Henkel - commercials

The first time I worked for DoP Andreas Hutter I was still a electrician - quite some years ago! Huge sets, tons of work, very high quality. So when I got offered to work with him as a gaffer, one can imagine I was quite nervous. I just said to myself: You know your job, do your best, I know my team will be backing me up as they always do and we should be fine. I love when I am pushed, have to be better than I think I can be. High pace, always two steps ahead everyone else. On your toes the whole day long. DoP's at his level don't need all their energy to get the light and image they want. One eye was on me all day long. Testing me, seeing what I was able to do. And at the end of the day he asked me if I would go on with him to the next job. I haven't gotten such a compliment in a long time. Especially from an artist like Andreas. So Henkel was up next and I've been at his side since then. Learning, enjoing my job and looking forward to 2009.
A compilation of pics.

Cardiac Move

My former Bestboy Mario is moving on to becoming a DoP. Our passion for images is something that we had always shared in and off work. obviously we got the same taste in light, so we were enjoying our job even on a very tight budged in a wonderful old and run down empty factory. Here are some images.
and here is the video

tatort "Baum der Erlösung"

I have always avoided TV "mak'em fast and don't look back" productions. But since DoP Thomas Kiennast was willing to take on the challenge, I was sure we would be in for a sweat but would end up with a good TV feature. To be honest we were both struck by our limitations (our "larger" standard equipment consisted of one 6k par, one 4k par for daylight and one 10k and one 5k for tungsten lights! We got additional stuff or extra days, but all in all that was the challenge. Working fast, maintaining a high quality.
Just to give an example, we lit a street as planned, but by the time rehearsals were done, the shot ended up looking down on to a plaza. but no more "big" untits in the truck! So we lit the whole plaza with one 2k! Thomas got the production to improvise a wetdown so he could play the whole scene as a silhoute in the refelction of the light. masterly! we were rolling 15 min later.
here are some pics. thomas also has an online gallery.

*new* open blog

Since I started the gaffers diary, I got lots of emails about the site, asking questions. So, this is a try, I'Ve opened the blog for postings. Feel free to comment, ask questions, everything aslong as it has to do with lighting! Lets give this a try. I'll answer as soon as I can.
Yours, Jacob

McDonalds

Lots a times the agency does not allow me to take set pictures. Sadly also on this job - which started to get interesting even before the location scout. I was just coming back from a job in Berlin, the plane already late, as the captain announced that were were going to have a rough landing. Wind ... interesting I thought, I'm curious what the wind will be like at the location. On the way to the location, the taxi driver was telling me that it would take longer to get there, the storm had caused big branches to fall on to the street. Interesting I thought. Were shooting in four days, usually when its like this, in vienna wheater does not change that fast. As I got to the set it was as i thought. 70 km per hour winds were tearing around. The DoP for the job was Thomas Kiennast, an excellent man, who knows what he wants - perfect light. And as we were standing outside, - in the wind, holding our hats, so they didn't come flying off into nowhere, Thomas looked at me and sayd: Well, we gotta do it right. We'll need a 20x20 Butterfly, 20x30 greenscreen, some 12x12's and some 6x6's. Some Arrimax 18k, 12k's,and so on. We have to match this material with some other stuff we'll do in sunny Mallorca. Of course, the usual. And for sure, I'm not going to be the one complaining about wind and stuff, I just love to suprise and get the job done - and he's just waiting to hear me talk about the wind. I don't. I just say, sure, no problem. He looks at me interested and then just says, great. At the time I had no idea how to solve this. The weather report sayed, it's going to be better than today, but it's still going to be windy as hell. Next day I sat down with my boys and told them what my plan was. (you must know, in Austria we sadly don't have key grips, it's all up to the gaffer) Well, it was more a vaque idea how to solve it, but I rembered having a close look at a major rock'n roll rig for a concert some time back. They put absolutly everything on massive concrete blocks. Just to give it a good base weight. And so I thought, what the hell, lets leave all our big butterfly stands at home and replace them with concrete blocks that have metal trusses built on to them. And then we replace all the butterfly rods with trusses and rig these big beautys where ever we need them. I don't care if the silk, or grid tears, but if hell breaks loose, absolutly everything will not only be save, but also look save. We all know the difference ;) Two of my guys worked as rigging stage hands, so Arthur and Alex worked out the details. My biggest concern was the loss of mobility. Luckily we were shooting on a good asphalt parking space, so we were able to move the concrete blocks around with two ... sorry I could not find the correct english therm. But theres a picture on the top! It was as fast as using stands! (if you include the time it takes to remove the ropes, sandbags, ect.) And so, using the rule of thumb, for one square meter you will need 100 kilos of counter weight, we came to the show with an extra 14 ton truck, just filled with weights. You won't notice the wind in the final commercial! And at this point I must say thanks to the line producer who trusted me to pull off this heavy stunt although we were way over budget - this was my first show where the costs of lightequipment were more expensive than the crew. And we were deffinitly not understaffed if you get the picture.
Go to the showreel of thomas: www.kiennast.info

