Lighting the Animals of the Jungle 2

We’ve just finished our second behind the scenes movie from the Wildlife Rescue Movie done together with F&V Light.

In this video we are talking about how we have been lighting animals when filming outside in daylight. The filming conditions vary from cloudless midday sky, to grey and rainy mornings, to fading evenings. We always wanted to give a consistent, soft illumination on the animal and create a glint in the eyes regardless the natural lighting conditions. This time meet baby sloth Hannah, parrot Deas and kinkajou Max where we are showing how we have been using very portable LED lights to light the animals and to help convey the feelings of warmth and tenderness in these scenes.

We used an array of LED panels, the larger F&V K4000 and the smaller Z180.

Enjoy!
/Andreas & Natalie

Midsummer Cows

Last Midsummer 99% of  all Swedes were out eating food, dancing and most likely drinking somewhat too much.

But I was out hunting clouds for Warner Brothers and Avalanche Studios Mad Max. I drove to Torhams Udde outside Karlskrona and have spent many hours there. It was a truly magical evening with a glowing red sunset over archipelago and we’ve got some spectacular skies.

Around 11pm the sun was gone, the gloomy misty twilight have descended and it became really, really chilli (+5),  I have packed my gear and headed on a long hike back to the car. However not coming too far I met some cows grazing in the open. They seemed to be just as curious about me, as I was about them and soon they have called more cows to come and look. Half an hour later I had a full house gathered around… and a party!  They were dancing, having frivolous (lesbian!) kissing and all in all enjoying Swedish Midsummer at its finest. I didn’t have the Red Epic with me but Canon 5D was able to capture the merry cows.

For half a year I didn’t do anything with the footage even though I thought it was hilarious. Until half a year later when our friends at WSPA mentioned that they ran a campaign for Milk Cows. I remembered the footage and got ready for some serious post production challenge in making the dark, gloomy, very shaky material look shippable.

After many passes in DaVinci, Final Cut Pro X and creative colour grading we managed to lift up the gloominess of a dark twilight and create a feeling of a warm evening sun. This film was subsequently used for educational purposes in schools and helped to gather the much needed signatures to improve the cows’ conditions in the milk industry.

I have learnt that no matter what you always want to have a camera on you and capture interesting things going around. Many times we do not know what to use the randomly captured footage for, until one day when it proves to be essential for a project.

Lighting the Animals of the Jungle – Part 1

Hello everyone!

We have just released our first behind the scenes movie from the Wildlife Rescue Movie done together with F&V Light.

In this short movie you will meet Natalie the baby sloth, Merlin the tiny, tiny tropical screech owl, Andie and the lovable Milo.

We used an array of LED panels, the larger F&V K4000, the smaller Z180 and the HDR-300 Ring Light.

You can also view our post on the Red Forum for more information.

Enjoy!
Natalie

Avalanche Studios in the Jungle

The Swedish games company Avalanche Stuidios has just released a movie called “Avalanche in the Jungle”.

This movie was produced by Thundoor Pictures and was an incredible project. Please view the 5 minute video here (remember to watch it in HD full screen):

So far all responses have been very kind!

/Natalie