Lighting is really hard and important in stop motion project. In order to re-create the real natural lights in the real world, especially outdoor sunlight, I need to use some big light and huge bouncing board to mimic the flat key light. Also, bouncing light comes from every where in real world. However, in the stop motion room, in which all the walls except ceiling is pitch black, there is hardly have any bouncing light. C-stands and big white or silver foam board can do a really good job, but also occupy most the room that you need to stand at or access to the puppet.
I checked out three C-stands from PEC, and two of them can only act as light stand because I use the knuckles with baby plate to set fluorescent lights on the floor to create that background sky. Beside, there are other two C-stand used as support of the back drop.
In order to save the only other two C-stands to good use. I shoot a light onto the ceiling directly, trying to create a big head bounce, but it doesn't work very well in every shot. Plus, the number of lights is limited too.
Most of time, I use two lights to light up the puppet and background hills. The surprise effect it create is that the hot spot and some darker spot make it looks like the shadow created by clouds.
When it comes to the foreground, things can be messy. I use small lights to light up some plants but it sometimes doesn't do me any good but just create multiple shadows on the ground. Another way to do it is shoot fore ground separately with FL/BL. It can achieve a better result with lighting effect. However, the technique of FL/BL require the object that being filmed to be sure in focus, otherwise the post keying alpha channel can be another nightmare. In this case, faking out of focus and perspective is added to the post workload.
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