New to video production - lighting questions

R

randbcreations

New member
Hi Everyone,

I recently was asked to create a DVD for my friend's wife whom is a yoga instructor. Well, I start "production" in early September. I have two friends in video production, but since this video shoot is for gratis (friendly favor) I do not want to spend money on production I may be capable of doing (selfishly, I want to try video anyway - it has always intrigued me). Thus, I'm on my own.

I signed up to be a dvx.com member a few days ago and got excellent advice on the DVX100B (which I am renting for the yoga shoot). I am getting the camera for a few days in advance so I can hammer through settings, the features, etc. My friend knows that this is my first venture into video, so he and his wife are not expecting a Lord of the Rings quality video shoot.

Now I am moving on to lighting. I am a self taught photography guy. I have a home studio made up of 4 Photogenic strobes, stands, various soft boxes, reflectors, gobos, scrims, etc. I use for product photos and head shots. But, I've never worked with video lighting.

What tools do I need for video? I was looking at the Lowel DV Creator 55 kit and the JTL Everlights. For a yoga video (that will be shot in a 500 sq. ft. room with wood floors, standard white walls, with some south facing windows), what lighting do I need? My budget is up to the $1,200 range, but the more reasonable the better (I'm also a musician and more "toys" as my wife would say may mean a divorce!).

I am aware from my photo shooting that lighting is the most important aspect of any visual production. So I need to way cost and quality issues together.

Thanks in advance for your assistance. It means loads to me!

Sincerely,

-Ryan
 
A yoga video was the last paying job I did before I moved on totally to Cool Lights so I know a couple of things about this. In fact, this is what made me investigate fluorescent lighting and build some of my own when I saw the outrageous prices. As luck would have it though, the instructors found a better venue and we didn't need the lighting but the fixtures still turned out to have many other uses ;-)

We ended up on a church stage and it had all the overhead TV lighting ready to go because they did a broadcast from that church. They simply rented the stage from the church for several hours.

If you don't do something like this, you're looking at a very difficult lighting job to cover the people well and make it look pro. The overhead is the problem. If you're confined to what you can do with stands, its a problem because the stands would be in some of the shots--hard to keep from it. I would have had a heck of a time lighting with all fluorescent lighting on stands. We would have ideally needed to put it overhead and there was no way in the first room we were going to use.

We did a 4 camera shoot and shot it live switch with my Newtek VT switching system. Two roving cameras (one stage left and one stage right--right in there with the action but keeping out of each others site) and 2 fixed on tripods, one in the center and one off to the right side a bit (and without operator) to catch some closeups of the two instructors in front. I was supposed to have headphones to call the shots to the camera people but the rental company gave us headphones with no cables! AHHH!

Anyway, it worked out fine because the camera people were competent and were watching and conscious of what they should be focusing on which was mainly closeups of people doing various poses. I simply shuffled through all the camera shots on the preview bus and picked my current live shot based on the one I liked best and then switched that to the live bus being recorded on disk in the Newtek system. Realtime editing. Reduced my labor after the shoot immensely. Just had to do a few post production things like credits and an opener and closer and final sweetening of the sound track. Gave a much better flowing feeling for the whole thing.

This is the real key though to make this all work well: I already worked out the soundtrack beforehand with the two instructors. We had the two instructors alternating, telling about each pose and how to do it--recorded each on their own track on a multitrack DAW in my studio environment with retakes as necessary and any editing to make it perfect. Added the necessary new age/music and sounds on another track later.

When it was just what they wanted (they rehearsed with it in their normal classes to make sure the timings between poses were correct and there was a good number of small pauses for rest here and there. When the soundtrack was ready, we were ready for the real production.

On the day of the shoot, we then used this soundtrack played back over speakers and recorded no live sound during the actual production. No microphones necessary! The instructors and class behind them simply followed along with the soundtrack which was being re-recorded onto the live video bus in sync with the action. Worked great! The sound wouldn't have been near as good and we would have had lots of starting and stopping if we had the instructors record live their explanations during the video wearing wireless mics or whatever. As it is, we only stopped for a short break in the middle where they transitioned from standing poses to lying down ones.

Much more professional looking. The instructors fought me all the way on this method of live production and the soundtrack idea, but finally gave in and could see the finished product was so much better because of these choices. But it does take a lot of preparatory work to get ready for all this and you do have to be on your toes to do a live shoot.

One more benefit of the soundtrack idea turned out to be that they could sell it as a separate product on a CD for people that were traveling or whatever and didn't have a DVD player. It would still be possible to do yoga to just a soundtrack if you already know it somewhat. My main extra work on this was just adding tracks to it so you could easily skip one pose and move to another one.

Another thing which was unique and very cool with this video is, I was inspired to do a dreamy video sequence at the end during the 10m guided meditation / relax period. Much more interesting than watching a bunch of people lying on mats with eyes closed and doing nothing for 10m! I still pull it out occasionally and just watch that sequence I love how it turned out so well and considering most of it was done with stock video and animations I had in my archives.

Thats all I can think of for now. Hope this helps...
 
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Thanks Cool Lights!

