shooting in white room can't be THAT bad

[c.g._eads]

everybody always says 'never shoot in a white room, against white walls. it always looks terrible.' And my personal experience with this has always been, YES, IT DOES. But then I see all these commercials on TV with completely white backgrounds, or in movies (The Matrix, before the gun racks come screaming in). Everything is white, and yet still they manage to make it look good. So my question is, how do these DPs do this? How do they make a completely white area look good? Are they using special walls? A special kind of white paint? Changing camera settings?

How do you make white rooms look good?

 

[Spartacus]

Watch "SIMILO" and ask macgregor...

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

Watch "SIMILO" and ask macgregor...

Agreed, he should know...he pulled it off beautifully. I would think (never having shot in a white room) that your contrast ratio is going to be important, that is, the overall difference in dynamic range. If your talent will be wearing dark clothes I'm sure it'll be hard to resolve detail in the clothes and in the white.

In the Matrix, I'm sure that scene was greenscreen so it makes it a little easier.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

It's about where the viewer's attention goes. I just finished shooting series of commercials where they wanted a figure talking in pure white space so obviously i did overblow everything. Still when shooting narrative projects white rooms usually are distraction mostly because of bad art direction. When you have commercials shot in white rooms the whole room usually is white (or light) so the subject still stands out. In those badly art directed projects you have a white wall in the BG with say a black picture frame handing so the viewer's attention goes to that high-contrast-ratio object instead of the actor.

 

[j]

>'never shoot in a white room, against white walls. it always looks terrible.' >Andmy personal experience with this has always been, YES, IT DOES.
> But then I see all these commercials on TV with completely white backgrounds,
>or in movies

Those are two different shots. In the first instance, it's difficult to keep a white wall from blowing out and still have skin tones in th 70-80 ire "normal" zone.

In the second instance, you want the white wall to blow out, it's part of the look

Here is one I shot w/ the DVX:

http://www.emrl.com/j/downloads/otm20.mov

 

[j]

> A special kind of white paint?

Yeah, off white. 80% grey will read as white, but help with the skin tones. That's an art department deal....

whenever I shoot (low budget) video I ask for a variety of wardrobe options to avoid whites and bad colors. I also picked up a reem of 80% paper from office depot. I use the sheets in place of white sheets as props, it helps a lot, epsecially if the talent is holding the paper.

-J

 

[RyanBellaCine]

I often have to shoot photography in front of a white backdrop. For one client in particular. I find it to be a huge pain in the rector. Even using a light meter, i find i just can never get the white backdrop to blow out properly, and keep the talent from looking flat and dull. My backdrop lights are never strong enough. Of course it doesn't help that i can't yet afford a good fast lens, and im stuck struggling with 5ks trying to get a even f8 on the backdrop so i can hit my f5.6 bottom end on my lens!

Recently after my 4th attempt to shoot white, am i starting to find that balance, However i still find myself spending much time in post trying to properly expose everything. Im shooting a D70 in RAW format ( never use jpeg negatives again!) and processing with Adobe's Lightroom software which is currently in a free download BETA 2 version for OS X.

I find i have to push the exposure by about a full stop even shooting at ISO 500, which has more "noise grain" then i would like and playing extensively with the brightness, blacks, and tone curve controls to find that magic look that's not too contrasty and not flat. Something Vivid, Crisp, Natural, and Clean.


I've got a music video coming up im shooting with the Sony F900. the whole concept currently involves a white cyc wall. its gonna be interesting, but at least i'll have a quality lens to work with! Im trying to get a test day planned so i can find out how i'll need to tweak the cam settings to get as good a look in cam and save time for the post people...

Anyway, getting back to the white room, it seems simple in theory, but for whatever reason, it takes a lot of practice to make it look right. (for me at least) if you plan on shooting something in a white room for the first time, be sure you give yourself plenty of extra time in post or a few test days to play around.

 

[cpyle]

I think the cyc is the key. On a sound stage. A good distance from the wall. You are not going to get that pure white look in an office room. You will see details of the room, flaws in the wall, corners, uneven lighting, window-light spill, doorframes, etc.

Chris

 

[bcheong]

Here is an example from a short film I did. This was shot on Super16 (7218 500T) but the concepts are the same for video - if anything it'll be a little easier as video will blow out quicker. Film holds so much more detail you need to build more contrast to get a good blown out look.

I key'd the subject to 2.8 I think with a 2K Blonde Chimera that was double netted (???) to knock it right down. The background was lit indepedently at T11 with 3x 2K zip lights hung on some 2" speed pipe. They key thing is to try to light the BG and the subject independently and build some contrast. It'll be deceiving to the eye because the subject will look really dark compared to the white background but with video you can see right away anyways..just expose for the subject not the background.