Quick rigging stops James Cordon from being Late

Director of Photography, Benedict Spence, gives us an insight into filming a car scene with James Corden and the LiteRibbon from LiteGear.

“I was approached by @Fulwell73 to shoot the opening titles of a London Special of The Late Late Show with James Corden. A hit show in the states for CBS, they were coming over to the UK to do a week of live shows. The US title sequence features James Corden on the streets of LA in a big American Car. So in the UK they wanted to have a Red London Routemaster driving around with James on the roof!

From the begining of prep myself and director Gave Turner felt that visually lighting up the bus was vital. After speaking to Gaffer Jonathan Spencer, a long term collaborator of mine we decided that wrapping much of the top of the bus in Litegear LiteRibbon would be the way to go.

The LiteRibbon ticked all our boxes. It could be battery powered; there was no power at the top of the bus. It was bicolour; the plan was to shoot from sunset, into dusk and into the night. As James Corden’s schedule was tight (he had a whole week of live shows to shoot) we couldn’t rerig the bus for night work so we sent with Bi-Colour LiteRibbon, daylight during sunset and dusk and then into Tungsten mode at night. And we had full dimming control too!

The output of the ribbons was high enough to create a base across the whole of the bus, dimmable to match the level and colour of wherever the bus was across London and Jonathan and his team did an amazing job on rigging it all. In addition Jonathan brought along an LED china lantern for a bit of front fill/key work. The Director was happy, James Corden was happy (as we finished early) and I was happy!”