Magiquest

The client said it was impossible. I couldn’t resist, so proceeded to evaluate. Considering that this was done on the run among 90 other setups same day, its relatively successful. The challenge is to light a very dark room and the subjects in the foreground, yet still retain the image on the highly reflective movie screen. Previously they have inserted an image over the white screen in post. I simply bounced the light off the wall behind me therefore eliminating direct light on the screen. And since light intensity falls off as the square of the distance to the subject, there was not enough light to reach the screen which was 20 feet from the light source. The foreground however was illuminated enough for the shot. The other challenge was the movie itself, trying to stop the action with a slow shutter speed and yet retain the depth of field required to keep everything in focus. By increasing the ISO I was able to shoot at 1/8 of a second @f8, hand held BTW and maintain a balance that worked reasonably well. The client loved the results and we moved on.