Rauris

Rauris - if you ever come to Austria in Winter and somebody says, let's go to Rauris - don't, well, or lets say you better be dressed real warm. Rauris is the coldest spot in Austria. I'd say I got my gear together, but I still partly froze two of my toes. Thats the time of day when I got quite angry again that someone stole my real expensive mountain shoes in Sarajevo. Anyway, Rauris has an impressive collection of high end Mountain gear - too late for my toes though ... but what am I talking about - lets switch subjects. We did some nice stuff in Rauris for a Short, again I was able to bring along the RLS gear (for more infos go to: www.dangl.tv ... /ligth and grip, there is a RLS Link there) Were getting quite fancy in the use of the reflectors, because as soon as you can handle the combination of more refelctors, you get even more serious results. When you look at the pics, keep in mind that ALL interieur shots were done at night time with the use of TWO 1200W paralell beams. The first picture shows a fire simulation with two Minibrutes which were punched through a dozend of tangling gels. The gels are mounted on a windmachine, the wind keeps them up and creates the "fire" effect. We came up with the idea at the scouting, it worked very well! Here are the pictures.

offline

Hi everyone,

sorry it took so long to come back into the web world. Too much work this year (I did tons of commercials, but nothing of interest for this site ;) Some months its just doing your job good and getting home safe. But it payed me a wonderful one month rock climbing holiday in Sardinia! So thats the story. Thanks everyone for sending me emails and asking why I haven't been posting! Great to hear from all you guys out there! We had bad weather back here in Austria the last week, so I'm off the work hook and able to post some of the jobs we did this year.

highspeed action

The last job of the year! An art project for the well know artist Harald Hund. For a video installation we lit a complete living room interior crash down from the ceiling, at 150fps. A nice ending for 2007 - a pre - "happy new year" explosion. Also we finally got a chance to work with the DoP Ludwig Löckinger. He's good - and he let us work in the "American" style with a key grip etc. Slowly I am able to convince Austrian production company's that this is the better and in the end, cost efficient way to work. So lets hope for the best in the future. Were all going on holliday now, will be back mid of January. Happy New Year everyone! To the pics.

muriendo - tango music film

It was very interesting to work with DoP Marco Zimprich again. He was the first to push me into becoming a gaffer. He gave me alot of jobs, helping me to learn to stand on my own. So it was great to say "thank you" and deliver him some beautiful light - which was only possible due to the production company penny lane film. They are very interested in getting good quality lighting - even if it costs more. So we had us some good time ;) Here or some of my pics, but better ones from the still photographer are here.

50/50

Working with young talented DoP's is always a pleasure. This also includes the gifted Massimo Bettarelli, an Italien cinematographer who learned his craft in the "old school" style from veteran cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno. So combining this knowledge with a young spirit must end up in something good! So aside from the good work shooting in Italy is a very nice thing if you like food and espresso ... By the way, on our only real day off (it was a very tight schedule) we went hiking up to this beautiful monastery (pic above) outside of Turin - in fact this is where Umberto Eco got inspired to write "the name of the rose"! For more pics click here - as one will see, we had the chance to work with the RLS system again.

the clash - a "dirty" look hip hop show

TV - shows can look different! Especially with the production company "golden girls" one has to be very open minded and take big risks to get something new. A few pics of the test run for the new hiphop show "the clash". Click here.

eggcrates

I won't comment that there are no 12x12" eggcrates available in Vienna. Due to time restrictions, we had to improvise and build one out of polyboards. The nice thing was that we could make the eggcrate deeper (50cm) and if necessary tilt single polyboards to direct the light more into one direction - keep it off the background and still be able to get more punch for the backlight on the actors. The pics show the first setup of the day, the small softbox (as seen above) was built some time ago (for a show where we did not have a lot of space but still needed some soft light). for more pictures

