Lighting A Police Scene

As I had mentioned in my early blogs, the art direction for this film opening is inspired by the vibrant colors of Moonlight and Childish Gambino's "Sweatpants" music video. I knew that color and lighting were going to be major aspects in this production. This was heavily emphasized in the police brutality scene. I figured the best way to show this was by incorporating the colors blue and red to portray police car lights. A while ago, I came across an LED strip that has helped me in most of my productions since. The PLAYBULB Comet has probably been one of my best purchases for lighting equipment ever. I currently have two of my own and occasionally also use my brother's (he decided to get one because we just love them that much lol). One of them lights up my room and the other is used for production. This RGB LED strip has bluetooth connection to the PLAYBULB app on my smartphone, which lets me choose from any color and has different effects like "flashing," "flashing f," "rainbow," "pulse," "candle," or straight white light. It is so versatile and useful in so many ways.

To light up our police scene, we used the streetlights that were already on location and two PLAYBLUB Comets next to each other (one flashing red and the other flashing blue). This effect is supposed to imitate the effect of police car lights.

Below is our setup for the scene:

**thank you Jessica Reales for the BTS photos**

Luckily, my car has a power outlet in the trunk! We connected an extension chord from my car onto the street and then connected that to another extension chord that has two outlets that powered on the LED strips. We then laid them on the ground across our set and turned on the flashing effects.

Fun fact: One of these strips was used in Chris and Rodrigo's party film opening as well. I brought them along when I went to help them on set.

Hope you guys enjoyed this blog posting and that it encouraged you to have fun and play around with colors for your future videos!

Bye for now.

CITATIONS:

PLAYBULB color - Smart Color Light & Wireless Speaker 2-in-1. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2018, from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mipowusa/playbulb-color-smart-color-light-and-wireless-spea