Lighting Stop Motion The Discord Tavern scene
Stop motion lighting breakdown.
One of the great joys in life is getting to create a totally new look to an as-yet unseen world using lighting and colour.
The tavern scene in this commercial was great fun to work on, as it’s a little crazy and that meant I was able to build something a little more exciting, with one foot still planted in reality and the other we are in the world of fantasy. One such example is using green moonlight.
Green highlights from the moonlight coming through the window. Influenced by Alfred Hickcock’s “To catch a thief” from 1955. The night scenes in this wonderful movie all have a strange green tint to them and this though not at all realistic has always stuck with me. Since this world we are creating for the Discord tavern is not of this earth, it seemed the perfect time to use some green hues in the moonlight to give a stylised feel to the scene. The lighting gel I selected for this was Rosco E-Color+ 728 Steel Green which they describe as malevolent moonlight! The name alone sold me but it is my go-to fantasy moonlight filter of choice.
The warm pulsing hard, low-level light from the flame of the fireplace was created by using a bare 30-watt light bulb I fitted to a gobo arm, these were attached to dimmers for the animator to control.
Practicals such as the flaming torches I made for the walls didn’t really give off much light and were better suited for when they were in vision. So I replicated the light they might be putting off by using some miniature filament 3 watt light bulbs in holders. I made several of these up so that I was able to quickly place them into set fixed with some black-tack. These were then powered through a small 8 channel 12 volt dimmer.
