosslight from our HMI. The campfire fill was a poor-man’s helium balloon light. It was created by suspending the Jem Balls above our campsite location on a giant 30′ menace arm/mambo combo built from schedule 40 aluminum pipe joined together with a Modern Studio Equipment boom kit. We could have flown the Jem Balls with rope and pulleys from the trees,  but the menace arm allowed us to easily reposition the light close to our frame for coverage and was quicker then climbing up in the trees to set ropes (we had to wrap and return to the same location over several weekends). The lanterns radiated outward from the centre of the campsite creating a warm glow from the set and leaving lots of shadows on the outside.

We struggled for exposure on our background from our 2.5k HMI (we needed at least a 6k for the area we were trying to light) so we had to fill in the near background in places with the Source Four Pars. They were punchy enough but had to chase the camera around depending on which direction we looked.

For scenes that took place without a campfire we raised a 6′x6′ Bounces into the air and filled it with an HMI so the fill would be more directionless (emanating from above the camera, rather then glow outward from the center as it did with the lanterns.

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These sweet photos were taken by stills photographer, Mike Mander of sublimephoto.