
Rotolight ANOVA lights BBC's BAFTA TV Award winner In the Flesh . 01 May 2014
Director of Photography, Dale McCready recently lit the second series of BBC's BAFTA TV Award winner In the flesh with the Rotolight ANOVA Bi Colour V2 LED flood light!
New Zealand born DoP, and Steadicam operator, McCready, has worked on some of Britain's most highly rated series such as Atlantis, Dr. Who, and Merlin including the feature film; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. McCready offers a brief insight on his use of the new Version 2 Rotolight ANOVA Floodlight on set of BBC's BAFTA TV Award winner In the Flesh
I've been using the Rotolight Anova lamp for the last month or so after purchasing it at IBC in Amsterdam last year. I often shoot with the Bi-colour Litepanel 1' LED unit on Atlantis and used them often on the forthcoming feature Blackwood. But, although Litepanel's Bi-colour lamp is useful, it suffers from a few problems. Being an early LED cine lamp it runs a bit green with a lack of true colour across the captured spectrum. It is also difficult to know you're getting exactly the colour light you want as the dials have no graphical feedback. You turn it till it looks the right colour to your eye (or meter) and off you go, fingers slightly crossed.
Rotolight ANOVA - Its the go-to lamp for nearly every setup
At IBC I came across the Rotolight booth and thought that their Anova lamp, a nice, punchy, lightweight, round LED panel with unique flower like barn-doors could work nicely for me. It dims, is adjustable in colour temperature with a digital readout and also contains a WiFi chip to create it's own network which you can access through the Rotolight Magic Eye app. (download from the Apple app. store). It can become a master DMX lamp to allow wireless control of multiple lamps plugged in via DMX. Need a lighting desk program but don't want a desk? Use your iPad instead!
The new Rotolight ANOVA Bi Colour V2 Flood light can be electronically set to accurately reproduce any colour of white light from candlelight through to full daylight in 10 degree Kelvin steps 3150K 6300K maintaining perfect colour temperature across the whole dimming range. Each light is hand calibrated using a Laser Aligned testing process for outstanding colour accuracy.
I measured on my Sekonic colour meter early on and found it to be very neutral in terms of green/magenta cast.
On In The Flesh the Anova fits in beautifully for nearly every interior setup I've done. I'm using it directly as a nicely rounded soft spotlight, bouncing it off poly, diffusing it with Depron, gels, a Chimera Softbox (new Rotolight accessory), hanging it from stands and also often just bouncing it off the ceiling for fill. It's not that tricky LED lamp for last minute eye-lights but not the ladies faces , instead, it's the go-to lamp for nearly every setup. The lamp's colour is good enough there's no need to think about it as a separate tool. It's just another lamp in the truck. It fits in with the 650's, it fits in with the HMI's, it fits in with the Kino's. I measured on my Sekonic colour meter early on and found it to be very neutral in terms of green/magenta cast. It's quick to adjust, and if I can't reach the control on the back, then the iPhone app can be used to tweak it from by the camera.
Featuring totally flicker free best in class' LED technology with an overall CRI=95 and skintone=98, the ANOVA range is now available in 6 new flavours; Bi-Colour, Solo 5600K and Solo 3200K, with a choice of Beam angle 110 ULTRAWIDE' for beautiful soft lighting or 50 STANDARD' for greater straight-line output. Each Anova unit includes V-Lock battery mount as standard and DMX or Wireless control via the Rotolight Magic Eye iPhone / iPad app.
I go back to shooting Atlantis and the Anova is going to be very handy indeed
I did a setup today where I wanted very fine control of the level for convincing night fill and could tweak it remotely while operating. Or, as today also showed, the gaffer could use the near instantaneous On/Off switch on the iPhone app to time the lamp coming on with an actor hitting a wall switch. I never spotted a delay once.
I go back to shooting Atlantis and the Anova is going to be very handy indeed. I'm hoping to have at least two on standby on all interiors. I'm hoping my one can be kept nice and tidy, but that's unlikely. It's too useful to keep it in its box.
BBC's In the Flesh Series 2 is available on BBC iplayer now!
Dale McCready's blog can be found at www.dmc.tumblr.com.
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