Soft, Daylight Balanced High Key Lighting For Sitcom

S

seunosewa

Well-known member
I'm working on a little indie sitcom set in a house. I'd like to sort-of flood the house with soft light that blends well with window light. I don't have any lighting fixtures yet and I'd have to travel far to get one, so i decided to ask you guys before getting one:

What's the best way to flood a house with soft, high-key, sitcom-type lighting for video?
- Professional soft-boxes with the usual powerful tungsten lamps?
- Many Daylight-balanced fluorescent lamps installed all over the walls?
- Daylight-balanced incandescent-lamps installed in a similar manner?

Why do I want something daylight-balanced and soft? Well, I noticed that indoor lighting in many Hollywood movies blends so well with natural light that one never even realizes that there's any lighting involved. I like that.

And I really want to know whether daylight-balanced incandescents will look better than daylight-balanced fluorescent lamps on video. Standard fluorescents look rather horrible even when properly white balanced.

Mostly, I don't want to use lights that have to be adjusted for every shot. I want something simple, effective and robust. Thanks!
 
dont know if this helps, but it's cool none the less!

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Thanks. Wow, that's exactly the look I'm gunning for. Bright lights everywhere, illuminating everything. The only difference is that I want the light to be compatible with daylight for easy transition from indoor to outdoor scenes.
 
seunosewa said:
Why do I want something daylight-balanced and soft? Well, I noticed that indoor lighting in many Hollywood movies blends so well with natural light that one never even realizes that there's any lighting involved. I like that.

And I really want to know whether daylight-balanced incandescents will look better than daylight-balanced fluorescent lamps on video. Standard fluorescents look rather horrible even when properly white balanced.

Mostly, I don't want to use lights that have to be adjusted for every shot. I want something simple, effective and robust. Thanks!
Click to expand...

One thing about this though, most of these sitcoms are shot entirely on a set in a studio so there is no natural daylight coming in through the windows. There's an effect of natural lighting. It's an high wattage HMI or some similarly powerful source shining in through the windows. As to whether you use tungsten or daylight sources inside that's a choice to be made depending upon the effect you want to get. You can even mix them if you know how to do it. Our friend "papa" above posted a fine example a few weeks ago of the different effects you can get when you mix color temperatures and do it correctly. It usually involves having the two sources of different color temperature on set but leaving one off then white balancing to the other, then turning the other source back on. You never want to white balance with both different color sources on at the same time though--that just confuses your camera and makes for terrible effects. Here are some different scenarios to think about.

Have daylight streaming through the windows and daylight inside? Once you white balance to that, everything is a very neutral and natural look. Have huge tungstens streaming through the windows and tungsten inside? White balance and you still have a very neutral and natural look. When you have opposite sources though that's when you start to get other kinds of effects.

Daylight streaming in through windows, tungsten inside (temporarily block off the daylight) and white balance to inside tungsten (afterwards unblock the daylight) will render the daylight a bit blue.

Tungsten streaming in through windows, daylight inside (temporarily block off the tungsten) and white balance to inside daylight (afterwards unblock the tungsten) will render the daylight very orange. Kind of more of a sunset effect and giving the inside a bluish look. Papa used this effect in a different way to simulate a very orange glow of a candle and a dimly lit bluish night interior of a house.

Just try all these different effects until you get what you're looking for to suit the mood of your show.
 
Thanks so much for the info. I think I'll just buy as many 100-250w incandescent fixtures I can find. They are brighter and cheaper than the fluorescents. I just pity the poor actors I have to convince to bake themselves in this oven!
 
Hmmm, ok I changed my mind. I'll use daylight flos.

I wonder whether it's better to use the professional fixtures from sites like coollights.biz or just CFLs?

Thanks a million, once again.
 
You'll get higher wattages and greater outputs out of the 55w lamp fixtures like ours and their optimized reflectors. On the other side, you can't hide them as well as the small, single CFL lamps placed here and there. They're just bigger units. Our CL-255 for example is about 23" long x 6" wide x 5" deep. the CL-655 is 23" x 17" x 5" so you can see they are not small, discreet units that can be hidden behind something. Best used in a studio above the line of the set. If placed on stands within the set, it works best if its at an angle the camera will never wander over too.
 
I've pointed many on the site to

http://www.paperlanternstore.com

For chinese lanterns. Not sure where you'd get them in your country. But, I think you'll find that the extra diffusion of the chinese lantern isn't necessary if you use CFLs, even high wattage ones like the 200w 8U bulb I recommend so often.
 
just to clear anything up, this is not me.

this is me :)
img3240xd1.jpg


and this is what that type of light turned into in camera. ( slight tweaking in post )

frame02ap3.png
 
Well thanks for clearing that up! We were worried you had put on a few pounds. ;-)

But this is good that you reposted this because this is one of the best examples I've seen recently of how you can successfully and intelligently mix color temps for great effects. Just remember to white balance with one of the color temps completely off so the camera doesn't get confused.
 
it was set to its tungsten preset at 3200 kelvin, the tungsten lamp used in the softbox and fresnels were both gel'd. softbox was corrected to 5600kelvin and the fresnel had, i think a half or full CTO, which was folded over basically making it four times as thick.
 
The point is not that it could be used for your show, the point is about how color temperatures can be mixed and what it takes to do it.
 
Hmmm. Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't really notice that he was simulating candle-light (and moonlight) until now. Interesting, but probably really expensive!
 
shyofnormal1ey1.jpg


Wish I'd seen this thread earlier.

To the left of the actor I had a 750 watt Tota at about thigh level with a soft diffusion gel pointed at a car windshield reflector, plenty of bounce from the reflector and the back of the gel onto the subject. I've had some really nice soft lighting effects by bouncing off of various materials as opposed to using a diffusion gel and just pointing the light directly at the subject.

In front of and to his right is another Tota pointed through an umbrella (yes, you can see it clearly in the reflection here).

And on the far right just about ceiling level against the back wall was a 500 watt Omni pointed towards the back of his head, no diffusion.

We didn't have any color correction gels, so the bluish cast from the window was toned down in post.

Peace,
S-
 
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