If you ever need to shoot a theater full of Stormtroopers, you know who to call: Art Streiber, master of crazy lighting setups and shoots so complicated they’d make most of us cry. For Wired’s March 2013 issue, Art shot a bevy of Star Wars denizens, including R2D2, Chewbacca, and Darth Vader in some unconventional ways. Art Streiber, Behind The Cover, Behind the scenes, Magnum Reflector, Pro-8, ProTwin, Softlight Reflector, ZoomSpot
In a post on the Stockland Martel blog, Art writes, “So my team and I were tasked with a cover concept that illustrated the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the movie series…and an illustrative opener to the package…and six concept executions…and 10 individual character portraits, all in one 13-hour day.” As always, he and his team rise to the challenge.
We reached out to him for some details on the gear he used and his decision making process. He writes:
“For this shoot we had rented (12) Pro-8a packs, (5) ProTwin heads, (8) Pro Heads, (12) Head Extension Cables, (1) ZoomSpot, (4) grid holders and grid sets, (4) speedrings, (1) Soflight Reflector Silver, (1) Softlight Reflector White and (2) Magnum Reflectors. That’s a medium sized order for us, and we always like to have a variety of light modifiers because we light “situationally,” that is, we don’t light the same way every time and Profoto provides an incredible array of large and small sources as well as hard and soft sources.
“The Star Wars shoot called for “all of the above.” The cover was lit very big and soft, using (3) large soft boxes (Softbox RFi 3×4′), all with ProTwin heads. I wanted a broad soft light to carry across the entire triple-gatefold cover, so we boomed the (3) large boxes in series across the assembled characters.
“The “Stormtroopers Theatre” image was made using (2) ProTwin heads with 7″ Grid Reflectors at a distance of about 30 feet. The coverage of the 7″ gave us the same f-stop all the way across the scene, which was seven Stormtroopers deep and 12 Stormtroopers wide.”
“The ZoomSpot came in handy when we photographed C3PO as a stand-up comedian, creating the look and feel of a spotlight in a comedy club.”
“It was a very long day, with no pre-light, so EVERYTHING had to work right the first time…and all of our Profoto gear rose to the occasion… I’ve been using Profoto for more than 15 years on every job. It’s my go-to source for strobe equipment.”
The photos do a great job of paying homage to the Star Wars universe with a healthy sense of humor (thanks, in part, to comedian Chris Hardwick). Read the post on the Stockland Martel blog for more behind the scenes details and see more from Art’s prolific career on artstreiber.com
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