Basic Interview Lighting

B

bobhope

Well-known member
I've got to shoot some interviews in a dance studio later this week, and I've been told we will have only a 3 piece light kit, maybe like a pepper kit or something, nobody I talked to knew the details. No word on flags, stands, diffusion screens...

We will have some natural light from a bank of windows facing east. And we will be doing mostly tight medium shots and close ups of subjects that are seated in front of a backdrop.

And ideas on the best way to light with this equipment? Interviews need to be well lit, not much shadow, and slightly warm in feel.

Thanks in advance...

oh ya, shooting with the dvx-100a of course...
 
bobhope said:
I've got to shoot some interviews in a dance studio later this week, and I've been told we will have only a 3 piece light kit, maybe like a pepper kit or something, nobody I talked to knew the details. No word on flags, stands, diffusion screens...

We will have some natural light from a bank of windows facing east. And we will be doing mostly tight medium shots and close ups of subjects that are seated in front of a backdrop.

And ideas on the best way to light with this equipment? Interviews need to be well lit, not much shadow, and slightly warm in feel.

Thanks in advance...

oh ya, shooting with the dvx-100a of course...
Click to expand...


For starters you'd better be sure of what you have in that kit if you plan on using that bank of windows...meaning if you have a tungsten kit then you'll need CTB gels to balance with the daylight, unless you want to get creative and mix blue and warm light.

If you're limited to straight tungsten, then you're best off blocking the windows if possible and working in a completely "flat" environment and creating the lighting scheme from scratch, which is certainly the more typical interview stlye.

If the kit has soft lights then it will be a bit easier to get a quick setup. You can wrap the subjects easier which will be important if the kit doesn't have bounces, and then you can use one or two of the other lights for kicker or rim lighting and background.

However...going into a shoot without any knowledge of your light kit is...well...kind of crazy. I would suggest two things.

Either find out ASAP exactly what the kit consists of, or rent, beg or borrow your own and familiarize yourself with it's potential before you get on location. Otherwise, you're just asking for a potentially disastrous shoot.

Also regarding, " Interviews need to be well lit, not much shadow, and slightly warm in feel." There is no hard and fast rule on this. It really depends on who the subjects are and what the attitude of the piece is.

Flat evenly lit TV interviews are universally boring. Using light to create and enhance the character of your subject is what it's all about. Modeling is a great way to achieve more interresting interview lighting as is creative backlighting and use of color temperature.

Walter Graffs site can give you a good example of a range of interview lighting techniques and he'd be the first person to tell you that you can use anything from cheap Home Depot flourescents to Arri fresnels and get good results as long as you have a good lighting plan and know what your shooting before you get there.

Do you know the size of the room? Do you know what the background is you'll be shoting to? Do you have enough light in the kit to light the background creatively?
If not you really can't use it.

In other words you should ask more questions and give some more specifics inorder to get solid advice on this.

I'm just finishing a documentary where we used everything from straight outdoor light with flex fills to kinos to chimeras and fresnels and often a melange of them all depending on the subjects, size of the location and natural light.

I'd be happy to help you design a setup if you get the necessary details.
 
If you had a completely dark room about the size of your average living room and needed to light an interview(subject matter is cancer, maybe half way between dramatic and informative) and had a budget of about $1000-$1500, what would you use to light and how would you light it. I know its a small budget but its what i got to work with. As far as background goes, maybe an example with a solid black background and one that may be in an opperating room. As you can see, i am new to lighting. Thanks

Luke
 
I'm by no means an expert in lighting, but I can tell you this. If you have a place close by that rents film and video equipment, you can usually rent what you need at great rates. For example, when our lighting (basic light kits that we own) doesn't cut it, we turn to renting and often we'll turn to an Arri Softbank kit or something similar. It's $80 a day, and if you can schedule weekends, you could potentially use it for 3 days and only get charged 1. C-Stands and sand bags are cheap too. So with that $1500, maybe $120 has to be dedicated to a light kit and some grip equipment. That's why everyone on here is always suggesting a lighting plan because you can determine if what you might already have will be enough or if you'll need to rent more. Maybe you need some gels to balance light that will be coming in, etc. A plan will allow you to figure this out and see if it's feasable to do the job within the budget you are working with.

Steve
 
Luke, I have found John Jackman's book to be helpful with lighting. It's called Lighting for Digital Video and Television. Goes over a lot of the typical lighting setups faced in the real world. Might be worth a purchase.