The path out of abstraction

Christian Berger, my former professor and international acclaimed DoP asked me to join him along with a bunch of students and other DoP's to a light seminar in Croatia. For some years now he has been studying Wolfgang Goethes Books on color and light and presenting his work in a light seminar. On the remote island of .. where one can be in total darkness, no artificial light blinds the human night vision. So 14 light obsessed people sat down for 10 days, reading texts, discussing light, looking at light and learning from nature. An experience that has truly changed my perspective on light. I had never experienced working and learning with light - without having to work with tools to manipulate it. This freedom gave me the space to look and reflect.

Mag. art Jacob Byron Ballinger

This is a nice posting to write. I was accepted to film school 11 years ago; working as a electrician was just not enough for me to learn the trade of a gaffer. During school my career took off - no time left to study. A few months ago I got a letter from the university letting me know that if I did not finish school at the latest 30th of April 2007, I would not be able to graduate. So... I had to cancel two feature films, sit down and do lots of paper work and exams - and on the 30th of April, at 10:45 I finished.

"Der Tod und ich" short film

My Best Boy is making the move towards becoming a DoP, so of course, we all jumped in our trucks and went to the Styrian countryside to help him out on this fairy tale like story. I am really happy that we were able to get some wonderful lighting setups. For a year or so now we all have been discussing on how to find a new approach to lighting. I have been obsessed with Kandinsky's "Point and Line to Plane" in which he talks about his compositional theories. I have been using my spare time to study his work and find a way to bring his thoughts in to the three dimensional space and now we were having the chance to test our thoughts! I especially like the lines we summed up on the wall in the sleeping room (which we achieved with a bunch of mini brutes) Well, we'll see how long I still have the last say before my Best Boy starts telling me which lights to set up. He is quite some talent!
To the Pictures

Gasteiner, commercial

Sometimes commercials are a lot of fun. Especially with the excellent DoP Thomas Kiennast - the pack-shot was just beautifully done. And I just loved working with rear projection again! Pics (Harry - thanks for the fotos!)

Text on Light

I was asked to write a text on light for the austrian film festival for the feature film "Fallen" (see posting September 2005) from my point of view as a gaffer. Dop on the job was Bernhard Keller. For some time now I have been interested in theoretical (lighting) work to be able to offer the DoP a broader scope of possibility's. Artistically and of course technically. At the time I am doing a lot of research and writing concerning the use of compositional tools in lighting. I hope to have some published texts in english soon.
To view the text (which is in german) please use the following link and click on "#32 Fallen" dir. Barbara Albert.
Diagonaletext

SKOK

Shooting in Tirol with the young spanish DoP Darios Ferrer had a lot of great opportunities 1. very talented DoP 2.wonderful mountains, wonderful light 3. my former professor and international acclaimed Dop Christian Berger lives there. He (together with the Bartenbach Licht Labor) has invented a new lighting system that is based on bounced light. He was kind enough to borrow us his private set (the system itself is still in the final test phase) for the entire shoot. I wrote a (quite commercial) text, summing up my experiences with the system. please click here for the text. The system is amazing, there is hardly anything to write - just when you look at the stills and set photos keep in mind that all of our light consisted of 1(!) 1,2 k parallel beam. The reflectors in combination with the parallel beam punches out such an amount of light; its like a 6k par! But the quality of the light is just amazing, beautiful and soft. The scene which plays in the rather small house (there would have been really little space for the "normal" lights) we put the parallel beam on the floor, downstairs, caught the light with some very hard reflectors and then bounced them over some softer ones to fill the room with wonderful light; as you will be able to see, we were able to expose for the outside and keep the light level inside the room on the right exposure! With one 1,2k bouncing over 4 reflectors! the system even worked on locations with big windows and lots of sky in the frame! I hope I will be able to use this system again, very soon! Beautiful light - little work, fast setup! Here are the pictures.
If you are intrested in further information about the Cine Reflector System, please contact Christian Berger.

