Abandoned Factory Lighting, What would you rent?

N

nemisis633

Active member
Greetings Gentlemen,

I'd like to apologize in advance for hitting you with what's seemingly a repetitive question, I've been searching for several hours and couldn't find anything that exactly described my situation, so hopefully this will help someone else in their quest for knowledge.

This coming weekend I'm going to be shooting a music video in an abandoned factory. There's no power at all and very little ambient light, so I'm going to be working off rental generators and lights. The little bit of ambient light there is looks really great so I certainly need to stick with "daylight". I have a very limited kit myself, 2 Cool Lights CDM 150 watt's with stands, 5 in 1 reflector, and a haze machine.

I was planning on renting 2x Arri 575w HMI's. Will that be even remotely near enough? Any other suggestions?

Camera rig is a Canon T2i with Zeiss and Tokina glass.

I'm attaching pictures so you actually have something to comment off of. These were taken with an iPhone camera so they're a little deceptive.

Thanks in advance for the help,
Jon

factory2.jpgfactory1.jpg
 
You should have enough for a simple set up. One word of advice, though. If you are concerned with continuity and don't want to have to keep moving your lights around all day- be aware that the shadows will move. If you shoot past sundown you'll notice a pretty dramatic change in light.

If you have the means, I would flag out the windows (gaff tape and garbage bags work nice in a pinch) so you can have better control.

Of course, in the end it's all about working with what you have and what looks best to your eye and the concept of the video.
 
exam1.jpgexam2.jpgexam3.jpgYou gotta ask yourself what kind of style you want. Are you a purist, then try to go with the daylight thing. Or does it fit the video not to be perfect, experiment with mixed lighting.

I just did a staggering 16 hour shoot yesterday with 75% steadicam. The setting was more of less the same as yours, with less daylight and a more industrial look, steel and mortar.

My premise was that the video had to be shot in slow mo Kanye style, so I lost a lot of light with 50 fps. Then going to 1/120 to catch the artists frantic hand moves to the high bpm and finally in the wider shots in the biggest hall shooting at stop 8 to avoid burning the pyro technical background effects.

We could probably have shot at a lower stop but I didn't think it necessarily helped the images, since I was Steadicamming with autofocus (eeek I know).

So to sum up the facts:

- No useable daylight
- iso 500 native (sometimes gained up to 12)
- stop 5,6 - 8
- 1/120s
- 50fps

Lamps used:
- 2 x 2.5K HMI (gelled down when needed)
- 2 x 1.2K HMI
- 1 x 800w tungsten (mixed lighting is yay ;) )

We did a lot of shots with the lamps going straight to my face. The off camera lamps were hidden in the corridors going off to the side of the halls we used. I pointed them slightly towards the camera so the light would come out of the corridor angled instead of a straight line. They were focused more than spotted. The lamps in my face were flood though.
I would love to have had a kino flo Diva light for key light instead of that old tungsten thing, but that's production for ya... "Oh you have one... fine, we'll use that...". The key light was camera right slightly behind me and in face height.

The big room shot I placed the 2.5s camera right so that they would light the columns and one of them act as a key light for the artist. It's not apparent in the image below, but I softened the artist from slightly camera left with a 1.2K going through a 4x4 silk.
The 1.2K in the back was initially because we expected more smoke from the blasts, but worked nicely as we started smoking up the area ourselves. (god... It will be a while before I want to do a smoke production again...).

For the big hall shots I would love to have had a few more lamps to bring slightly more depth to the back part of the room, but the production was happy with the setup I did there, so who's to argue.

If I had to change something and do it again, I would love to have the time and money to change the ceiling fluorescents in the halls to film grade tubes with white light instead. I think that would have given a nice atmosphere that the video would have benefitted from.
I would also love to have generator stations so we could hide all those cables and actually spent less time looking for a power socket that works or have sockets that are an inch smaller or bigger than our cables x)
 
Before I can add any advice:

How much of the space do you want to light?
Whats the overall look your going for?
Is this to be shot day or night?
 
Thanks for all of the advice so far! I as really visualizing a well lit performance area with a LOT of fall off outside of the area where the band is going to be setup. It's going to be more of a hard rock video so it seemed like that would ad grit. I thought I could probably use one of the CDM 150's to bring a little texture out of the background and show depth if needed, and the other much in the capacity you used the tungsten 800. Certainly most akin to the first shot you posted above legreve.

