Stained Glass Experiments

 
After my last post discussing how I would try and create a practical stained glass lighting effect, a classmate suggested that instead of different gels or digital effects, I should try glass paints and sheets of glass. Yesterday the glass and glass paint arrived at my house so I decided to do some tests with them to see how they worked. 

The video is private on YouTube, but linked here: https://youtu.be/D-iPC6Pjsmw

Results were mixed. Once the glass was painted and I held it up to the lights there was very little color payoff. On camera there was a very slight change of shade but not much was really happening. It was doing basically what the gels had done before but with less color. When the glass was held a bit further away from the light it was working a bit better, but still nowhere near the effect that I was hoping for. 

I had basically given up hope on this, but then decided to hold up my phone flashlight to the glass, and the shapes started becoming clearer, we tried this for a while then realised that what was working better was how concentrated the light was. While the phone had much more concentrated light, it was nowhere near as bright as the lighting setup. We then decided to create a kind of pinhole and attach it to the light to make it more concentrated, and it worked! 

As you can see, there was significantly more color payoff, and the shapes were more defined. 

There seem to be three elements that make this effect more effective:

1. Thin paint (the thicker sections came out more gray)

2. separation from the light (being attached to the light did almost nothing, while the further away the glass is the more defined the effect)

3. concentration of light (will try and use an even smaller pinhole next time)

Even though I was picturing having a nice, finished looking video to show for this experimentation, I'm still happy to have this one to document the experimentation process. As it goes on you can see the progression of how it improves slightly. I've only colorgraded the last four clips of this video, but will put this up and try to make my second attempt a more produced version/ template for a scene. 

My plan to try out this effect again as soon as possible is:

Buying much bigger sheets of glass. The ones I used this time were chosen because I thought them being the same size as the light would make them easier to attach and give the. most realistic effect. I will also try and get a couple more paint colours, as I only bought 4 to test it out, and I think a broader range would look better. And finally, I will try and make a pinhole with a smaller hole to make sure the light is as concentrated as possible. 

 I am still quite intrigued by the idea of using several smaller lights for this, but im not sure how to accomplish this.