DEFINITION March 2020

THE PERSONAL H I STORY OF DAV I D COPPERF I ELD | COMEDY

LEFT Hugh Laurie and Dev Patel with Armando Iannucci BELOW The opening scene shot at Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds

TOMMYBARS

Tommybars is new to Zac, but the lighting system was actually designed and built by Harry Wiggins, the gaffer for David Copperfield, with a colleague. The company has only been going for about a year, renting the lights out. Tommybars is a weather-proof lighting system made up of eight- foot-long bicolour LED units that create a high CRI (90+) softlight without using a cloth. Rigged in single eight foot-wide banks or double 16ft-wide banks, they have been designed to be used in multiples of eight. A 45ft boom lift will lift eight, 12 or 16 units, and a bigger cherry picker will get to maximum reach with 32 units. In bad weather and high winds, machine operators are much happier not to have the sail factor of a diffuser in high wind speeds. Tommybars are very efficient and 16 of them can be run on a local 13A supply. Harry Wiggins comments on their use on the movie: “On Copperfield , we used them on the north Norfolk coast because we were limited on our machine size and weight by geological factors and location access. Because Tommybars are lightweight and cloth-free, our machine operators were happy to keep them up in windspeeds of up to 12m/s.” tommybars.com

as if they were gas lamps. We also shot in the office and we also had some Kino Flo Freestyle 31s, as they’re called now, on the floor with some practicals.” For daylight exteriors they were shooting either available light or maybe bouncing some 4K HMI lights to give some light push across a street or an alleyway. “So as the characters walked down a darkish alley they would catch some side light.” PEPPER’S GHOST Nicholson used one set of Master Primes and a couple of Arri Alura zooms (he owns a 45-250mm Alura) over the course of the movie and between the cameras. “The Master Primes are quite fast so we never really ran out of light. We did some night systemmade up of eight foot-long bicolour LED units Tommybars is a weatherproof lighting

exteriors on the beach; there was a storm on the beach with lightning for dramatic effect. We also used a new fixture, which were LED batons called Tommybars. They can be rigged as 8x4ft panels, and we had three of them. The big drama at night, especially on cliffs, is the wind and worrying about whether the gels are going to blow off. But because these LED batons are structural and the wind passes through them, that’s not an issue (see Tommybars panel, left). The Personal Story of David Copperfield doesn’t do much for the enhancement of pro video tech – with use of the original Arri Alexa, Master Prime lenses and limited use of LED lighting, technology-wise this movie could have been shot ten years ago – but skills will always win over technology. In an Iannucci show the golden comedy moments are the most important thing and even the production can’t get in the way of that. Nicholson did have some fun though, especially when he had to create a Pepper’s Ghost for some of the scenes. THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD IS ON GENERAL UK RELEASE

LEFT Tommybars were used for a beach scene under windy conditions

MARCH 2020 | DEF I N I T ION 25

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