need help lighting a commercial

FiddlerMD

FiddlerMD

Well-known member
I will be shooting a commercial in the next month or so for a local business analyst school. One of the shots is going to be in a classroom with a teacher going over some stuff on a whiteboard. this classroom is fairly small (10 seats or so) and has 2 large windows (almost the whole side wall). Lighting is overhead fluorescent.
I'd like to know how to best light this cause as it is now, with the shades drawn and just overhead, it obviously looks really flat and dull. I'm thinking of putting up a softbox from one side or top corner of the room or using natural light (or a combination). Any tips how to best light such a tight space, and should i use natural light or mix or close the shades and completely control it?

The other issue is taht the whiteboard is reflective so I'm afraid i may get reflections from windows and/or lights in there depending on the angle i shoot from. Anything i can do about this?
Thanks
 
A softbox isn't going to cut it, unless it's huge... just sticking one in a corner will give you pretty hard light, if you can even get it bright enough.

A few things that will work:

Scrim the windows on the outside with some white mesh or scrim fabric (depending on how soft you want it) and blast a couple (small rental) HMI's in there;

or:
Bounce some barn-doored floods off the opposite wall (if it's white); aim them so they hit the top 1/3 of the wall and some of the ceiling; use some flags to control it all if needed and plan on giving up about 4-5' of that side of the room... if you use something fairly open faced like a tota light or a softlight, you can get them pretty close to the wall (getting close will give your light a little more direction as well, won't be as flat)... play with it all to get some bounce from the window-side. If you're getting some daylight from the windows, that might make decent fill, but you'll need to balance your lights to match in that case, and bring some extra blue... chances are your daylight will read a little blue unless it's direct.

If the walls aren't bounce-suitable (bad colors, etc) you can hang fabric or foamcore.

These kind of shots can take a fair amount of prep time... getting realistic room light can be a bear, getting it "real" but with a nice (non-flat) "feel" can be harder than doing something artsy and dramatic. bring plenty of c-stands, bogen superclamps (or those amvona knockoffs -- man those are handy for foamcore and flags!), spring clamps, white fabric, black posterboard, and tape!
 
seems to me that one wall of windows should look very good natural ... IMO turn off overhead lights ...
then it comes down to how much fill you want .. if little bring something to stop the bounce light ... if more bring in 1200/2500 HMI and bounce it off other wall or ceiling or back wall ...
 
Both Michael and donatello have it right, even a large Chimera at 20-30 feet is a small specular source. You either need huge soft sources (like putting diffusion on the windows and blasting some serious HMIs through them) or you need to use the sunlight and just supplement it as best you can with HMIs or gelled tungsten.

Are your shots ever going to see out the windows?

What is your budget?

How are you framing and moving your camera?

Let us know,

Dan
 
I cannot light from outside - windows don't open. My budget is very very low. My production business is just starting our and i'm doing this commercial for my sister's business so its not a big-paying client. Odds are I'll rent lights and such ..
the room is probably around 20 x 16 feet or so - fairly small. there are 2 5 foot wide windows on the 20 foot wall (all these are approximations of course).
the shots I want to do is a wide shot to get a bunch of students into the shot , a shot from the back of the room "over the shoulder" to see the teacher explaining osmething on the (reflective) white board
i may also do a dolly shot from one side of the room to the other but not sure yet.
I may or may not shoot out the window - it may be unavoidable due to the size of the windows and the small size of the room.
The other option here is to draw the blinds on the 2 windows.
Any other tips really appreciated
thanks!
 
I agree with the above comments. If your building(classroom) is on the first floor. I too would opt to turn off the ugly overhead lights and supplement the daylight from outside. The windows themselves do not need to be open.
Believeable shadows from the window casements and glass dividers will add interest to the wall and white board. You could even use gaff tape on the glass window to make imitation venetian blinds . I'd put your larger source on the main talent, and then put two or three lights on the students to side light them.Save a well diffused 1k , gelled to match daylight, for fill if needed.. Done. Just make sure you scout this location so you know when it's best to shoot this. If you can only shoot this during a real class, and it's not when the light is best for you, You may need to put even more lights outside.
Just ramblin...good luck.
 
the classroom is not on the first floor and windows don't open - they do have horizontal blinds on them. time of day when i can shoot is undetermined at this point but looks like morning to late afternoon - will depend on when they can get the students in.
 