Steve
 
stevesherrick, thanks for the suggestion, i will look it up. "That's why everyone on here is always suggesting a lighting plan because you can determine if what you might already have will be enough or if you'll need to rent more." I have absolutely no lighting gear at all but would like to start building a set. This is a project that might go on for several months. So could you maybe give me a couple suggestion as to where i could start. I'm going to get that book but hearing your opinion on what might be good to use based on the set up info i provided would be very helpfull before i jump into the read. Thanks for the help.

Luke
 
Hey Luke,
You're thinking smart if you've allowed, within the scope of a long term project, to buget for a light kit, or the start of one.

Over the years developing our studios for music, film/video and design, I've always aquired rather than rented what we needed as we grew...from cameras to lighting to instruments etc.

A good example would be the Mini35. For a system that cost well over 10k without getting into serious lenses, it would have been very cost effective to rent it (as I did on the first shoot to make sure it was viable) for the 1/2 dozen projects we needed it for over the first year. However, I've always looked at new projects as an opportunity to grow creatively and to grow our resources.

The bottom line is that I could have acted as director as I always had and hired a DP and rented as we always did when shooting film vs video. But I could never aquire the talent to shoot with it and film lenses, by renting it a few weeks here and there, The same goes for lighting.

Renting lights and reading about them is a good start, but to develop talent in lighting requires that you have lights on hand all the time just like you need a camera, piano, design software etc. to become accomplished in those creative fields.

So there's my little bit on creative philosophy. Now to your question.

Like with clients, never give a high and low price range, because they'll always remember the low estimate, and in this scenario I'll use the $1500 so that I can recommend a better setup <g>.

Now I could suggest a basic Lowell kit which petty much every shooter and gaffer has on hand for remote and small locaton work. If I were, I'd say the 2 Omni and 1 Tota (I think they call it the elemental kit). It's in a carry case with stands, barndoors, clips, gels etc. that would be around $900. Add a couple of speed rings and small and medium photoflex soft boxes and you'd have around 1750 watts of tungsten light that could be configured as a combination of hard and soft lighting to do a nice job with basic 1, 2 and 3 point lighting, kicker, backround etc.

Add a couple of dimmers for a few bucks from eBay to dim the Omnis and you have some decent control. You could probably do this for around $1500 and it would give you nearly everything you need, after you add some clamps and gaffers tape, extra bulbs, heavy extension cords, etc., to do nice interview work and small studio and set work.

It's limited, but proven and reliable and hot and hungry (that's my clever way of saying it burns and uses maximum energy).

I like working with different lighting, but I'm growing more and more fond of flourescent for location, setwork, documentary, pretty much everything. It's cool, uses a fraction of the energy, can balance tungsten or daylight with bulbs or gels (tungsten can only balance daylight with gels or dichroic filters that cut down on valuable output in a small kit like a Lowel). And there are more afordable flourescent options now than in the past and more coming.

With that in mind, what I'd really recommend is a Lowel Caselite 2 kit that puts out about 110 watts which is equivalent to around 450 watts tungsten and with the reflector it probably puts out a similar amount of light to the Tota in a softbox. Very cool (both ways) and around $750 for a kit with reflector, barn doors, gel clamps, egg crate, stand - basically it's a self contained 1 light kit.

Now softlight is good, but you'll alwyas want hard light as well, and Arri fresnels are pretty industry proven, rugged and affordable and a great foundation to build on. You could add an Arri 300 and 150 with bulbs and doors and stands and that might squeak in around $1500 total as well.

There are thousands of variables, but those are certainly affordable, professional starting points and both systems can be built on - another Caseltite 2 or a Caselight 4 for twice the output...another Arri 300 or 600.

There are other more affordable alternatives (i'll actually be trying out a new flo on an upcoming shoot) and morxpensive, but I would recommend you look seriously at flourescent for your main/key lighting for the reasons I've mentioned and the Caselite is probably the best value.

Hope this helps.
 
jimagine, that was the most detailed in depth answer i have ever got on this forum. Thank you for taking the time to help me out.

"Over the years developing our studios for music, film/video and design, I've always acquired rather than rented what we needed as we grew...from cameras to lighting to instruments etc."

"A good example would be the Mini35. For a system that cost well over 10k without getting into serious lenses, it would have been very cost effective to rent it (as I did on the first shoot to make sure it was viable) for the 1/2 dozen projects we needed it for over the first year. However, I've always looked at new projects as an opportunity to grow creatively and to grow our resources. "

You described my feelings exactly. Before this i did mainly outdoor stuff. But now i have moved on to this, so i would like to purchase what i need to get the job done. Not only making the project look better(providing i do a good job with the lights)but also expanding my versatility for future projects. I will surly have more questions as i get closer to my purchase and i hope your here to answer them. Thanks again.

