Shooting under uncontrolled floresents!! HELP!

NOMADIC

NOMADIC

Major Contributor
So I am shooting a scene in a grocery store, and I am going to rent some kinos to control the light the way i want it to look, but whats the best way to shoot under the stores floresents, knowing that i can't turn them off, or have access to gel them.
i am concerned of having odd looking color / color temp issues/ crappy amature looking footage

I'm going to be shooting on dvx100a in 24pa if that is helps with a solution.


any comments are helpful!

thanks,
matt
 
place the kinos to mimick the store lights. except you would be heightening the effect. you can still do a kicker and fill because naturally, real fluros give off that look as well, depending on where a person is standing.
 
I have shot in several grocery stores. I was lucky that we had a client with deep pockets.
I had a 12ftx12ft black silk raised up by a couple of hi-hi roller stands, blocking the stores flo's and bringing in Image 85's (Large kinos) to light our scenes. When we shot in the freezer area, we replaced the vertical flo bulbs that are in the glass cases with our own kino bulbs. We simply removed the light harness/fixture wiring
from a 2 bank kino and set our bulbs inside to match our Image 85's.
Why black silk...? Just because it was lighter in weight than a solid fabric..
On a tighter budget, just block out the light with a couple of pieces of foam core, with a couple of c-stands.
The cheapest , cheapest way, is to get some flourescent fixtures and then borrow bulbs from the grocery store to match the overhead lights. They always keep some around when a bulb would go out. However, some stores use bulbs that are 6-8 ft long, and I don't think you'll want to buy fixtures that big. Go to the store ahead of time, and find out exactely what bulbs they use, and your local Home depot should have something to match. Just white balance under these bulbs and shoot.

EDIT: Our shoots were in 35mm, and not DV. We also added a couple of 1200 hmi's and a 400 joker bug...
 
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Years ago shot a short in a Wegman's in Syracuse, NY (does Wegman's still exist...?) using an Arri 16BL under their existing horrible fluorescent lighting...didn't have any trouble (aside from needing color-correction at the lab).

Our main worry was pulsation and color-spectrum, neither of which turned out to be a problem (see above).

I should imagine that it would be even less of a problem with a CCD camera.
 
If most of your shots are medium or tighter, the kinos may overpower any problems that the practicals cause. If you are on a tight budget I would say make your hero look good and damn the background. I'm not sure of your gear situation but c-stands, flags, duvateen etc. can help block the flos. I carry around small squares of 1/8 and 1/4 CTB, CTO and minus green to experiment with white balance, with flos minus green may solve your problem...

RJS
 
Sad Max said:
Years ago shot a short in a Wegman's in Syracuse, NY (does Wegman's still exist...?) using an Arri 16BL under their existing horrible fluorescent lighting...didn't have any trouble (aside from needing color-correction at the lab).

Our main worry was pulsation and color-spectrum, neither of which turned out to be a problem (see above).

I should imagine that it would be even less of a problem with a CCD camera.
Click to expand...
Wegmans! Wegmans! that's all I used to hear out of my wife. She had a thing for Danny Wegman. And yes, they are still all over the place up there.
 
If it's completely uncontrollable, and the store's fluorescents are lousy green-spike nasty lights, you may have to gel your kinos to match them with plusgreen, and then correct it out in post.

For flicker issues try forcing your shutter to 1/60th.
 
thanks for the thoughts, I think I am going to use the 12x12 idea, and try to block out the lighting, hopefully i can get the 12x12 mounted between the outer isles.
 
RJS said:
If most of your shots are medium or tighter, the kinos may overpower any problems that the practicals cause. If you are on a tight budget I would say make your hero look good and damn the background. I'm not sure of your gear situation but c-stands, flags, duvateen etc. can help block the flos. I carry around small squares of 1/8 and 1/4 CTB, CTO and minus green to experiment with white balance, with flos minus green may solve your problem...

RJS
Click to expand...

Sorry misspoke earlier, I meant to say "plus" green ...

When I'm doing a run and gun type shoot under flos I sometimes wb with 1/8 plus green or 1/8 plus green and 1/8 CTB...
 
Don't forget to remind your gaffer or grip to take plenty of stingers with you. Grocery stores don't like to unplug freezers while you get your shot. In larger stores, sometimes the outlets are quite far away. Tape them down well, or cover up high traffic areas with the type of rugs you see near the entrances of most big stores. If some client of a store is inconvienced by something as simple as not being able to push their cart over one of your cords, the store manager will let you know about it.. Safety first !!! Sorry, just being anal.
 
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