Comments on: Building Medusa: The Perfect DIY Fire Light

By: sabri

sabri — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:11:06 +0000

developed by Zeiss

By: Shane

Shane — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:15:05 +0000

John P. Hess, thank you so much for your kind words

By: Fire and Ashes « Neil Oseman

Fire and Ashes « Neil Oseman — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 10:55:18 +0000

[...] wanted a 1940s Hollywood look to this romantic scene set in a room full of candles. Shane Hurlbut recently posted a great blog about building an artificial firelight source, but given the size and layout of the room I didn’t feel this was going to work for us. When [...]

By: Shane

Shane — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:29:50 +0000

Baron, thanks so much. Yes I feel the interns rocked this baby out.

By: Shane

Shane — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:26:06 +0000

N.K.Osborne, ha ha, yes sometimes you have to pull out the carpenter skills. Thanks for all your kind words and support.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:14:42 +0000

John P. Hess, thank you so much for your kind words. I think the interns kicked some ass on the build

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:11:49 +0000

D Phillips, thank you so much for your kind words and support

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:11:15 +0000

Donut, you can go with that, I will go with my Medusa. To each his own

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 02:59:29 +0000

Jon Kranhouse, thank you so much for that history lesson. I love John Alcott’s work, what an amazing visionary.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 02:58:24 +0000

Sean Finnegan, you never change. It is up to you as the cinematographer to make it sing no matter what the budget. I have worked with 200 million or 5 thousand. It is shaping your lighting and camera concept to fit the budget.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:44:58 +0000

Jendra Jarnagin. Thanks for the comment and support.

By: Sean Finnegan

Sean Finnegan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:19:46 +0000

Hey Shane, I was wondering if you could give me a little insight into how your lighting approach changes when you’re shooting commercial work vs. creative work. I’m a young cinematographer currently working for a new media production company and in new media often times production quality and creative lighting take a back seat to turn around time and keeping the budget low.

How should we as cinematographers think of lighting when the content we’re producing isn’t strictly narrative? I can provide examples to you of the shows we shoot if that’d help you frame where I’m coming from. Pun intended.

By: Jon Kranhouse

Jon Kranhouse — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:35:47 +0000

Hi Shane,

You have a great website, and kudos for keeping alive the 100+ year-old tradition of color-dipping bulbs in such a clever way!

Per “Barry Lyndon’s” director of photography, John Alcott, “Argh!!! THAT rubbish! Stanley wanted the NASA lens, and it got lots of ink thanks to Ed DiGiulio, president of Cinema Products. But in almost every shot we hid grain-of-wheat bulbs behind every wick, so we could close down a few stops to capture a slight yellow hue in the candle flame. Otherwise, the candle flames would become so many white-hot splotches on screen.” John said they used “thousands” of grain-of-wheat bulbs, run through Variacs and dimmers. Custom-made triple-wick candles helped to increase the stop, as candle wax burns at the same temperature, regardless of one or three wicks.

The above conversation happened in Washington DC, where John had wrapped “No Way Out” the day before. He was leaving for a well-earned vacation the next morning, and I had just arrived to shoot the film’s opening and closing credits with a Gyrosphere helicopter mount the next day. I was disappointed for missing an opportunity to observe the maestro on set…so I suggested he take a break from packing and have lunch. Ostensibly, lunch was for me to learn how to preserve the look he wanted (no 85 and a dense negative to print in the 40′s). Of course, John knew that mostly I wanted to pepper him with “inside-baseball” questions and he graciously obliged. But John got surprisingly prickly when asked about the “Barry Lyndon” candle scenes — that as a DoP worth my salt I should know better than to believe everything I read! A few weeks later John suffered a fatal heart attack while on vacation, which shocked and saddened all who had the privilege of working for him.

By: Jendra Jarnagin

Jendra Jarnagin — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:55:03 +0000

Cool! I didn’t know about that bulb dip!

By: Donut

Donut — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 04:01:44 +0000

that is a very cool project… call me lazy… but any television set, lcd panel, or video projector and a “Fake fire” christmas log burning video would be easier to set up…. and just as effective.

By: Cory

Cory — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 05:04:23 +0000

not that it really matters but it was Bound for Glory (Wexler). Second time today I’ve heard someone get this wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_for_Glory_(film)

By: D Phillips

D Phillips — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:58:53 +0000

Hey Shane,
Awesome post as usual. I absolutely love this site and all the work you do to spread the love…
@ NightWalker, I have to respectfully disagree, Garrett Brown first used the steadycam (I believe) on Rocky, 1976.

Again, Shane, thanks…

By: Light with Fire - with a DIY "Medusa Light"

Light with Fire - with a DIY "Medusa Light" — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:26:34 +0000

[...] The Hurlblog | Read the Full Article [...]

By: John P. Hess

John P. Hess — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:12:19 +0000

Shane – that is single handedly the neatest idea I’ve seen in lighting in a long time.

Wonderful!

By: NightWalker

NightWalker — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:37:21 +0000

Great article and awesome idea! I have one correction though, John Carpenter actually was one of the first to develope the steadycam for Halloween in 1978. The Shining is still an awesome film experience though (Slow burns live on!).