Weltwechsel, mystery film

When DoP Volkmar Geiblinger asked us if we would join the production he was working on for the complicated night shoots I felt honored and knew I was in for some diligent and spooky stuff! We were able to use Tungsten Lights for all the night locations. For a scene which takes the main character on to a mystic hill (- quite amazing, it was used by Druids about 700 B.C) we illuminated the hill with space lights. The rig consisted of 10 space lights (without the silk) which gave us a bigger surface than if we would have used a 12 k HMI or so. Anyway - Tungsten is a much more beautiful source (especially on the skin). Due to the way (the naked) space lights are built it gave us a unique, beautiful texture on the dry grass (and of course on the faces). Since it was a HD production, Volkmar was OK with adjusting the color temperature digitally. (Gelling the space lights would have become a problem with the wind issues we were having out in the open...) An interesting task was calculating the the needed hight of the Condor, not knowing the hight of the hill. Suunto and the cos funtion did the job! As always, thanks to the great key grip alex broschek and my team! For the pictures, please click here! CLICK

Bandz, feature film trailer

Well, when I look at this year 2006 I see I've spent two months in my flat and only did three jobs in Austria. So, it was kind of nice to end the (working) year in the town where heights of windows and movements of the sun are known by heart. "Heimspiel" means "home game" in Austrian soccer.


For a few smoky pics, click here.

light seminar at the camerimage festival, lodz

I had the privilege to assist Chis Doyle and Rain Li as a Gaffer at their Light Seminar at the Camerimage Festival in Poland. Working in front of about 300 students and DoP's was a new experience of its own! And it was great to be able to continue the high level work flow after rapping the show in London with Rain. Chris Doyle is an artist with very high standards - to get the chance to slip into his thought process for a day was naturally very rewarding!
After the hectic and the long night party's at the festival I took a few hours to walk around Lodz before my train left. The Jewish Cemetery (the second largest in Europe) was quite stunning. Very old, very young, very ambivalent. A few pictures are in my personal work site.

losing her, short feature

One does not often get a chance to work in the Tate Royal. It's one of those places where I went to go relax and learn. So setting up lights in those big rooms with all the amazing pictures - William Turner (one of my all time favorites) has his own rooms there - was just a privilge. But it was quite a challenge to work at the Tate especially because we were only allowed 2k for each room; we managed to sneek 2x 1,2 k pars in there, but still you're fighting the limits on every shot. And so our package for the Tate just consisted of the 1.2k Pars, some CP64's, and a handfull of Tungsten units and Springballs) It was my first time working with the high ranking DoP Rain Li. She designed the shots in a way so that we always were able to get in our lights as close as possible - so we still got a soft, beautiful daylight look that incorporated the available lights in the Tate. In one master shot where we did have to see the whole room, Rain went with just having a beautiful blue reflection (of simmulated daylight) on the shiny floor to match the other shots. Those were the moments where she really gained my respect - incredible images! A nice detail on the side was that our small daylight sources that we had pouring into the rooms were extended onto the faces with tungsten lights (gelled with CTB). This really enhanced the quality of the skin tones. HMI's are quite harsh on the skin... (of course, this was only possible due to the white balance - the CTB gels tend to have big green spikes... ) The D20 (and the way Rain calibrated the white balance, etc.) really helped with the colours. All in all - working in London is always a pleasure!
Thanks for the beautiful setfotos, more are available on Marias homepage: http://www.mariaguerberof.com
For further information:
http://www.rainli.co.uk
http://purefilm.co.uk

innere werte (inner values), feature film

When a script starts out with the main actor tumbling out of an nightmare and saying, "light!" the light goes on and the film starts - what else is there to say except: when does prep start? (I must also add that the script has a "mullholland drive" feeling; a science fiction - mystery film with a dark sense of humor with a great story that was really fun to read!)
Working with Dop Sandra Merseburger was an exeptional working releationship. She has such a fine eye for light, rooms and colours so that when I arrived in Hamburg (wonderful city!) for location scouting, most of my work was done. Sandra had this idea about using lots of practicals in the corridors of the hotel (the main location) and had picked camera angels and positions that were amazing in themself and ready to shoot.I told her about my experinces in london where I used mostly practicals in the interieurs. She loved the idea and off we went to ikea to pick out lamps that would fit my lighting needs and also suit her needs within the frame. we came up with a bunch of really interesting lamps. It worked fantastically and was reduction in its purest form. sometimes we had wonderful shadows on the wall and the lamp that produced them was right in the frame next to the actor. I was struck by the beauty and the simplicity! After the first day Sandra trusted me enough to give me the artisic freedom to light the scenes (after having talked about the mood and light levels for the scenes of the upcoming day) So I just checked with her shortly before rolling. - she just nodded her head " looks great " - and off we went. we both felt that we wanted the same light for the film, so talking about the light was never about technical issues but about results and looks. Such collaberations don't happen that often and are very rewarding. This includes producer Peter Stockhaus who was very supportive in our creative decisions. My crew also got their share of the party by being able to give them the freedom to rig the way they wanted to. This gave them much more fun in their job- which they did outstandingly. I am proud to have found a team that over the years has become a family in its own sense. for some pics click here.

