Filming inside of a cleanroom. Possible?

I

iservin

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I'm working on short piece about a couple research projects being done at a nano-fabrication laboratory. The facility where all the cool visuals are is in an ISO 5 certified clean room and I've been warned about the likelihood of being able to film inside of it. The walls are transparent, which is good, but tinted bright orange and made of rather thick plastic that is not so great optically. (EDIT: I added a smartphone pic I took while doing research)

I'm trying to figure out the best way to film lab visuals, whether that means making my setup cleanroom friendly or optimizing the process of shooting through the barrier.

1. Can I make a small camera setup cleanroom approved?
2. What is the best way to deal with shooting through bright orange plastic? (filtration?, wacky WB?)

And if any of you guys have experience shooting in a clean room or other laboratory environment, I'd love to hear about it. My internet searches weren't particularly fruitful.


Thanks!
 
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Talk to the people in charge of the clean room. They have to get people and equipment in and out of the clean room every day. Find out what procedures they'll require of you and your equipment, then do some research and see if your camera can withstand it (hint: don't let them use a cleaning method that takes the coating off the front element of the lens!). If not, investigate using an underwater rig that can take the procedure.

As to shooting through the orange plastic. Good luck with that. The resulting image is going to be largely monochrome since all the higher frequency light has been blocked (so, no yellows, greens, blues, just oranges and reds). You won't be able to get a white balance without blue light. But if it's a research project, why not just show it as the orange that it is?
 
If you can be in there filming in a clean suit can you get a underwater camera housing "clean room proof"? Maybe with certain chemicals you can dip the housing and get it sanitized
 
Alternative to an underwater housing you could seal it in a plastic bag glued to a uv filter. If you can't get inside, since you're already monochrome perhaps black and white is an option. But depending on your project the orange could be used to cool effect. You could find out the reason why it is orange (uv?) and draw attention to it.
 
Hi. I shot in a cleanroom not long ago, and I've got another shoot coming up soon.

It's mostly going to be up to the people who run the clean room, obviously, and up to the budget.

The first one, I was lower down the ladder and not involved in the planning, but as I understood it, we shot in there without taking any special pains, and they were planning on doing a full clean after we left. That has some cost, but apparently it was worth it to Kaiser Permanente. Re-cleaning a clean room is only a matter of money. If it will cost more to take extreme pains that take a lot of shoot time than it would cost to re-sterilize the clean room, then it'll be worth it to them.
The one I'm producing that I've got coming up, I did talk to the cleanroom people. It's more about your body and clothing than about metal/glass/plastic equipment. They told me I would just have to don all the same protective gear as their workers use. I'll follow up on this post once I've had my shoot, which is in a few weeks.
 
Airboxlights said:
Hi. I shot in a cleanroom not long ago, and I've got another shoot coming up soon.

It's mostly going to be up to the people who run the clean room, obviously, and up to the budget.

The first one, I was lower down the ladder and not involved in the planning, but as I understood it, we shot in there without taking any special pains, and they were planning on doing a full clean after we left. That has some cost, but apparently it was worth it to Kaiser Permanente. Re-cleaning a clean room is only a matter of money. If it will cost more to take extreme pains that take a lot of shoot time than it would cost to re-sterilize the clean room, then it'll be worth it to them.
The one I'm producing that I've got coming up, I did talk to the cleanroom people. It's more about your body and clothing than about metal/glass/plastic equipment. They told me I would just have to don all the same protective gear as their workers use. I'll follow up on this post once I've had my shoot, which is in a few weeks.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your info. I'll get in touch with the lab director and see if they're doing a clean in the near future. I'm still waiting on final approval from higher ups about filming so I've got some time to stew on this.

BTW, love Airboxes, have a set for some Lowel LED lights. I hate those lights, but the inflatable softbox improves them greatly.
 
Hello,
I have worked quite a lot in Clean Rooms ISO 5 (Type 100,000) and have produced a marketing documentary posted on my YouTube channel that you can look at mostly all shot inside this Company's CR's.

Sanitize the equipment you will be bringing in (specially polluting surfaces like weels on tripod bases) and do not touch anything nor rest equipment on work tables. Gown correctly according to the site's current SOP and you should be good to go. Don't forget to balance your light correctly.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2YqbjtTvdo

Hope this is of use to you.

Regards,

Leo
 
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Thanks everyone for your advice. The shoot went down a few weeks ago and everything went much better than I expected. The lab director had a change of heart and let me in the cleanroom environment with all my gear. All I had to do was clean up my equipment and of course gown up myself. It was a great shoot and then unfortunately the project got shot down by some higher ups. It was a great experience nonetheless and I'm shopping around the story to some local news outlets so the work wasn't done completely in vain.
 
I shot in a place like this. It's a lab inside a chemical engineering school that is working on some nanotechnology stuff.

I had big problem with sound because there's a venting system that can't turn off. I wasn't even shooting dialog or anything. Just a scientist doing work. But there a loud whirring noise so even if I wanted to use ambient sound like when glass beakers are clinking the fans just dominate the sound
 
I'd strongly consider not using the live sound at all - other than atmosphere, does it give the audience anything?

Depending on the context, you may wish to fill the soundtrack with:
- a voiceover commenting on what's happening
- music (which might sound weird if there's no music elsewhere)
- the live sound turned down so low that it's just a vague fan sound - fine if its not distracting to listen to
- in extreme situations, you could go as far as creating a fake ambient background track - but it better sound believable, or it will be worse than nothing
 
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