Have you considered shooting night for day?

With a lower budget, daylight balanced instruments are likely beyond your capabilities. Gelling tungsten sources to daylight is going to make their output so meager that you won't have much to work with. Either have enough capability to work with the sun (read HMIs) or avoid it altogether and shoot at a time of day when it won't contribute.

To make it look right, you need to avoid mixed color temperatures as much as possible. I would avoid revealing the windows as much as possible (assuming that you can frame as such) and use a single larger tungsten source outside to simulate daylight. Using your overhead fluorescent fixtures as a motivation, consider placing a decent sized globe (ECA or ECT) in a China Ball hung at each of the fluorescent fixtures. This will give you soft and even illumination over your entire scene and will mimic the character of the overheads nicely. To add some contrast, place a few smaller instruments as hair / rim for your talent and let just enough of the exterior light (from your bigger tungsten source) provide a bit of contrast (perhaps a 2:1 ratio) on the talent's faces.

Here is a link to a setup that I had to light last month that sounds like it might be similar to your situation.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=76604&page=22
 
Kevin - looked at your thread. the setting is about right but the room i'm gonna be working with is probably less than half the size of that one :)
 
Kevin's set up is tried and true. Can't you adapt your set up for a smaller scale.
You can't argue with the budget for lighting. And you can see by example the excellent results he had.
Not to mention the lovely talent he used...Kevin, isn't your daughter one of those actresses ??
 
"consider placing a decent sized globe (ECA or ECT)"
any chance you could expand on what ECA, ECT is/are:
it's not a term i've heard use in the UK

thanks
 
filmat11 said:
Kevin's set up is tried and true. Can't you adapt your set up for a smaller scale.
You can't argue with the budget for lighting. And you can see by example the excellent results he had.
Not to mention the lovely talent he used...Kevin, isn't your daughter one of those actresses ??
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments. Though I often use elaborate setup's with a lot of instruments (see some of my examples on the "Threading the Needle" thread) this is in fact a very simple, yet tried and true approach. It will scale up/down without any problems at all.

As for the talent, yes, the auburn haired actress is my daughter Courtney. Thanks for noticing.
 
looking at ect/eca bulbs, it says rated life is 4 hours??? Is that normal for a photoflood? Seems excessively short
 
Yep, 4 to 6 hours is very typical for these types of globes. They are cheap to acquire, but their operational costs do add up over time.
 
This isn't narrative work so don't sweat it. Natural light is fine for the wide shots. If the sun is coming straight through the window draw the blinds or diffuse/partially drawn blinds. For the close ups where you need to see more facial detail use a gold reflector for fill if there's too much contrast. Remember this is a classrom not a portrait studio, it should look it. Good Luck.
 
Don't know if you shot your classroom shot already, but here's my $0.04 . . . Shoot at the right time of day, and it should look awesome. My "airplane" interior in RUNWAY was all indirect daylight coming through windows. The only additional lighting was a Home Depot daylight flourescent behind the curtain, and a piece of Foamcore in front of the featured actress.

P-INT-02.jpg

Nikon D70 production still (still lighting supplemented by an on-camera flash) of lighting set-up for frame grab below.

P-INT-F-04.jpg

Color-corrected Sony DSR450 frame grab from above set-up.
 
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'Course you might also want to rent a K5600 Joker 400W or 800W HMI (common rental-stock, small HMI PAR with lenses) with a couple different sized Chimeras (medium, small, extra small), just so you have it, in case you need to "pop" the instructor. It would also be a nice touch to rake the students with (without Chimera) to give the scene more "snap" (contrast). Also, you could spin it around (with Chimera installed), to key a student reaction shot, anytime you needed to, etc.
 
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