white lie & mind torture, short film

Some projects just have to be done due to the script or the people envolved and when both work out at the same time I'm off on a plane - knowing that the budget is more than tight and working conditions will not be as usual. But helping a young production company to get on to their feet is sometimes important and so, with the help of AMF we got a small package together to be able to do the lighting in one of my favourite places - england.
As I started out in the lighting business, I was mostly working on big commercials. I was lucky to learn from the best gaffers in town. Big lights, big set, lots of people, little time, beautiful light. When I became a gaffer, my first bigger job was a small feature film. I managed to keep myself above water but working in small spaces, not having an art department to help you, and not having anything around that I was used to from working on commercials made me quite nervous sometimes! I went back to commercials and in the last few years I've finally found my place in both worlds. Now in England I often had to muse about my beginnings and how much fun I now have fiddling around with two household bulbs and one 800W redhead outside the window. What I found out for myself is that its not about the lighting equipment, it's about the beauty of a scene, the emotions, the people and the magic of light softly touching actors and objects.
For more pictures please click here.

ring road - musicvideo

Some time ago I met up with an old friend of mine again, martin stig andersen, a composer, and we decided to explore further possibilities of light and music together. We were able to get some fundings from the Bundeskanzleramt Abt.7, kunst., cine styria and the danish artfund. "ring road" is a combination of landscape lighting (the landscape is a miniature), dance and music.
The light reveals the landscape as we "drive" through it. (although the camera is static - motion is simulated by light -as we simulate speed for rear projections or any carshot in the studio). Dop Volkmar Geiblinger was kind enough the do all the camera work involved for us. Thanks to everyone who helped us - as soon as the work is online I will post the link! here are some stills from the set, more infos in the gaffers workshop.

For more information on the project please visit: http://ringroad.eyemotions.com

oe3 commerical

ok, I admit it - sometimes everything just runs smoothly; i can hand the set over to mario (best boy) for a few minutes and take the time to enjoy being outside (altough it was rather windy - no more ropes were left in the truck) and take some pictures - that will not win the pulitzer prize! thanks to the team for the easy day! here are some more ...

miniature stop motion lighting

the task: the rain stops, the clouds move apart, the sky clears and the full moon shines through onto the miniature landscape . I thought the best approach would be to use paint on a role of clear gel; to spray the whole movement of the clouds (from total black to clear gel) onto the gel and then move it over the landscape. for the moon we used a pack of 12V single kinoflo kits. Interesting enough it seemed to look better then the bouncing light off a showcard. Fortunately, the decision to animate the whole procedure with stop motion rather then filming it, made the rig alot easier for unrolling the gel to produce a smooth animation. We were really pleased with the results - the change in weather looks amazing! Although I had never done stop motion before I had no idea that each photo takes about 5 seconds to shoot, readjusting the next frame another 5 seconds - and this 500 times ... ouch. Maybe I should have built a motor controlled system after all!

What I did build were some small hallogene 12V/10W lamps which fit into the model -I put them on a dedo hand dimmer (added some extra ballast to get the 60W necessary for the dimmer) and it worked quite well. But one has to be careful about the heat from one of these little globes - one tends to underestimate the heat of such a little cute thing! for pics please click here and visit the gaffers diary.

volksbank commercial

here's the deal; we want to shoot with daylight into night without seeing a change in (day) light. but -a tent is not allowed in front of the big windows. OK, no problem - four tie-ins 2x 125Amps, 2x 63Amps (with 220V) and - take out your sunblocker - its going to be hot today - we love tungsten lights! needless to say that with a bunch of 10k's and alot more wendys there's going
to be a beautiful light source pouring in the windows. working with dop thomas benesch and the production company schmutzer productions is always a pleasure.

