Rosco’s Backdrop Technology Boosts the TV and Film Industry
The Tonight Show on NBC has long been noted for the cityscape backdrops over the years. Carson had the Hollywood hills behind him. Leno had the downtown L.A. high-rise look. Now Fallon has the NYC cityscape as his background. Each new set brought a sharper, clearer backdrop of the city they were shooting in.
The idea of lighting them in different manners to make backdrops look different has been a fascinating study for years. Whether the drops are painted with luminous paint, printed works fabricated by digital machines or, my favorite, the ones with cutouts of material so light can shine through fake windows, they all have a place in theatrical and cinema sets.
But what about when it comes to working with film on various sets? What’s the best choice of drop to use then? If we listen to some of today’s major cinematographers, they will tell you to look no further than a Rosco SoftDrop.
A New Style of Drop
I hit up Joel Svendsen from Rosco to get some insight into this new style of drops. “Many people in the live-entertainment world don’t know this, but we’ve been in the digitally-printed backdrop market for almost three decades — mostly for the motion picture/television market. In fact — we’ve got an Academy Award and an Emmy Award for our Day/Night technology — the day scene of a skyline is printed on the front side and the matching night scene of the skyline is printed on the back. When productions light it from the front — the camera sees the day scene, when the front lights are turned off and the backlights are turned on, the camera sees the night scene. Furthermore, when back and front lights are mixed, the camera sees a nice dawn/dusk effect.”
The coolest part about these drops is that the two scenes (day and night) are printed on a woven, all-natural, cotton fabric from actual photographs taken of the skyline. Many of the “night” effects other backdrop companies try to print involve simply blacking out areas of the materials backside. Rosco’s is a printed image of the actual skyline that is digitally registered/aligned with the front/day and rear/night images. This means that filmmakers will see all the different color temperatures a nighttime scene has, which makes it much more realistic. Hence — the Academy and Emmy Awards the company has received for this product.
SoftDrop was created out of necessity. Many digitally printed backdrops used for a day/night scenario were made from vinyl, which had several limitations. Vinyl is stiff, and if it is transported in a cold truck, it may take several hours for it to warm up under space heaters to hang straight. Attaching a vinyl drop to a truss or pipe is rarely easy, depending on the site of your shoot/show. Quite often you will see grips removing the vinyl from its traveling tube (for protection) only to have to stand it up and unroll it, while more hands work on ladders to attach it to whatever it will suspend from. It was a tremendous hassle. The other downfall of vinyl drops is the aroma. Even after being exposed for long periods of times, these things just stink. It is a type of plastic that is made from ethylene (found in crude oil) and chlorine. Working with vinyl is like being in a room full of car tires — it gets old fast.
Joel explains the other interesting thing Rosco does. “When we shoot the stills to make the physical backdrop, we also shoot 4K footage of the same scenery.” This, he says, is for any close-up shots the filmmakers might want to shoot near the window. If there’s a backdrop out the window, it can look a little more fake when the camera is in tight, he adds. “It looks great when it’s pulled back, but not so great up close.” By having the 4K footage of the same exact vista, the filmmakers can roll in a green screen behind the window and composite the same imagery, but with a little more motion/life, he notes.
The Material Itself
The ultra-matte surface of SoftDrops means cinematographers no longer need to worry about hot spots and lamp reflections. Plus, SoftDrops require fewer lamps to backlight for night effects, which results in significantly reduced setup time and power consumption.
With most any custom made backdrop, you are at the mercy of the manufacturer, as far as size goes. More often than not, the company will come back to you to ask where you would like the seam to appear so they can sew multiple fabrics together before applying ink. This is not something any designer wishes to hear. With the SoftDrop, you would need to spec something larger than a 39-by-170-foot piece of fabric to need a seam. This is pretty much unprecedented.
Unlike most soft backdrops, the cotton SoftDrops also weigh a lot less than traditional vinyl drops, and their wrinkle-resistant properties make them ready to use right out of the box. All of this equals less pre-production time, effort and cost for rigging crews to hang and light a SoftDrop on set. You can fold it or just West Coast it into a hamper with zero worry of how it will look the next time one pulls it out for use.
Finally, vinyl comes with a hidden cost: in terms of ecological sustainability, it’s a disaster. It’ll last a thousand years. This new product, SoftDrops, use 90 percent water-based ink printed on cotton, which is all biodegradable.
In Use
Phil Greenstreet is Rosco’s resident expert in backdrop technologies. “There’s a movement these days to get everything on camera, when a scene is shot,” he tells PLSN. “Cinematographers complain that when they shoot scenes with green screen backing, they lose control of the visuals. Because after the scene is shot, the visual effect tech fills the screen with imagery, and quite often it doesn’t match. It’s not what the DP envisioned. Add to that, the actors react better performing in front of scenery than a blank green screen.
“Another factor for using the SoftDrop over vinyl is, there’s no sheen on the drop, causing light reflections and possible camera flare,” Greenstreet adds. “Older backdrop technology required the lights to be focused at a tight angle on the drop. Now we can easily top and bottom light these very evenly from sharp angles. We’ve had gobo rotators illuminate SoftDrops to mimic snow falling or trees moving in the wind. Once we have these effects on camera, they can be fine-tuned later.”
SoftDrops are printed on two completely new handmade machines that are much larger than any normal digital printer. According to Greenstreet, “it took three years of tinkering, getting it right. We teamed up with another company that had a lot of printing knowhow, added our film and television knowledge to their off-the-shelf product, making a final result that was better than anything previously available.”
Availability
Rosco has a large inventory of backdrops available for rent, including quite a few SoftDrops. Because Rosco is a global company, they have the ability to supply SoftDrops virtually anywhere in the entire world. Phil comments, “The fastest turnaround we have ever done printing a SoftDrop has been in one day. These machines have been working at capacity lately, so three weeks’ time between ordering the product, shooting the pictures, printing the sized fabric and getting it to the customer would be more routine.”
SoftDrops have been utilized in such recent projects as Rogue One, 50 Shades Darker and Fear the Walking Dead. For a look at all of Rosco’s backdrop capabilities, including their vast inventory of rental drops and their new SoftDrop, go to www.roscodigital.com.