Tumbling Dice Captured In The Air

500-Weeks #007

Tumbling dice, flying through the air.

My father has always provided excellent advice, which includes: “Make sure your brain's in gear before your mouth's in motion.” Ignoring that advice, however, resulted in the following photographic adventure.

I was working on a series of advertisements for an internet-based casino. Even though the casino was totally web-based, the ads were designed to be run in printed magazines devoted to gaming and luxury lifestyles, from American and international publishers. Life in the early days of the internet. The art director – Deanna(?) - would always prep great little doodles of what she was after. They were not so detailed that you had to recreate the drawing - they still left room for me to contribute - but they were detailed enough that you always knew the spirit of what she wanted to convey. My job was to figure out how to turn her ideas into reality.

For this concept, she spoke of how she wanted dice flying through the air, as if thrown in a craps game, with streaks behind the dice, in order to show motion. Her and her studio partner – Brandon - had tried to create the look they were after in Photoshop, but were not happy with the results. The dice appeared to be stretched, or double exposed, but not truly in motion.

So, from my mouth come the words “why not just photograph dice as they’re falling?”

The two of them paused for a moment and looked at me as if they were stunned before asking “you could do that?” My mouth decided to double down, so I replied “Sure. Why not?”

The set, without the hot lights in place.

They looked sceptical, but told me to go ahead.

I headed home and the next thing I remember is lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, dumbfounded, with one thought on my brain: “How the heck am I going to do this???”

Another take - the effect was repeatable.

This is actually the most interesting part of photography to me, the solving of technical problems to achieve an aesthetic goal. I really, really enjoy plotting out how to build the set and light the project in my imagination. How will it play out in front of the lens? Sometime I will sketch out a plan or two, along with arrows indicating what direction the light should come from, and if it should be hard or soft. Then it’s a matter of gathering the props, assembling the crew and cast and making sure the correct tools are in the studio or at the location in order to execute the plan.

Part of problem solving is breaking a large problem into a series of smaller problems, and to remove variables in order to reduce randomness.

The first thing to come to mind was the size of the dice. If I used regular sized dice, they would have to be so close to the lens in order to fill the frame, that I would have to use a macro lens. With a macro lens, you only get a millimeter or two in focus.

The set, all the lighting in place

Part of background is film production, and an old trick I had read about in early days of Hollywood was the use of oversized props for in-camera special effects. With that in mind, I determined that oversized dice would be better, because I would be able to use a normal lens. But where would I get them?

A few months earlier I had been to a gaming store in the Eaton Centre, which had a plastic tub of different types of dice beside the cash register. So I called them up and asked if they sold over-sized dice? “No” was the answer. “Okay” I responded “Do you know who your dice distributor is?” “Don’t know” said the sales assistant.

I kept at it: “Can I ask a small favour? Can you grab the bucket of dice on the counter, turn it over, and see if there is a company name on the bottom?”

“Give me a second” was the response. I heard movement over the phone. “Kaplow Games, Boston” No phone number.

I double-checked the spelling, said thank you and called international directory assistance. I got in touch with Kaplow, who did, indeed, sell oversized casino style dice in translucent red and would ship them to Canada. They had a minimum dollar value per order, so I requested a pair of dice in six ever-larger sizes, which was enough to meet the minimum order amount. They arrived a few days later.

By this point, my plan was to build a miniature ski jump. For the dice to slide, I would need a slippery surface, so I bought a really flexible plastic snow carpet designed for kids to use as a toboggan. I clamped it onto a piece of plywood and mounted everything to a stepladder. My reasoning was that if we could repeat the launch spot and speed, then the dice would fly through the same place and distance in the air each time, and I could get them in front of the camera lens consistently.

I had the studio totally blacked out so no daylight was coming in. The camera was on a boom arm aimed down. On the floor was a great big black cloth backdrop folded up multiple times, to make a soft landing area. I aimed a studio strobe with an attachment to make a circle of light at the background. I also added a theatrical green gel to add colour and to separate the dice from the black background.

Then I set up two, 200-watt fresnel movie lights in an x pattern to light the air space the dice would be falling through. Using a slow shutter speed, the dice would be in the air when I clicked the shutter. The short duration flash of the studio strobes would freeze the action, and the continuous light from the hot lights would add the blur after. Turn the photo upside down, and it should look like the dice were falling down. 

Joe was my assistant that day and he took great delight in tweaking the kicker part of the ramp, to get the dice jumping into the air correctly. Also critical was marking the starting spot on the ramp with a grease pencil, to ensure the same air space and flight time in each take. He described it as being similar to settling up his Hot Wheels toy cars to jump the tissue box and land on another piece of track when he was a kid.

#PapaJoeMambo lets the dice fly!

Another problem was where to focus. The closer the object is to the lens, the less depth of field (the area that is in focus) there is. I was restricted to about f/5.6, because any darker and the hot lights did not make streaks on the film. Using a manual focus camera, the best I could do was to hold the dice in the air where I thought they would be, and focus there.

We shot a lot of Polaroid lighting tests that helped us tweak the set-up. At first, the hot lights were not aimed correctly, so there was a gap between the dice and the streaks. We also had to find our count down and release procedure, so the flashes fired when the dice were in front of the lens. We then shot a couple of rolls of film and I took it to the lab. In the meantime, I left the studio set up exactly as it was, in case it didn’t work out.

The film was… not great. The look was there but the dice were out of focus. What to do? I used a small piece of clear acetate to trace one of the shots from the film. Then I cut that out, opened up the camera and placed it inside the viewing system. Then I reassembled the camera and held one of the dies until it filled my tracing and focused on that. I was about 3mm of lens rotation off.

With the focus adjusted, we did the whole thing over again for another few rolls of film. With each take, the dice would land with a soft thud on the black cloth and then clatter around as they bounced off the backdrop and rolled across the floor into the corner. Kind of like a big craps game.

This time everything came out great. Of course, once it was printed, I am sure no one looked at the image and thought how difficult the photo must have been to take. I’m sure most just thought it was just assembled in Photoshop.

The final ad.

I am sure these days, advanced Photoshop users could obtain the same look in post. But would it be fun? For me, there is no sensual joy in a keyboard and a mouse or Wacom tablet. Yes, they are efficient, and I use them a lot, but they are not as much fun as setting the whole thing up in front of the camera and letting the dice fall where they may. Literally.

Also, this sure was a weird way to execute a national ad campaign for the entire USA. No art director or clients were present, no fancy catering was required. Just a couple of dudes playing Hot Wheels with dice.

Technical stuff: Camera: Bronica ETRsi with 75mm f/2.8 Zenzanon-PE lens using Fuji RDP II, Provia 100 ISO transparency film.

Lighting: Dynalite strobes (modelling lights off), plus tungsten.