mahony photography

light for the photographer; andreas duscha, mahony, april

Doing photograpy at 30 sec exposure time is a task of its own because you see every spill light - controlling the soft light from a 12"x 12" frame made us to unload alot out of the truck! the rig we built for the redheads (to light the computers) consisted of rods from a 20"x20" frame. The frame itself is 12"x12"; the rest of the rods were used to build a construction above the frame to hold the redheads. In this way we could easily move the entire constructed soft light source without a hassle.
I like working on art projects, especially with the art group mahony (http://themahony.org) and their photographer, andreas duscha who is very good and knows exactly what good lighting is (and that this is what we like to do!) for more pictures please click HERE.

baton striplights

the striplight softboxes were built for cinematographer christine maier on the feature show "the itty bitty titty committee".

we built a bunch of them in different sizes. (6light, 3light,2light and singles) usually, i had some 250 diffusion on it. if we needed some extra punch within the soft light, we cut some diffusion off. we used them almost on every night interior where we had low ceilings. on very small sets we boxed them with showcards to keep the spill of the walls. due to the light weight, we could easily hang them on bailing wire. if we wanted to wrap the light around the face, (using a 6light) we used some higher wattage (150W) as a backlight and reduced the wattage on the bulbs the further it wrapped around the face. the light naturally keeps the tonal range of the practical in the frame, which makes it in this case easier to handle than a kinoflo. beautiful easy light!

"the itty bitty titty committy" feature film

hollywood goes
europe style


keep it fast, beautiful and cheap seems like a motto you hear on all shows. well, on the "itty bitty titty committee" (dop: christine maier, dir: jamie babbit, prod:"power up") this motto became really serious. we shot eight pages a day - and you won't notice it when you see the film! the local keygrip lawson deming and best boy electric steve irvine and the rest of the crew really pushed the limits to get the job done well. if you are looking for really good guys in los angeles, send them a mail!
as posted in the workshop blog we used alot of baton striplights. christine maier was so happy with the result we ended up using them for almost all night interior scenes. we were shooting alot in small spaces with low ceilings so blanket lites and the rest of the kinoflo package came in real handy. the weather worked out really well for us - beautiful los angeles winter light. the translight we were using in scene in a tv studio was something i hadn't used in europe before. it looks really real and is easy to handle.
there was hardly time to take photos, but here is a small look into the production plus some shots from LA. "the itty foto diary"

speedrail

sometimes trusses were just to big for the set and the speedrail alone wasn't able to hold the weight, so we came up with a simple wire solution for the speedrail. works efficient and does the job.

linestra cine kit

after using some linestras on a commercial forDoP manuel mack, I decided to make up a package that would be "filmfit" We built some linestras into a kinoflo housing, plus some handheld versions. the linestras are really warm lights but cast a beautiful soft light which works really well on beautyshots or when tungsten practicals are involved. because linestras work on normal dimmers you have perfect control over them. we have used them ever since, gelled them 1/2 CTB if necesary.
special thanks to branko vali the amazing house technician from the rental house dangl.

"hello" music video

music video for "hubi mauracher"

working with DoP Volkmar Geiblinger always involves some very interesting work. "hello" (prod. balag film) included a one shot simulation of the sun rising and going down. including dawn, magic hour, etc. a 10k was rigged on to a dolly, passing trough gelled frames (a combination of warm colours, ambers, cto's etc. to simulate the sun coming up) dawn, magic hour and the fill light of the day time was simulated with a bunch of minibrites (9lighs) and parcans all hooked up the 48channel digital mixer. we got the time needed to complete the shot beatifully. big time fun.
for setfotos, please use this link.

moonligth softbox

a softbox we built for bernhard keller on the film" fallen". we were doing big exteriors of a wedding on a windy hill outside of vienna. we wanted to create a very soft moonlight feel as a backlight. because there was no way we could use balloon lights we built a 6"x6"x6" softbox and bounced 9 minibrutes (9lights) into the the full grid we had rigged around a custom made speedrailbox. the back was covered with a silverbounce, the bottom with muslin so we would not reveal the position of the light which we rigged onto a condor crane so we could control the softbox from the remote. we gelled the minibrutes with a 1/4 blue and 1/8 green. it turned out looking really fantastic because the tungsten light gave the moonlight such a tender feel. all the lights of the party tents we dimmed down to increase the difference of the colour range.

