Advice on a lighting set-up

texvanwinkle

texvanwinkle

Well-known member
Hey all. Saturday night I'm shooting a roast of/for a friend of mine in the private room of a local restaurant. There's a window wall on one of the long sides, but things don't get started till 7:00 (Central), so it will be mostly dark outside, fortunately. Even so, I asked them to put the roasters against the opposite wall facing the window. The room is probably 18x25-ish. There's bench seating all around the three common walls. The wall section the roasters will be standing in front of is 6-7 feet wide, with entrances on either side to come into the room. Ah, heck, I'll just draw you a picture (not exactly to scale, obviously).


roomsetup.jpg


The only lighting is small track lights several feet overhead, hanging from a warehouse-style ceiling. I'm obviously going to have to augment that, and that's where I could use some advice. I've never lit something like this before, and even though it's for a friend for almost nothing, I'd like to do it reasonably well, if only for the learning experience.

I have Rifa 44 & 55 softboxes with diffusers, as well as a ProLight and Omnilight with barndoors for each. I have no gels for the latter two.

I don't see how I can use anything very close to the speaker since it would potentially block sightlines, but I can't have lights on the walls because there are benches against them.

I have some ideas, but what do y'all recommend, based on my toolkit?

Thanks in advance.

Clint
 
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Can you get some photos of the room? A photo of each wall ceiling to floor. A photo of the ceiling about 10ft back from the talent, and a photo of the window-wall.

I have some ideas, but it might be tricky.
 
PerroneFord said:
Can you get some photos of the room? A photo of each wall ceiling to floor. A photo of the ceiling about 10ft back from the talent, and a photo of the window-wall.

I have some ideas, but it might be tricky.
Click to expand...

I wish I could--I wish I'd thought to take some while I was there (there were not one but two babies involved)--but I'm not going to be able to get back over there until time to set up.

If you tell me what's on your mind, I can give you more info as best as I can from memory. Thanks in advance for the help.
 
I don't know what I was thinking earlier, but the room is definitely bigger than what I said. It's probably closer to 18x25-ish. (I've changed it in the original post.) To the degree I'm off, it's probably being too short on the shorter sides. After comparing distances here in my own house, I'm pretty sure it's bigger and more square than I was remembering.
 
Ok, things that are on my mind

1. Placing a fairly powerful light or set of lights behind that window wall and shining through just to bring up ambient light levels.

2. If the room has a traditional drop ceiling, assessing it's strength, and then using a scissor clamp or two to get two small fixtures up there. If you can get 10ft away from the talent with a decent angle, you can put some reasonable light on the talent and hopefully make it flattering.

3. If you a different kind of celing, it may be possible to fly a spreader bar and attach a softbox above and in front of the talent.


There just aren't a whole lot of options here and really, without placing stands, you're options are going to be somewhat limited.

Honestly, this is a scenario where a broad light is ideal (like a Tota) if you could fly it from the ceiling. One light would probably be enough if you could get back from the talent a bit.
 
Much obliged for the quick responses. I wondered about trying to hang something, but I'm not sure how the restaurant would feel about that. I'll look into it.

If I do need to set stands, though, what are my best options? Should I just set the Rifa 44 or 55 in the middle of that back wall--the window wall--and let everyone sit on either side of it? (They're almost certainly not going to fill the room, so there should be plenty of seating to the left and right of center.) Or should I set one of them to the side, along that left wall in my diagram, at the end of the benches? Oh, and should I throw a backlight behind him with the Pro or Omni?
 
How far is it from the window wall to the podium, and how far is it from the podium to the seats where the roasters will be?


I wouldn't worry too much about a backlight. Depending on the size of the room, you're going to struggle just getting enough light on the subject(s).
 
PerroneFord said:
How far is it from the window wall to the podium, and how far is it from the podium to the seats where the roasters will be?


I wouldn't worry too much about a backlight. Depending on the size of the room, you're going to struggle just getting enough light on the subject(s).
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it's about 18 feet from the window to that wall. Mind you, there's no podium. We're just going to clear that area of tables to use it for the roasters. I'm guessing we'll clear about 10' in front of that short wall for them, which will leave 7-8 feet between them and the first set of tables. It might be able to be more.
 
Ok, given that, I'd see if I could place the larger Rifa at the back of the room maybe at 8 o'clock to the speaker, and maybe one of the other fixtures at 5 o'clock. Maybe the third fixture can be placed low to light the background..say at the bottom of the bench on the left side there in your drawing.
 
PerroneFord said:
Ok, given that, I'd see if I could place the larger Rifa at the back of the room maybe at 8 o'clock to the speaker, and maybe one of the other fixtures at 5 o'clock. Maybe the third fixture can be placed low to light the background..say at the bottom of the bench on the left side there in your drawing.
Click to expand...

Yeah...I like the sound of that. I just found out there'll be fewer than twenty people there, so it shouldn't be a problem at all to clear space for lights.

Thank you thank you for the help. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Clint
 
PerroneFord said:
Ok, given that, I'd see if I could place the larger Rifa at the back of the room maybe at 8 o'clock to the speaker, and maybe one of the other fixtures at 5 o'clock. Maybe the third fixture can be placed low to light the background..say at the bottom of the bench on the left side there in your drawing.
Click to expand...

Well, things didn't go quite as planned, but they turned out all right for a friend and sixty bucks. First, I got sick, so my wife had to fill in. She's had some experience shooting dance recitals and as second camera on a wedding, so she's not unfamiliar with the camera. I told her where to try setting up the lights, and she did, but the table arrangement was completely different from what we were expecting. They pulled them all together in one long line in the center of the room, making the space available for the speaker even shallower, no room for lights in front, and people in front of any lights we'd put against the back wall. My wife did what she could, which was to crank the lights in back as high as they would go to minimize shadows, with the Omni as a backlight. Considering somebody kicked the cord on the Omni at some point, apparently, knocking the backlight more into a spot than it should have been, it came off as well as could be expected. Definitely would have been good to be able to hang, but there was no facility for being able to do that. Considering, again, it was just a cheap job for a friend, we're not sweating it. They'll be perfectly happy with it.

Thanks again for the advice.
 
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