This week I had to build a white circular cove with an inner diameter of 12' for the Teen Wolf season 5 promo. The cove needed a 20'x20' diffusion rag hung from it that light would be pushed through. Basically Cinematographer Matt Workman and Gaffer Justyn Davis wanted to create a glowing, concave wall.
Original Previs work of our shooting setup by Cinematographer Matt Workman. The Previs system helps immensely by showing us all setups and camera moves in a scaled, functioning 3D environment. The amount of money and time saved is beyond incredible. For more info on Matt's Previs system click here.
There were several challenges for my department besides shooting last minute and having a limited budget and rigging crew. At 47'x37'x16'/13' the studio was painfully tight for our setup. On top of that all of my contacts for truss in the city were out of 10' diameter box truss circles... which were too small anyway for what we needed. We also had a Fisher 23 arm which takes up a ton of interior space at 28 feet total, but is sectional so we sized it down to 22'. With the addition of three 20'x20' Ultra Bounces on the cove's perimeter to bounce 5 and 10k fresnels into, the set was not only small, it was hot.
For the cove, my connections sent me to Lou at Mutual Hardware in LIC. He was excellent and said it was fine for me to come down to the shop to check out their truss hardware. Lou told me that they had truss hinges in shop. This would be my first time using this hardware and I understood the benefits immediately. I could create my own custom curve. I could take another diameter and marry the pieces with smaller truss.
Now this isn't hardware I would use on a very big rig. The cove, having a 14 foot outer diameter with one diffusion rag hanging from it, was small enough for me to be comfortable with creating the custom sized piece. I sized a circle out of 4 pieces of 20 diameter circular 12x12 box truss plus 2 pieces of 4 foot and 2 pieces of 2 foot straight truss. Hinged together they made a nice circle with a 12 foot inner diameter. Because of the hinges the circle could actually be molded into an oval or other shapes. Just make sure to brace and hang accordingly. Because of everything I already had hung above (5k Sky Pans and a 20'x12' frame) I set my cove on 4 Avenger crank stands. The rig held well but do make sure to have enough guys to set this up. The hinges have play so balancing and rigging is delicate.
Here is a shot from the build day. I'll post the promo once it airs.
2nd AC Sean Joy and DoP Matt Workman build the Alexa camera with the CineMagic Periscope Lens on our pre-light day. Because of high speed shooting, powerful lights were needed.