"FALLEN" feature film

sometimes work does not seem like work. if this is so then only because you have an exellent DP, director and production team like on "Fallen" dop:bernhard keller, dir:barbara albert, prod:. coop99. the cast was a combination of high ranking austrian actresses which made the job very interesting because the style bernhard keller was aiming towards was a real nitty gritty - so we were always balancing keeping the actresses beautiful and maintaining a very harsh realistic look. we gelled neons so they would spike around 30M but at the same time have some other neons go into mangenta. we did everything one should not do. at times when I got worried, bernhard keller tapped me on the shoulder and meant that there was no need to be; he was right - the rushes really looked incredible. in a major parking lot scene there was no way to hide condors, so we opted for original streetlights which were in the scene. but since they did not emit enough light we stripped 4banks and tied them around the neon streetlight. since the neons would anyway overexpose when in the shot, one could not see that we had about 6 four banks tied to the three original ones. it looked totally natural, perfect for the mood of the scene. A few photos are to be seen in the archive.

"grbavica" feature film

award winning snow shoveling

it is nice to have worked on a film that has won the golden bear in berlin. even if at times the melting snow on a 12k was freezing again when it had reached the bottom of the gel mounted on the barndoor. but grbavica (dop: christine maier, dir: jasmila spanic, prod:coop99) was really worth the experience. working in a country that is struggling to find its way back to normality after a war is an experience. electricity was borderline, english was rare and additional equipment we had to use from sarajevo was very old. but the crew we had was amazing, old school - from times when the yugoslavien film industry was at its finest. improvisation was a key to keep on rolling. shooting in sarajevo is like being on an island. as a 12k ballast broke down, a lokal electrician replaced the busted pieces with parts from a washing mashine. also the austrian production company found ways to get stuff to us within a day by local busses. luckily we were able to keep up the fine quality of light in front of the lens. on the main location we were extending daylight by bouncing 12k, 6k's into 20x20 grifflons which were rigged as a topper outside on the window. we had it on ropes, so when we were looking outside of the window we could raise it just above the frame. in addition we had 6k's going directly trough grid frames to let the daylight reach further into the room. christine mayers idea was to give the whole film a feeling as if it was dusk all day. practicals were mostly on inside giving the scene a mixture in colour temperatures. for more pictures, please use this link.

rotolights for moving car shots

we built these for christine maier on the show "grbavica"

the carshot was set up so we would see the passing streetlights behind the actor. logically we wanted to see the passing streetlights on the actors face. due to the fact that it was not possible to get a trailer for our car in sarajevo we were forced to position the camera in the car next to the actor and all our lights on top of the roof! a bunch of kinoflos and two rotolights which we repositioned for each shot were rigged to a small grid of pipes which we attached to the roof. basically we built a housing for an upgraded version of an emergency light. we rebuilt the lens so we would get more punch, then gelled the housing with a combination of 1/2 CTO, 1/4 plus green and a combination of 250 and brushed silk so we would get more spread form the little distance that we had from the roof of the car down to the actors face. the motor of the light was hooked up to a seperate dimmer so we could sync up with the passing streetlights. the power came from a small genny we had on the pickup pulling the actors car.

"UPC" Commercials

We did a series of commercials over the year for the telecommunications provider "chello" with DP thomas benesch (prod:neutor film) It is especially fun to work with thomas benesch since he likes to light a scene like he would approach a packshot. lotsa lights, lotsa flags. each has its precise position, down to the inch. commercials like we lov'em. a few more photos exist in the archive.

"Die Unterrichtsstunde" theater play

lightdesign

sometimes you get an chance and have to jump into the cold water. when stage designer vanda sturdza approached me if I would like to do the lightdesign for her next job I immediately thougth of james turell and said yes. we ended up doing the play in a smaller theater than planned, so I had to pull some tricks which did not seem normal for a theater play. (bouncing of some showcard, using lots of diffussion) but in the end it worked out really nice. it was very interesting not to be thinking from shot to shot but in a two hour conzept which was really rewarding because you get to see the light queues right away and diidn't have to wait till someone would sneek you into the editing room ... but I can't remember ever being that nervous on a job as on the day of the premiere. no take two, no reload - it's live and that's it! two more pictures in the archive.