citytyscape backdrop lighting?

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B12works

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Hello all, I'm brand new to this site so be gentle with me.
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I need to light a fabric backdrop with a cityscape painted on it. The backdrop is on two large panels that are fastened together and will be placed outside of the windows on a small set. The backdrop will only be shot through the window and from a minimum distance of approximately 10 feet from the subject. Although i'm not yet sure how deep the DP plans to go with focus i would obviously like to be able to sell the backdrop(otherwise what is it doing there?) and would like to prepare for a crisp deeply focused shot.

The backdrop is painted to resemble dusk and is of a cityscape from a somewhat high vantage point.(as if you were looking at the city from a similarly tall rooftop) It needs to be somewhat dark and shadowy and as the painting suggests its a rooftop or at least at rooftop height.

I have never lit a canvas background and since its been painted i can't place lights behind it to shine through. My thought was to light it from below with an orange-yellow gel to suggest the light is coming from street lamps that are out of sight. The other option was to add a little fill from the side, again staying away from hard light so as not to reveal imperfections on the surface of the backdrop.

It seems like i also heard something about placing LED's behind/on the surface of the backdrop to simulate lights on in the buildings in the painting. Although i don't think this is doable in my case i'm interested to see if anyone has ever done this and if so how + how it turned out.

Any suggestions opinions are welcomed as i really feel like i'm just winging it as far as lighting this thing. Thanks.
 
In my opinion, all the lighting should be done in the painting or picture. If you light it anything other than flat, it's going to suggest that it's a flat surface, because there's nothing 3 dimensional to cast shadows.

I worked on a series of spots for apple a while back and we had giant cityscapes printed out on paper that we hung outside the set windows. From there, we lit them with two image 80's on either side, keeping it pretty flat, while having it be a few stops over our base exposure. Also, it looks like they had taken the pictures for these cityscapes pretty out of focus, that way even when the DP was shooting at a 4 on a wider lens, it still looked like a soft background in the distance. This is honestly the best I have ever seen for fake backdrops. It really looked fantastic.

Now, you can put little christmas lights on the surface of the backdrop but you have to dim them way way down. I was on a job a while ago where we tried this and it only looked convincing when it was thrown pretty far out of focus. When they did do that though, it looked great.

Re-reading your post, of course you should light the backdrop to what is appropriate. We lit our backdrops a few stops over because we were saying that light was coming from outside, and we weren't getting any direct hits of light inside, so it obviously must be brighter. However, if your main light source is not coming from your backdrop, it can be a stop or so under to sell it.
 
Although I haven't tried it myself, they used a single net here in front of the backdrop to give it a little more hazey look....or look like it's a bit softer. Sort of like when you put pantyhose over the lens. You could also give that a shot.
 
Thanks guys. Your suggestions really helped! The backdrop painter had the good sense to paint the backdrop slightly out of focus and i convinced the DP keep the focus on the backdrop slightly soft. I ended up using a few sheets of diffusion and put the lights on dimmers to drop the light level and warm up the image a bit. I think that it turned out looking really nice and everyone was pleased, so thanks Ryan T and slondon! You guys were a big help!!
 
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