American Cinematographer - October 2007 - 96

and green, while cyan falls into a gap between green and blue. The Kelvin series uses a proprietary mix of LEDs that include the colors orange and cyan, as well as a broad overall white, such that the units emit fullspectrum light. The overall color of the light can be easily warmed or cooled, and the individual LED colors can be mixed to create almost any color imaginable. The lights can also be dimmed without changing color. This six-color (RGB COW) LED mix makes the Kelvin series the only fullspectrum LED lights available to the motion-picture industry at this time. Element Labs contributed two 4'x1' Kelvin Bank prototypes to the production for testing. “There was no need for a generator or fans to cool off the set — it was a very easy way to work,” says Sutch. “It was very fast: just program and go. It was lightweight, and I even shot through the Stealth lattice screen from behind to create a textured fence look. The Kelvin Bank prototypes eliminated the need for color-correction gels on my keylights. I had other lights standing by but never needed them. “I look at both Stealth and the Versa Banks as being really big video displays,” he continues. “We built two walls of Stealth, one on either side of the car, and played a wide selection of cool video imagery on them, including mockups of speedometers and RPM gauges as well as treatments containing the drivers’ names.” Kelvin Banks mounted easily on rolling Mathews stands, and the Versa 96 October 2007 Banks were suspended on steel cable from a truss grid with pipes at specific points. The Versa Banks mounted flush together, creating a single 2-meter-by5-meter screen that hung safely over the car. The Stealth screens, originally designed for live concert tours, required little time to set up. Each screen arrived folded and preconfigured in its own road case. The tops of the segments were attached to trusses and unfolded cleanly as the trusses were raised. Each screen consisted of 96 Stealth panels, resulting in a display measuring 21' wide by 8' high with a 3:1 aspect ratio. At 2.2 pounds per panel, each screen weighed just under 300 pounds, including cabling. Together, the Versa Banks and Stealth screens formed a short tunnel, with a race car parked in the center. Pit crews worked around the car and the displays, with the talent framed in the foreground. Recalls Sutch, “Originally, I thought we might have a problem with the far ends of the Stealth walls because perspective caused the far LEDs to face farther away from the camera than on the close ends, and I thought the far ends would look darker. I had the grip crew move the far ends of the Stealth walls closer together to force the perspective and open those LEDs up to the lens. It turned out that being off angle to the LEDs wasn’t a problem at all, so I had the grips square the walls off again. “We used the Versa Banks over the car in place of a big softbox. Sometimes we used them for white beauty light for the car, and sometimes we played a loop of sky and clouds that reflected in the car’s windshield. “The Stealth and Versa Banks both ran on 208-volt, three-phase power. The Element Labs engineer controlled the whole system from a Mac laptop connected to a small media server. The screens’ video inputs took standard DVI cables, and we controlled each screen individually. Jump Studios gave the engineer a CD full of graphic content, and off we went.” The project was shot in high- definition video using two Panasonic VariCams. “I had ring lights on both cameras, and I used the 4-foot Kelvin Banks from the front with 216 diffusion on the doors,” the cinematographer notes. “I had a couple of tungsten backlights with 1⁄2 CTO on them. The rest of the lighting was LED.” All of the LED lights were balanced for 3200°K by Jonah Strauss, an Element Labs engineer. “We balanced the 4-foot Kelvin Bank keylights to match a 3200°K Kino Flo ring light by mixing differing amounts of all six Kelvin LED colors,” says Strauss. “We then repeated the process for the RGB-only Stealth screens and Versa Banks. The Stealth signal-processing unit has a built-in RGB color-correction feature, and we mixed those colors such that the unit output 3200°K white light to the screens when a white video signal was fed into the unit. To whitebalance the Versa Bank array, we used our RasterMapper software running on a laptop.” “This is a new way of looking at lighting situations,” says Sutch. “You can color-correct on the ﬂy; it’s like having a camera-control unit or paint box on a light: warm it up, cool it down, dial it in just right. It was very quick and very soft. The biggest advantage, though, is that the active lighting gives the talent something to react to, which results in better performances. In this way, it’s vastly better than greenscreen.” Element Labs, (512) 491-9111, Email: info@elementlabs.com, Web site: www.elementlabs.com. Cinematographer Art Adams consulted with Element Labs in the development and testing of the company’s lighting products. Iconix HD-RH1 by Jon D. Witmer From his earliest discussions with director Steve Shill and the producers of the Spike TV miniseries The Kill Point, cinematographer Bert Dunk, ASC, CSC knew he had found the right project for the Iconix HD-RH1 point-of-view

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American Cinematographer - October 2007

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