Trounce Alley Lighting Company

Here’s a video from last year, shot at one of the abandoned buildings in the 240 acre Riverview Mental Health complex which still actively houses clinically insane from all over Canada. The video is Caspian, “Amnesia” featuring Belly and its directed by multi-Leo award winning director Matthew Schilling.

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.

Official music video for “Nobody Says No” by Jessie Farrell. This is the second single and video off Jessie’s new album Good, Bad & Pretty Things (604/Universal). Directed by multiple award-winner Stephano Barberis and produced by Arkadia Pictures Inc. Cinematography by Ron Williams C.S.C.

Offical Video for Scatterheart’s “More Than A Man”

Scatterheart’s love letter to Vancouver: Filmed in front of Vancouver’s landmarks: Science World, Sunset Beach and the SeaWall in the summer of 2009. From the album, ‘The Masterplan’ AVAILABLE ON ITUNES and at WWW.SCATTERHEART.CA

Credits:

Produced and directed by Scatterheart • Edited by Mike Southworth • Filmed by Randy Che • 1st AD Masayo Takada
Lighting and Grip Josh Alkoff • Colour Timing Miles Forster • Assistant Brian M Calvert

We’ve just wrapped an independent action thriller feature, “Transparency“. The film is produced by our friends at Qube Films. It is directed by Raul Inglis with cinematography by Michael C. Blundell who is known from Stargate: Atlantis and Jeremiah television series. It stars Lou Diamond Philips, Estella Warren, and Deborah Kara Unger, among others.

During the show we picked up a few tricks from Stargate veteran key grip , John Zulisnki, while sharing our TALCO package truck with his team of grips. Many of the cast, crew, and stunt people were also from the Stargate universe making this an enjoyable feature to work on with a tightly integrated crew all around.

We will have more on this film as Qube Films publishes more information in the upcoming months.

We are pleased to hear from Rugged Media the aboriginal short film “The Cave” by Writer/Director Helen Haig-Brown of the Tsilhqot’in tribe has been selected to screen as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Top Ten (TIFF).

Set in 1961 in the Chilcotin Territory of Western Canada, The Cave recounts the story of a bear hunter who discovers a secret portal to the spirit world. This beautifully crafted film provides a powerful cinematic rendering of an authentic Tsilhqot’in oral story.

Helen Haig-Brown is an award-winning Tsilhqot’in director, director of photography and teacher who is in love with experimental documentary filmmaking. The Cave is her first dramatic film. She resides in her traditional lands in the interior of British Columbia.

Here are two corporate video we did with Director Cliff Prowse from Pin Point productions over a year ago:

Click the teaser images above to view them. Safari Man Dan | Dinosaurs Unearthed

This first is a childrens promo spot funded by the BC Chicken Marketing Board which us on a week long tour of the British Columbia chicken industry. We wore bio suits and hosed down our lighting equipment in chemicals to pass bio security checkpoints in order  bring cameras and lights into places nobody but chickens go. The spot was narrated by Adam Groves who coincidently plays Amir in Under the Apple Box the feature we recently completed earlier this year.

In the second we did the camera mounts for Dinosaurs Unearthed a promotional video showcasing the traveling animatronic dinosaur event which was installed at Metropolis at Metrotown.