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Add Hollywood Flair with Projection Effects | FUJIFILM Exposure Center – USA

Exposure Center

7 minute read

Add Hollywood Flair with Projection Effects

Chris Knight examines an aspect of staging that adds visual impact – and narrative flavor. It’s all done with projection effects.

Video 2022 © Chris Knight

In this series, we’ve already seen how taking inspiration from past techniques can bring a cinematic feel to your images. We’ve studied classic lighting effects, color, and staging. Projection effects can have just the same influence, drawing on movie history, combining it with modern technology and opening up new realms of creativity.

In fact, when you learn how to work with projection effects, you’ll realize their storytelling possibilities are almost boundless. They can also be used in a more simplistic fashion, adding a sense of depth, texture, mood, and place, even with a modest studio setup – and you won’t require expensive physical backdrops or time-consuming post-production.

Read on to discover more about projection effects – and adding them to your images.

Photoshoot man and woman embrace in front of aeroplane

Photo 2022 © Chris Knight

What are projection effects?
Projection simply involves adding a still or moving image onto a screen behind the actors on a set. This gives the illusion that they’re somewhere else. Like three-point or motivated lighting, it’s a technique that’s writ large through cinematic history.

The advantage for filmmakers was that projection effects allowed them to work in a studio rather than on location. They could build smaller sets, or add special effects and stunts – all of which saved money or avoided complicated logistic elements. And it quickly became as creative as it was efficient. Cinematographers and directors picked up the idea and ran with it.

Projection effects allowed the thrilling chase between Cary Grant and a crop duster in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. And let Ray Harryhausen have Perseus fight Medusa in Clash of the Titans. They were also used to fill in the backgrounds of studio-bound car chases, like Terence Young’s Dr. No, or James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Projection effects became such a mainstay, they were parodied in movies like Airplane!, or treated to a loving pastiche in films like Pulp Fiction.

Are projection effects relevant today?
So, why use these practical effects, when you could make pictures in front of a chroma key or green screen, adding backgrounds in post? There are several reasons.

Firstly, it’s a more organic process which lets you align elements through the lens, reminding you that you’re a photographer, not a technician. Secondly, models and actors prefer it to the sterility of a green screen, as it gives them something to connect with. Remember, too, that even though you’ll be adding illumination on the subjects yourself, projection relies on light, so its glow can help tie the subject to the scene. And you can avoid hours in post-production, spent keying and masking.

Of course, all of those memorable silver-screen scenes weren’t created with actors and screens alone. As you’ll see in the two examples below, clever lighting and haze effects are instrumental in tying subject to background.

Front or rear projection?
There are two main types of projection: front and rear. The difference is in which direction the light is coming towards the screen.

Although rear projection was the staple of Hollywood, it’s been outdated for some time. It was mainly superseded because results lacked contrast and fully saturated color. This is understandable, as rear-projected images needed to be photographed through a translucent screen, so some light is always lost – bouncing back in the opposite direction and making images look fuzzy.

Front projection is more efficient. It works in just the same way as showing movies or slides at home or in the theater. Projecting onto a much more reflective surface from the same angle as the camera, gives a much stronger image.

Front projection also requires less space than rear projection, as a screen can be positioned right up against a wall – or even be the wall itself. The downside with a traditional front projection is that you have less freedom positioning your subjects, as they may get in the way of the light. Some filmmakers solved this by using mirrors to reflect light, but it’s a fiddly process.

The answer is a short-throw projector. Here, we’re using a FUJIFILM FP-Z8000. This model is able to produce a 100-inch image from a position only 30 inches from the screen, so models or actors can freely move around in front of it. Compare this to a traditional projector and you might need it to be eight or ten feet away.

Photo 2022 © Chris Knight

How to make images with front projection
Firstly, we need to set up the projector. As already mentioned, a short-throw projector can sit very close to the screen. The image comes from a laptop connected through an HDMI lead, but you could run it off a folder of images on a USB stick in most cases. Although the images we’re going to make are somewhat stylised, the projected image still needs to look undistorted – so make sure it’s appearing straight and well-focused on the screen. Also, make it as large as possible, to give options in composition and avoid seeing the edge of the frame as you photograph.

Next, it’s important to match the color and light on your subjects to that on the screen. In the two examples, you can see that the color and position of my lighting reflects that in the projection. For instance, if there was full sun, I’d look at where the shadows were being cast, and try to replicate them in strength and position. Remember the section in Chapter 1 on motivated lighting? It’s all the same stuff really.

We also need to take steps to avoid the light falling on the screen, as that will lower the contrast and spoil the effect. In this situation, I angled the lights away and used grids or flags to block the lights from spilling onto the background.

With exposure, you must marry the projected lighting to what you’re using on the subjects. I set up the camera to expose correctly for the projected image, then set the strength of the studio lights to reflect that. Because I’m using continuous lights, this is easy – it all comes together through the EVF.

As the image behind is still essentially a lower resolution than the world in front of it, dialing in a wider aperture helps soften the image and hides some of those issues. Also, when required, I added darkening and contrast to the background in post-production, to match the foreground contrast more closely.

Setup 1: Classic Hollywood
In this example, we’re replicating the look of the final scene in Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. This is reflected not only in the projected image, but in the costume and lighting style. I used grids to make a harder key light and a strong hairlight, typical of the 1940s. The grids also cut spill, keeping light off the backdrop. But we also used a 24x32in flag to prevent any light falling there. In this setup, there is also haze-in-a-can, giving the light some grip and tying in with the background mistiness.

Man looks on as fire rages in the background

Photo 2022 © Chris Knight

Setup 2: Firefighting
This image was tonally inspired by the burning of Hagrid’s hut in David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As a full-color image, it’s imperative we match the strength and warmth of the fire in the studio lighting. Effectively we’re motivating what’s in the projection, as described in Chapter 1. I also wanted to give the subject a cooler, complementary tone, as though partly lit by the moon. For this, LED lights with a full RGB output are a great choice, as they let you dial in a wide range of colors, without the need for gelling. I used three Nanlite Pavotubes in this case.

Put it all together
Now you’ve seen how simple and effective projection effects can be, why not give them a try? Think about the story or emotion you want your picture to convey, then pick an image accordingly. The images we used for projection here were built from stock libraries, but there’s nothing to stop you creating your own. It’s all part of the creative journey. Just remember that you can’t use actual stills from a movie, or stills from other photographers, without permission.

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Chris Knight

Chris Knight was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and hardened by the sweaty, nearly chewable, humidity of Florida. He combines his unconditional love of art history with his conditional love of technology, topping it off with a flair for the cinematic and an uncompromising eye for detail. His ...

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