There’s a tendency in stop motion to over light sets. After spending all that time building puppets, sets and props the last thing I’m going to do is place a couple of fixtures 10 feet away, turn them on and think I’m good to go. Flat lighting is one of the dead giveaways of an inexperienced filmmaker (that and bad sound … don’t get me started) I spend days working out the lighting. I move them all over the place, use different intensities, coloured gels, diffusion, flags, and scrims. I take a lot of stills from all angles to make sure I’m getting exactly what I want. Some sets I can get by with 3 or 4 lights. Other times I’m hitting them with 10 or 12 lights. This set has 7 lights on it right now and I think it may be ready. It just takes a little practice and willingness to experiment to develop an eye for lighting a miniature effectively.
a film by ADAM CIOLFI 