Behind The Scenes: The LEGO Awakens "Jedi temple"

Jedi Temple

After lessons learned with my "Follow Me" shoot, I knew that in order to get the biggest bang for my LEGO arm's buck I had to temporarily remove it from the figure.

I feel kinda guilty for not using a Luke minifig for this shot. When setting up, I grabbed the first minifig I could find with white sleeves and it happened to be Han solo from the LEGO Slave 1 UCS set.

Han borrowed the Emperor's hood & cape and swapped out hands with a stormtrooper to complete the outfit.

Here is a bird's eye view of the shot setup. This was the most complex lighting setup I've used so far even though it just consisted of a trio of flashlights.

I used a LEGO Emmet flashlight to light the backside of the figures, while a small LED flashlight subtlety lit up their front. To create fire in the background I placed an 8" LEGO Stormtrooper torch with a red gel.

While prepping for this shot I Googled how to make 'fake' fire. I came across an awesome light painting video from Pieke Roelofs. She has used this effect with phenomenal results, and I wondered if I could pull it off on a small scale.

In the video, Pieke used plastic gift wrap, but the closest thing I had on hand was regular plastic wrap.

Here's how the setup looking while shooting. In order to create the fire, I set a 10 second exposure on my camera and while the shutter was open I gently moved the plastic wrap back and forth in the red light.

It took some trial and error to get the range of motion right, but as you can see below, the effect started to look great in the exposures.




Here is a before and after look a the shot after cropping. In Lightroom I adjusted the exposure and color hue for a more 'flame like' appearance. I added a bit of grain and bumped up the clarity as well to give the photo more grit.

Though my flames certainly leave room for refinement, and I wish I had a little more focus on the figure's hood, I'm happy with how the final image came out.

This was a fun challenge, and I'm eager to use this flame effect in the future.

Thanks for looking, and let me know if you have any questions.