Luke
 
If you're doing medium and close-ups, and are going for a natural look, then place them by a window and forget about the lights. Use a large bounce instead. This will look A LOT better (and more natural) than artificial lighting.

Image2.jpg
Here, a large window (with shades pulled to diffuse light) is on the left, and a large foamcore reflector on the right. The "tree" is cheated into place. The bounce is a "wrap-around", so with one piece of foamcore (actually four pieces taped together so they fold down) I can get both fill and hair-highlights.

Ditch the lights -- go thermonuclear!
 
pmark23, that looks very nice. So is it a bad idea to mix natural and artificial lighting.

Luke
 
I have a Lowell DV Creator 55 light kit and I feel it is the ultimate portable interview light kit. Are they the best lights on the market for shooting a feature? No. But if you're carrying around a kit and doing lots of interview set ups, this kit is the bomb. You could actually get by with a smaller kit. In addition to this kit, I carry a small bag with a reflector some gels, a couple of stringers, a couple of dimmers, a cookie and some clothespins. With this setup you can light anyone, anywhere.

Once you have the tools there are many ways to light the subject. You could use typical three point lighting utilizing three lights, or you could do it utilizing two lights and a bounce. I like shooting one light through a cookie on the background, but it depends on the background and if I have a enough room to use the long side of my lens and throw the BG out of focus. If you have a meter, you can set ratios a little more precisely but a good monitor will let you adjust by eye. I found a meter useful in learning what something should look like. For example if you get the Jackman Book and you set up a subject with the "proper" ratios and look at it on a monitor, then you start to get a feel for what it "should" look like. After a while, you don't need the meter as you know how to get the look just by looking at the monitor.

Don't forget to pay attention to how you set up your background (what props, colors you use, etc.) and how you separate your subject from the background.

Matt
 
Nothing is bad Luke, if it works. The most imprtant things for you to wrap your noodle around is the concept of color temperature.

Everything you'll read here and other sources about natural light, HMIs, dichroic filters, CTB and CTO gels, tungsten, flourescent, 5600, 3200..... all revolve around the idea that light has different "temperatures" which doesn't mean heat, it means the inherent color of the light.

Here's a quick, simple start and then do a search here and google "what is color temperature" and read and let it set in.

So when we talk about daylight temperature we are usually talking 5600k (Kelvin), tungsten light is normally 3200K.

The higher the value, the cooler (towards blue) the quality of the light. The lower the value (towards orange) the warmer the light. Of course this all needs to start with white balance which establishes your relative white point for the camera.

In other words, go outside and balance your camera on a white source. You've now told your camera how to define white under the current light available.

A quick aside...5600k is relative, a daylight average. The actual temperature is higher (cooler) on overcast days and get's noticable warmer at sunrise and sunset (hence the term golden hour for those times).

So back to 101. Now that you've established your white balance, if you were to add a tungsten lightlike and Omni for fill or a backlight outdoors, you would get a noticeably warmer light because the camera "sees" the 3200k tungsten differnetly.

Now do the same thing all over again except this time start by lighting your subject with tungsten and white blance directly on the face lit with the Omni close up. Now when you pull back, everything in the environment will be blue ligtht except for the well lit subject because you've now told the camera that 3200K represents the relative white point.

So, for simple starters and using the image above, if you were to add a tungsten light to provide a hair light or rim light to this man for separation, or to add light to the flat background, it would look orange because the camera is balanced for the 5600k daylight coming through the window.

THis is where you would need to add a CTB gel to the Omni to "correct the light and get it close to 5600K.

Now reverse this, close the blids to block out any daylight and light the subject with tungsten softbox from his right and balance to that, and the light will look exactly the same as in this picture. Now open the blinds and the left side of his face where the sunlight will now hit will turn blue.

That's what happens when you mix daylight or daylight temperature light sources and tungsten.
That's why you carry CTB and CTO gels in order to correct the differring light sources if you do need to mix.

One more comment on the above post. Pmark did a great job working with the avialable light and controling it as much as he could using simple bounce technique. However, you never want to go into a shoot hoping that you have the right source of natural light and a background that will work with it. In other words, you're limited to setting your scene based on where the natural source is, and you have very limited control over lighting the background or creating separation.

THat's why you need to have a flexible light kit to enable you to use good available light where it makes sense, and to enhance it by correcting your 3200k lights or, as I suggested in my other lengthy post <g>. by using flourescents with day light bulbs that will provide you with great flexibility inside and out.
 