Thanks Cool Lights!

Well, it sounds like I have a lot of work cut out for me. I think I might be lucky in that I only have the instructor by herself in the shoot. I was planning on doing the same type tracking on the audio. No audio if I can and dub it in later at my home music studio. We are actually going to be making a chanting CD as well, so this might be a good time to track the video audio.

Since this is my first shoot (and a freebie) and I am not experienced at all with video production, I was thinking of trying to make a go of this with one camera. I was going to rent the camera for $500.00 for the week and eat the cost, since my friend has no cash to pay me for this service. I will chock up the $500 as a learning experience behind the lens. I may get a portion of the sales from the $7.95 price. She is planning on selling the DVDs online and as part of a paid subscription on her website.

I was thinking a possible solution to the whole lighting issue is to film outside under a large canopy for indirect light and use a few portable lowel lights bounced off umbrellas or with soft boxes (rifa-lite) as fill. My only concern is that it has been in the high 90's to low 100's in Phoenix lately. I might also have access to a friend's elementary school gym that has skylights that may be an option.

Am I pretty much toast trying to use lighting on stands or bouce lighting off a ceiling in a mid sized room? Since I am only lighting one subject, will the lighting be a difficult issue to handle?

Thanks again for your input you have given me some great pointers and things to think about.

Sincerely,

Ryan
 
Yes, that job was a lot of work and there were two very temperamental teachers to manage. One of those jobs I'm glad I did but didn't like it while I was doing it ;-).

The days in the recording sessions were some of the worst where lots of ass-chewing and fighting over script lines was going on between the two and occasionally one of them on me after they'd redone something 6 or 7 times. All this preparation paid off though and by the time we got to the shoot they were adequately prepared thanks to the soundtrack and my hard direction and recording skills--so that day wasn't so stressful for them as it was for me--I still had a live show to run and pick my shots without direction to camera people, there was a time limit on the stage rental and there was no stopping without losing momentum so I decided I was going to do it in one take! But that's my method. I much prefer the live/realtime editing situation over the "serial shoot with one or more cameras then assemble it later method" of film making.

It's really tough when clients have opinions on the way things should go. the ideal client is someone with money but relatively few strong opinions about the finished product. The not-so-ideal ones are paying for an expert but they still second guess them and unconsciously believe that they know more about it so can't surrender totally to the guidance of the expert.

Back to your present situation, I think the idea of the outside shoot is fine but you won't be using any of those Lowel units to help. They'll quickly be overpowered. The idea in the gym is better but again, your lowel lighting won't cut it IMHO. How many people are there behind the instructor? That's they key. The lighting is going to easily be one of your hardest tasks if you don't find a room with already good lighting since there is no budget. Just remember though, all overhead lighting makes people look sickly. Its far better to have lighting coming in from an angle overhead or on stands than it is from direct overhead shining down on top of heads type lighting. If there's a list of things to do to make your production look amateur, direct overhead lighting would one of the first on the list ;-) especially fluorescent lights in the drop down type ceilings which are some of the worst offenders.

Try to find a church with lighting that will cooperate and let you use it for free if possible. In any case, there's bound to be some room somewhere with adequate lighting that you can just "borrow" for a while.

Lastly, I think the one camera will be tough to make the finished product look good. Try to find someone with a camera who can help out for free if possible. You really need at least two views to make it work in the editing suite later and have a product that will be great.
 
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Thanks again Cool Lights!

Thanks again Cool Lights!

In answer to your question, I am only shooting the instructor, so 1 person.

I was thinking of using the Lowels like I do on my photo shoots as three point lighting. 45 degrees pointing down at the instructor about 7" - 8" height to the left of the camera, a fill light to the right at about 5.5" - 6" and a background light shot from behind and overhead splashing down towards the background (since ground level up you will see the light stand and background light). I was thinking about a bounce light off the ceiling to boost the ambient light in the room.

I am hoping since I am not trying to light 5 or 6 people that I can get away with a smaller lighting setup.

As far as the second camera goes, I will see if I can locate one. Should I be using the second camera for close up shots and side angles and use the primary camera for direct frontal shots? If so, should my editing include cuts between the angles depending on the yoga pose. When you shot your yoga video, was there a lot of camera movement to show the angles and poses or were the cameras set to specific points and used to zoom in and out on particular people in the yoga video?

I guess I am lucky that my first shoot will be with a friend's wife that I know will not be overly demanding because she knows I am coming out of pocket up to $1,500 for a freebie shoot for her.

Thanks again, this means the world to me and is helping me learn how this whole video shooting scenario works.

-Ryan
 
Oh, that changes a few things. I was assuming there were other people like there are in the vast majority of these types of videos. There were 12 class members in my video. Your light setup is probably fine for one person.
You may not need a second camera either then if its just one You can record all the action continuously and then come back and do pickups and closeups on certain parts that may need more detail explanation. Like on the alternate nostril breathing pose for instance (if she does that one). It's hard to explain the position of the hands. On my video, I used a picture in picture to illustrate a closeup of the hand and how the fingers are positioned.
 
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