Curio

Michael Bauman - Chief Lighting Technician

As a gaffer, Michael Bauman is the head of the lighting department on major motion pictures and television shows.

His most recent projects include blockbusters like Munich, Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, and The Island. Working with such acclaimed directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stephen Gaghan, George Clooney, and Michael Bay puts a lot of pressure on the person in charge of the set lighting.

But, Michael's not alone in these endeavors. He has Curio by his side!

First Impressions of Curio

Michael was first introduced to Curio through a colleague, and his initial impressions speak volumes:

"WOW!! What the hell is this? This thing rocks!! I couldn't believe how easy and powerful Curio was."

From that point on, Curio became a key part of his lighting duties. From designing the lighting plots for sets, to communicating lighting ideas with directors, production designers, and cinematographers.

Making Movies

Michael generally starts by scanning in the map for a scene from the art department, and locking that down in a Curio idea space. Next, with his digital camera, he'll go on location and take photos and record audio descriptions and notes about his lighting needs. When he's finished, he imports both the photos and the audio clips to his laptop, then adds them to his Curio project.

Michael uses graphical symbols and Curio's drawing tools to annotate the map and related photos. He points out specific features and items of interest using Curio's sticky Arrow tool, so when he moves items around, the arrows always remain pointing at the right locations.

For example, while working on the movie Munich in Malta, Michael found himself challenged with designing the night lighting for one of the largest sets he has ever worked on. The set was over two miles long, and he was working with a multi-national crew.

"We had 5 languages used in my department so communicating on a basic level was difficult enough, much less communicating all the complexities of large night exterior lighting. Curio allowed me to organize picture and sound file notes into comprehensive maps that were not language dependent. It saved a tremendous amount of time and effort."

Using Curio's export capabilities, Michael was able to print large format JPEG versions of his idea spaces complete with his annotated maps indicating the locations and types of all lighting equipment. This allowed all the technicians to quickly assemble the set, bypassing the language barriers.

Next Steps

On his most recent film, Michael has added a new system of distributing his lighting plan, thanks to Curio and Apple's iPhoto 6.

Taking advantage of the photocasting feature in iPhoto, Michael can output his Curio idea spaces as JPEGs and then place them in a photocasted album in iPhoto. All subscribers to that album instantly receive the updated lighting maps, regardless of whether they are in Los Angeles, New York, or anywhere else in the world. The entire team is immediately up-to-date with the latest changes.

He is also interested in adding videos taken with his digital camera to his Curio projects to show more of a scene than static images. He can then publish those idea spaces to his .Mac account for sharing, where all embedded assets, including those videos, will be accessible to everyone on the team.

Curio is certainly having a great time in Hollywood!