Cameo Lighting Question?

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keentave

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I am going to be shooting a music video where I want the band to playing in pitch black. I believe this is called cameo lighting. All I want to be lit and seen is the band, the background and everything else is all black.

What do you think the best way to do this is? I am planning on exposing to the right and overexpose the band and then crush the black background in post. Should I use only one key light on the band member that's playing?

I've done some tests and I seem to get too much spill onto the background. Any comments would help. Thanks.
 
If you light it right you shouldn't have to crush the background in post. The light needs to be pointing away from the background, so either a side light or pointing down from above. Use flags or other solid black sheets on the side on the light to prevent spill and for negative fill. Buying a black fabric and hanging it in the background would also help.
 
Yep, also check that you're not bouncing light from anywhere, say a big white wall in front of the band.

Just flag it and keep the light off the back wall.
 
Easy in theory, darn hard in practice. You better either be in a LARGE space, or have 100% control of all your light. You are going to have light reflecting off the people, off the drum kit, off the guitars, everything. Honestly, this is one time I'd do chromakey instead of trying to do it the more traditional way.
 
I don't know...it's really not that difficult. Just be sure to have large flags if you want to use soft light, but if you want to keep things hard, should be pretty easy. Just make sure the light is only hitting where you want it to.
 
I'm with Ryan, it's fairly easy to do. I've done before with success, well twice actually.

The second time we shot on 16mm, and film picks up a larger latitude of light and we could still make out what was in the dark 0 f-stop areas, but a simple slight crushing of blacks fixed that problem, even then we didn't care too much.

The first time was also film, but seemed to work perfectly. Just has to be a large enough space. I mean don't try this in a small room unless you have a black backdrop.
 
Yeah, really, the 20x20 solid is key!

Or, large piece of black fabric. I'm only confident with this all because I've worked on so many music videos shot on a stage where we build some sort of set, then behind that put up a few 20x20 solids and we always have no problem making them go black.
 
Thanks for the advice. Yeah I'm planning on hanging up a black fabric in the background. That became very clear when I recently did some tests. The room is a pretty small room especially for having the whole band and equipment in there. But I'm thinking with the backdrop and not having the light hit the background I should be alright.

It's weird I did this as a test twice and the first time I got it just right but after that have had trouble reproducing it.

Anyway, my problem before was that I had the light aimed at the background. So my next test will be from the side.
 
On a side note.... does anyone know what material works good for a cheap greenscreen?

Another part of the video has a greenscreen shot and I need to cover a pretty large wall. I am thinking green paper or fabric. Has anyone had any success with a relatively cheap material like that?
 
I think the trouble is that you're still thinking about adjusting your usual lighting setups. Most people who start to add lighting to their arsenal of video kit work with open face or Fresnel lensed kit on stands. This means a typical fixture height of not much more than 8 feet or so. When you see typical material shot giving the great isolation between subject and black background, much of the success is down to much steeper lighting angles. Subjectively, an angle of 45 degrees from the centre, and 45 degrees up gives what appears to be the best modelling, and of course needs a fill from the other side - to get the cameo style look, then the angle from centre can be reduced, and the steepness of the other goes up considerably - 70-80 degrees can be good. Think Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody (although that is steeper still!). I often achieve this look by accident when shooting live music in theatres, and the position of the kit is not ideal. We use 'specials' - profile lanterns - ellipsoidals in American terminology. These are very tight - don't spill much, and because of their narrow angle are really intense. Once the iris has closed to cope, the background just vanishes, as the contrast ratio is far wider than video cameras can cope with. So to do the entire band, you need one per performer. You do get deep shadows, especially if they look downwards (again, look at the Queen video to see nasty eyebrow shadows). You can get it looking better by lighting each person with two fixtures, one either side of the centre line. Another pointing up, a birdie (2" halogen) can work here, just filling in the shadows a little.

These projects are fun, but do require extra kit, and focusing is a pain. In fact, with a band, moving heads are ideal - you can focus them from the control desk, add colour if you wish, and with a bit of haze in the air, it can look stunning. This is probably out of the realm of most video people - but why not consider a venue that already has this lighting in place and use that. This won't be cheap - but if the end product warrants it, give it a shot.
 
keentave said:
On a side note.... does anyone know what material works good for a cheap greenscreen?

Another part of the video has a greenscreen shot and I need to cover a pretty large wall. I am thinking green paper or fabric. Has anyone had any success with a relatively cheap material like that?
Click to expand...

I never end up keying the stuff myself, but I do notice that using a fabric is always a pain unless you have a steamer on hand. What usually ends up happening is it gets all wrinkled and so you have these big creases across your green screen. I worked on a film where we used paper green screen, and while it may not work as well if you want something large...since you have to combine multiple pieces of paper, it's very very flat and easy to get that way. I would just look into how much a large piece of fabric would cost you, then look into how much a roll of green seamless would cost you and compare the two. Just keep in mind that the green seamless probably won't be as reusable as the green fabric.
 
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