MattC, thanks for the response. The Lowell DV Creator 55 light kit was originally a kit i was intrested in. Being no expert on lighting, is it wise to invest in something like that or should i slowly build a light kit and learn in the process? Was this your first venture into lighting equipment of your own? I must say, it would be nice to have most of the basics laid out for me in this kit. I would spend much less time researching lighting equipment and more time learning how to work with it.

Luke
 
Oh by the way...i addition to the various rope lights and battery powered 8" flourescents etc that you can pick up at Hoem Depot for accent lighting and back ground work, one of my new favorites is a small case of par cans that I have in our kit,

These things cost about $10 at HD and you can put 45 watt floods or narrow spots in them. THey actually come with a flat base and swivel mount and an attached dimmer. I've used them from everything from interior keys in small dramatic lighting to dimmed colored accent, rim light etc. You can get 4 or 5 of them with flood and spot bulbs and dimmers for under $100. Stick them in a bag and you've got a great little dimmable, spotable, accent kit...use some cinefoil to make a quick snoot for the front and you can get really creative.
 
jimagine, Thanks again for the informative post. That cleared up a lot of questions i had but was never sure how to ask.

"One more comment on the above post. Pmark did a great job working with the available light and controlling it as much as he could using simple bounce technique. However, you never want to go into a shoot hoping that you have the right source of natural light and a background that will work with it. In other words, you're limited to setting your scene based on where the natural source is, and you have very limited control over lighting the background or creating separation."

I absolutely do not like the feeling of being unprepared, and a lot of the times thats how i feel when going into a shot. This is exactly why i want to take the initiative and get a kit together. So jimagine, what do you think of the Lowell DV Creator 55 light kit? Is it a good start to simplify things a bit or should i start collecting peaces. Regardless of what i get, I know that as i grow so will my lighting(hopfully). So what i get now (weather its the creator 55 or one i build myself) it probably wont be what I'm using in 10 years from now. But i could be wrong about that. Thanks

Luke
 
Some great observations here- one I did not notice, however, in reference to using window light. I'm a big fan of using windows, but remember- it will limit your shoot times, especially if shooting a series of interviews that need to match each other. The interviews will need to be shot at the same time of day, with the same outside weather conditions. Could be inconvenient at best.

fn
 
Here's the gig on the Lowell lights. I know they have a mediocre rep on the net, but I think it's somewhat ill founded if you are using them for the purpose they were intended. They were designed as super portable lighting kits for videographers on the move, especially those conducting interviews (broadcast). The serve this purpose superbly. Are they the most robust lights? No of course not. If you were buying lighting to shoot a feature, I would say buy one at a time and look for used lights, or to start by buying an Arri kit. If you said you were going to be conducting a lot of sit down interviews in a studio where the subjects would be coming to you, I would say either would work, but if you have the time and money go with the Arri kit as it will be more versatile in the future. But if you're going to be traveling around conducting interviews, and you need a portable solution, I really think Lowell is the way to go. Used like this, I don't think you'll find yourself "outgrowing" them. But you will certainly add to them as your needs become more diverse.

One thing with Lowell lights. While the fixtures themselves are surprisingly robust, they can be murder on hot lamps (bulbs). Bang those lights around by moving them too hard when the lights are hot, and you'll lose a bulb. So make sure you have extras. This is the trade-off for portability. They do throw a nice quality of light.

And yes, it was my first kit, and I bought it for exactly the reasons you laid out.

Matt
 
You ARE limited using available lighting, and sometimes it can be a real pain. I carry a HUGE lighting kit, but I try not to use it (partly out of the challenge, and partly out of laziness.) I have a 5600K fluorescent fixture that I use for fill if there isn't enough light to bounce.

If you're inside a building or it's night, you have no choice but to use 3-point lighting. There's already lots of great advice in this thread on using lights.
 
"Some great observations here"

Fake Name, they really are some great observations. I really can't thank you guys enough for all the help. MattC, i feel like something along that line of the DV Creator 55 kit or something very similar is for me. Any suggestions for some extras that i should consider?

"they can be murder on hot lamps (bulbs)."

How much does a typical bulb cost? Are there different brands?(Better quality and so forth.)

"I'm a big fan of using windows, but remember- it will limit your shoot times, especially if shooting a series of interviews that need to match each other. The interviews will need to be shot at the same time of day, with the same outside weather conditions. Could be inconvenient at best."

I know exactly how that goes.

"I carry a HUGE lighting kit, but I try not to use it (partly out of the challenge, and partly out of laziness.)"

I'll take it for ya.

Luke
 
MattC, i was checkn out B&H and EVS, and there are like 5 options for the kit. Which one do you have. Ive noted a few of the differences. Are the more expensive ones with the larger cases worth the extra cash. Thanks

Luke
 
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