Advice on Lighting a Small Space for an Indoor Scene?

[Filmkid2003]

Hey everyone. I will be shooting a scene that takes place in a kitchen inside a small one bedroom apartment. Good news is, the apartment will be completely empty (since it is the apartment I am moving into soon) so, plenty of room to set up lights and such around the talent. The actor will be sitting at a small table, next to the kitchen but up against a wall, eating a bowl of cereal and looking at a map. His back will be to the family room and the sliding glass door will provide some ambient back light. I plan on using a 3200K 1,000 watt quartz light:

http://www.tubetape.net/servlet/the-408/QL-1000--dsh--1000/Detail

and some 300 watt incandescent bulb work lights:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Okay, my questions are:

Do I need to put a gel on the quartz light to match the incandescent light?

Do I need to put gels on all the lights to match the ambient daylight?

Where would you set the lights up (height and distance) and how would you bounce them to achieve natural looking lighting (off of the ceiling, walls)? I don't want to be able to "see" the lighting when I watch the footage. The actor will be sitting right next to a white wall so, putting lights on either side of him is not an option. I repeat, its not an option.

 

[Noel Evans]

Im going to try and give some general advice to each part of your post. First, as its breakfast I am assuming your plan is to shoot this daytime.

So lets take a look at what you have in here.

Hey everyone. I will be shooting a scene that takes place in a kitchen inside a small one bedroom apartment. Good news is, the apartment will be completely empty (since it is the apartment I am moving into soon)

For me thats bad news, unless you plan to fill the shot areas with items that youde expect to see in a guys apartment. Whilst we are on that. May I ask why we are seeing him eat breakfast? I recently watched a piece where a guy walks into the kitchen to make a coffee, he opens the cupboard and sees that the mugs are labeled with one of the housemates names - this was the key component as it gave us information about that housemate. Then we watched the guy make a coffee, my question there was why? There was no new information. So why did I need to watch someone make coffee?

So, to you again. Why are we seeing him eat breakfast? Is it pivotal to reveal the piece of information you want us to see? Im not saying in your case its not needed, Im just asking if it is?

Moving on.

The actor will be sitting at a small table, next to the kitchen but up against a wall, eating a bowl of cereal and looking at a map.

Probably one of the worst things you can do is shoot someone up against a white wall. Hard to light, ends up very flat and uninteresting. Can this table be repositioned centrally away from the wall?

His back will be to the family room and the sliding glass door will provide some ambient back light. I plan on using a 3200K 1,000 watt quartz light:

So will the sliding glass door behind him be using natural daylight? If so your mixing a 5k approx light source with your 3200K. Where else will there be natural daylight coming in?

Ill need you to answer that one before I can finish the rest of this post. But one last thing....

The actor will be sitting right next to a white wall so, putting lights on either side of him is not an option. I repeat, its not an option.

Is it not an option because you have him up against the wall to begin with? Is the table nailed to the floor? Is there another way to give us the information of that scene that can take him away from that.... white wall?

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Where would you set the lights up (height and distance) and how would you bounce them to achieve natural looking lighting (off of the ceiling, walls)? I don't want to be able to "see" the lighting when I watch the footage. The actor will be sitting right next to a white wall so, putting lights on either side of him is not an option. I repeat, its not an option.

Is the area where you will be shooting 'near' the windows/sliding glass door? If so, see if you could bounce enough light from the exterior back into the 'shadowed' area of the subject, perhaps with a big white sheet.

Here's a classical example... sure it's a painting, but that technique is worth emulating.

 

[Jokerswild]

It is tough to match daylight watt for watt so to speak. I wonder if you will have enough light there, especially if you are bouncing it.

 

[polfilmblog]

Noel's post was good. Why does anyone care about a guy eating breakfast?

Assuming WW3 comes on the TV or radio in the middle, then...

I've had some good results with reflector boards beaming light in. This needs a straight shot, and not much distance, and a way to hold your reflectors in place.

Unfortunately the sun moves pretty rapidly when you don't want it to. I've used mirrors also, this is all perfectly matched real daylight, so could come in handy.

Mixing 3200K with daylight doesn't look so good. Better to use 5600K lights or gel the window to orange, or something.

You could also, conversely, black out the windows altogether ("altogether now!") and just light it all artificially, where everything will match.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Noel's post was good. Why does anyone care about a guy eating breakfast?

Why does someone want to see a woman weighing something on a scale?

I chose Vermeer for two reasons... lighting in 'small spaces' with a dominant window light... and for the mundaneness of the image...

I don't know what the 'point' of a guy eating breakfast may be for the story... but the question was 'what lighting'...

 

[Filmkid2003]

Thanks guys. The actor isn't just eating breakfast in the scene. Like I wrote in my post, he will be eating breakfast AND looking at a map. The map is pivotal to the story. It will be difficult to position the table somewhere else unless I put it in the carpeted family room but then, who puts their dining table in the family room? The apartment being almost empty goes along with the story since, the character is very poor and can barely afford to pay his rent with his crummy job, hence, barely any furniture.

Is there any way to put gel over the 3200K lights to match the 5600K daylight coming in through the sliding glass door? That would be easier than putting an orange sheet of gel over the entire sliding glass door, which I plan on showing in the background in some shots anyway. ???