It' will be shot during daylight, but as you can see, thats going to consist of spill coming in from 3 windows..

I can rent larger than 575's if you guys think that would be necessary, just trying to really keep the budget down to a minimum for the sake of the band obviously. Just don't want to have something ending up in ISO noise hell. We could move up to 2 2.5k HMI's if that's what's required. That would probably be about the top.

Cheers,
Jon
 
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I just have to add... I'm in no way trained in the art of lighting movies or videos. I'm a still photographer trying to educate myself, so the above was my first real lighting situation where I had more or less total control of the lights. So there are probably loads to improve. But I just wanted to give you an example which might hint how to go on. I definitely could have used that before setting this up.

In other words, don't take my "advice" for truth. There are far more skilled people in here... :)
 
legrevedotcom said:
I just have to add... I'm in no way trained in the art of lighting movies or videos. I'm a still photographer trying to educate myself, so the above was my first real lighting situation where I had more or less total control of the lights. So there are probably loads to improve. But I just wanted to give you an example which might hint how to go on. I definitely could have used that before setting this up.

In other words, don't take my "advice" for truth. There are far more skilled people in here... :)
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For the love of it, I do still photography too and everything you know about light transfers from the still to the motion picture world. Light is light and more importantly, shadows are shadows. In fact, in still photography one so often uses flash that can only be visualized in a photograph that there is a handicap in that realm that doesn't exist in the continuous lighting one. So approach your set as David Hobby would and think in terms of layers of light and shadow -- on the subject, in the background, near, far, motivation, depth, mood, style, art. It's all the same.

Here's a model from last weekend whose key is a diffused flash. I learned to do this with continuous lights then just transferred the look to still lighting technology. What you know, see and feel goes both ways.

IMG_6399-1.jpg
 
slondon said:
I do still photography too and everything you know about light transfers from the still to the motion picture world. Light is light
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While 'light may be light'... how it is produced typically these days for still photographers and movie photographers is different. The use of strobe equipment in stills does not lead you to a list of continuous light wattages required, which is really what the fellow needs to answer the question 'do I have enough light for this'.

For me, given the size of the 'abandoned' building, from the location shots, I don't think the fellow has near enough light, unless he is really going for a very limited area, and will have problems with black 'holes' everywhere. Perhaps during the day, with sunlight coming through the holes in the roof, there is a bit of 'boost' to the dark areas.

But really he needs to know how much of an exposure he wants, what that translates into footcandles from his lights, which in turn specifies how much wattage, given the type of light, that requires.

In the still studio, most people these days have a set of lights, use their strobe option on their meter, and flip the power selection as required...

For example: From various formulas, to shoot at F/8 @ 1/50 @ ISO 400 one needs 200 footcandles incident on the subject. From the ARRI photometric data on a 575W Compact HMI Fresnel, one has a range of 681 fc @ 20 feet, with the beam on 7 deg spot, for a 2 foot diameter area... for full flood, one has 69 fc with a 18 foot footprint...

If the 'style' is to have a 'in the spot light' look, then the lights appear to be adequate, (background, out of spot go to black...). If the desired look is softer, at full flood, doesn't look like there's enough, and if a bounce is used, less light will get to the subject.

Actually the most problematic words the OP has is 'I want to do a shoot on the weekend.'... no time to check anything out to see if it will do what is required, even with some preliminary 'theoretical' analysis...
 
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slondon said:
Gee, I was just trying to encourage the guy not answer the OP.
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You can take it that after shooting for years with studio strobes, my first foray in to moving pictures with continuous lights was... uh... less than satisfactory, centering on 'how much light do I need to get a 'good' exposure'... This could 'easily' be answered if I was standing in a room filled with lights, and selected the appropriate ones as required by metering... however, one usually rents these things, and one does need to know how much to rent... well, unless one has the budget for a truck filled with lights and the generator power to run them.
 
use the small kit for the talent. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. then shoot really fast and try to get most of what you need in about an hour when the exterior spill looks the best.
 
U need a gaffer. Ask him.

I would start with a 12k HMI, 2x 6k HMI's, 5k Tungsten, and all buttload of normal tungsten.

Its not as expensive as you may think.
 
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