How should I light a garage? (pictures)

HBlack

HBlack

Underage Member
The scene is as follows:
Very similar to fight club. Dingy looking garage, two people standing on either side, with one in the center telling them the rules. It's daytime, with light coming in through the garage windows, and from a single lightbulb on the ceiling. Starts with slow dolly shots, and static shots. They go to the center, shake hands, and have a violent fistfight.

I'm really new to this, so any advice would help.

I have three 1k redheads, 4 c stands, and any lamps I can find around my house at my disposal. I can probably find some gels/diffusion at my school. Don't have the funds to buy anything else, so any reflectors will have to be made from cardboard/foil and whatnot.

I'm mostly having trouble figuring out how to make this look natural. For example, if someone's standing close to the wall with their back to it, wouldn't a three point light setup with a rim light look out of place if the light is supposed to be coming from the center and side of the room? I think it might be best to get the lights on the ceiling, but I can't think of a safe way of doing this. Any ideas?

Also, lighting people standing and talking is easy enough, but how would you suggest I light the fighting bits?

Again, any help you can give at all will really help.

Here are some pictures of the garage. The car and trash bags won't be there, and I'll be taking down the unicycles as well (they don't make it look very menacing).
http://i8.tinypic.com/8g8oza1.jpg
http://i18.tinypic.com/6qc7mrk.jpg
http://i3.tinypic.com/6ydp34x.jpg
http://i13.tinypic.com/7w8c104.jpg
Thanks in advance.


EDIT: Here's the video.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=117633
 
Last edited:
I am no expert and don't pretend to be. But you might try blasting those three 1ks through the windows at a down angle to get really strong beams of light and a motivational light source. Then maybe pick up some Chinese lanterns and hangs them up (out of sight) in the rafters to bring up the ambient level.
 
That seems like a good way of doing it, but I can't think of a safe way to keep them that high off the ground, and I'm not sure I'll be able to get any chinese lanterns in time. I'm going to check out walmart tomorrow.

What do you mean by motivational light source?
 
If you want it to look like fight club I'd think about a hazer/fogger. Then blasting lights through the windows will paint nice shafts of light. Shooting night for day will give more control over the light, other wise you'll have to CTB the red heads. Use one red head from the ceiling to act as your single hanging light. Replace the bulb in the hanging light to 25w bulb. As far as people against the wall you can let the light slash across them then when you go in for close ups just use a nice very soft low contrast light, that will give the illusion that your looking at them standing in the shadows.
There's many ways to do it this is just one.
 
Come to think of it, that's pretty doable. One thing though, if I'm going to be putting such a low wattage bulb in the redhead, why wouldn't I just use the lightbub that's currently there? I would assume that's at least 25w anyway.

Here's what I'm thinking so far.

All three redheads through the windows with blue gels, for strong beams of "sunlight". Replace the lightbulb in the ceiling with a 100watt flood, so that it's a relatively strong, distinct source of light, and get a regular, soft lamp on every shot to bring up the ambient level. Thoughts?

One more thing, how do I tell if something is a CTB gel? Will any blue gel work? My school just has a box of various gels, so how do I know which ones to use?
 
Last edited:
Turns out I have three fresnels as well, not sure of the voltage. I'm going to put those around the ceiling, one in the center to serve as the main light, and the rest with diffusion to give soft ambient light.

Any suggestions on how to use these alternately?
 
HBlack said:
Come to think of it, that's pretty doable. One thing though, if I'm going to be putting such a low wattage bulb in the redhead, why wouldn't I just use the lightbub that's currently there? I would assume that's at least 25w anyway.
Click to expand...
Your not changing the redhead´s bulb, but the practical´s...
You are prettending that illumination comes from that practical, but that bulb won´t be strong enough for filming.
So you hang one of the redheads to the ceiling, out of frame, and fake it.
The lower wattage bulb in the practical won´t burn out that much, this will look more pleasant...
 
Don't forget to make sure you're managing your circuits correctly as well. 3 1,000 watt lights and fresnels of unknown wattage is more than enough to trip circuit breakers, or even worse blow fuses (how old is your location?).

As for the setup... here's my little idea.

Put the three 1ks through your windows with CTB, just like you're already planning on. Put the strongest fresnel you have (hopefully a 650 or 750) up in the rafters to motivate the hanging bulb, and use your two remaining fresnels to fill in the opposite sides of the actors faces. That is... use The 1ks in the window as a 'key', the fresnel in the rafters as an ambience, and the other fresnels as a VERY soft and subtle fill to give definition to the actors' bodies and faces. To do this, either double up diffusion or silk on the lights or get some large white boards and bounce the light from them onto the actors.

Def show us what you come up with, it sounds like a really fun setup!
 
That's exactly what I was planning on doing. Having someone who knows what they're doing confirm it's helping my confidence on this one. Also, for whenever it's necessary to show the practical bulb (low angle shots) I'm going to replace it with a 40watt as it's the dimmest I could find, and do all the real lighting from the sides. Hopefully it won't be too noticeable.

This is the first time I've put real thought into lighting so don't expect too much, but I'll be sure to post the finished product as well as some production photos.
 
80pf6u8.jpg


Here's a still from it. Should be done editing by tuesday.
 
i would light only the center of the garage. The white walls would become greyish and with some low light from the sides or the top i would enphasize the wall bumps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top