 

[Homunculus]

filmkid I agree one of the worst things you can shoot is just plain white background like that like white wall that's why 90% of shoots put wallpaper on that has a pattern and looks interesting. however if you have no time to do that you can possibly at least try to make it a little more interesting for example can you hang some framed pictures or portraits or something on that wall? put some colored posters or post cards or somethign whatever fits with the motif of the film is up to you to decide. as others have said it's just white walls are not only nasty to light due to over exposure issues and hard to expose the talent properly but they just look flat out 'flat' and uninteresting as someone else said. worse comes to worse at least try to frame it so the white wall is as much out of shot as possible.

 

[morgan_moore]

the wall is only white if light falls on it, if no light hits it its black

(to be extreme)

id think about where your light is coming from and at what angle

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

filmkid I agree one of the worst things you can shoot is just plain white background like that like white wall that's why 90% of shoots put wallpaper on that has a pattern and looks interesting. however if you have no time to do that you can possibly at least try to make it a little more interesting for example can you hang some framed pictures or portraits or something on that wall? put some colored posters or post cards or somethign whatever fits with the motif of the film is up to you to decide. as others have said it's just white walls are not only nasty to light due to over exposure issues and hard to expose the talent properly but they just look flat out 'flat' and uninteresting as someone else said. worse comes to worse at least try to frame it so the white wall is as much out of shot as possible.

Another boring shot...

 

[vcassel]

I don't know what the 'point' of a guy eating breakfast may be for the story... but the question was 'what lighting'...

Yeah, don't know why this would be a question for anyone trying to help the OP out. This is the 'Lighting' forum.

 

[craigbowman]

This entire scene was lit with two lights. A 1.2k HMI outside the window to increase the daylight effect coming in and a daylight balanced kino inside for fill. Window in background was gelled with 0.9 ND to keep it from blowing out.

 

[paulears]

The white walls will be big reflectors anyway. If the ceiling is white too, then you can bounce light off this. Exposure is going to be tricky with all that white and probably the white will crush badly. The 1K is going to be in a soft box? Or some kind of key? It's going to be very hot, that's for certain - and all this light needs to be controlled or the cast will squint!

 

[David G. Smith]

This entire scene was lit with two lights. A 1.2k HMI outside the window to increase the daylight effect coming in and a daylight balanced kino inside for fill. Window in background was gelled with 0.9 ND to keep it from blowing out.
]

Did you bounce the HMI out the window, or put diffusion on of any kind?

BTW, dude, your gaffer left his latter in the scene! :2vrolijk_08:

 

[craigbowman]

Did you bounce the HMI out the window, or put diffusion on of any kind?

BTW, dude, your gaffer left his latter in the scene! :2vrolijk_08:

The HMI light is coming in the window. And the ladder is in there on purpose as all the boxes, packing paper, and hand truck are there because the family is moving in as was shown in previous scenes.

 

[David G. Smith]

Yes, but was the HMI punched through some silk, bounced, or have diffusion on it.

Just kidding about the ladder.

 

[craigbowman]

Yes, but was the HMI punched through some silk, bounced, or have diffusion on it.

Just kidding about the ladder.

HMI was set back about 10 feet from window and set to 3/4 widest beam with no scrims. Outside was still a dark overcast as it had only stopped raining about 20 minutes earlier and we had to make it seem like sun was out and a nice day as exterior shots for scene following this supposedly later that morning were done on a day that was sunny and beautiful.

 

[memento515]

not sure if the whistler's mother post was all about but those walls are grey and paint "exposes" any way the artist wants.

White walls are only white when you hit them with light? hrmff. if only it were that easy. white is eviilll!someone right up against a plain white wall blasted with 1000 watts sounds ewww to me. its like the formula for a crappy looking movie.

soudns like youre being a color temperature nazi. . Go ahead, gel and all that if you want. You dont have to. Some ppl like a cool backlight. warm colors advance, cool colors recede. use it.

Not wanting to 'see" the lighting is why most movies are lit boring as crap. Naturalism sucks. Yay expressionism. MOVIES ARE PHONY.

I cant help you further without a diagram. im confused.

When in doubt, light just the background, let the actor fall into silo, and hit them with soft light for exposure. Its like the swiss army knife.


SILO IS THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4A2xCwQsMo

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

not sure if the whistler's mother post was all about but those walls are grey and paint "exposes" any way the artist wants.

The 'official' title of 'whistler's mother' is 'arrangement in black and grey', and as such, is an 'object' lesson on 'what to do with a background (wall in this case) that is one monotonous color/value'... put something there...

Since film has to work in some sense 'with what is there', one has to learn how to 'texture' blank walls with something, lighting that brings out the texture, shadows that break up the vast expanse, put 'pictures', etc...

In a word... or two... 'set design'... even if it is a 'location' set... even if you have to drop in 'artwork/posters' post production with After Effects (or whatever...).

 

[memento515]

thats what I was trying to tell the guy. It's a good example though.

By the way,

You dont to buy any expensive props- you can download free public domain artwork off the internet, do a prints at Kinkos, etc. Be creative, you can do it cheap.

For a (black and white) short I did I bought 99 cent frames from the 99 cent store and put in black and white -photocopies of stuff I downloaded off the internet. I'm doing a horror short right now with white walls and I'm doing a simple abstract painting for the background. Dont use very saturated colors or anything that will visually pop out too much.