Help me decide how to light this...

Azmyth

Azmyth

Veteran
I'm shooting a crowd funding pitch next week, and I need to assistance with lighting. This lighting setup or content of the scene is something new for me and I'm not totally sure how to go about it..

It's basically a wrestling match in an old run down warehouse. the match itself is not so much a match, but a training session. so there will be no people in the audience, just two people in the ring.. the only examples I could find were these, where I actually liked the look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j87a257j6FM

Some french tv show that I randomly found on youtube...

The Wrestler

https://vimeo.com/20223769

I want to look as cinematic as possible. Shooting on the black magic cinema camera. I'm not so much needing to know types of lighting, other than a general idea.. more so the placement of those lights. The building is lit, but I'd like the action in the ring, to be lit, and everything else sort of bleak.
 
Real life wrestling matches are often over lit and not so cinematic looking. The Wrestler has that realistic approach. The same movie's poster though doesn't. Check it out, I think it's closer to what you want. There are many films out there from Rocky to Ali and Million Dollar Baby to use for reference. Check their trailers and you will see that they use the same lighting setup more or less. You can even see the lights when the camera tilts up. The ring is lit overhead with soft lights. This can be an array of fluorescent lamps, of any size and shape, or even china balls. This should provide enough light for the ring. Other than that you should strategically place a few more of those lights to light the seats, just a little so they' re not pitch black.
 
Please don't take this the wrong way, but seriously, how would anybody on an internet forum know where lights need to be placed in a room they have never been in, for unknown scenes which have yet to be blocked? Secondly, we have absolutely no idea what lighting instruments you have at your disposal, nor do we have any idea what type of budget you might have for rentals. So any suggestion to use light X would be pointless if you didn't have access to it. I know you stated you do not need to know the types of lights needed, more so just the placement, but the type of light & wattage selected will have an impact on where it needs to be placed as well. Have you thought about consulting someone localized who actually knows how to light?
 
Check out Fat City as well... it's a classic and had some pretty nice fight scenes. You could use those as an idea to find out how it was lit.

Without having seen your location, I'm thinking overheads with skirts could look nice. Adjust the skirts so your background falls off just over black.

Screen Shot 2013-05-23 at 16.25.39.jpg
 
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Thanks for the helpful info.

@ David. I'm not asking anybody to come light it for me. I'm looking for examples of how someone else would light something like this. Providing examples of other films with similar scenes in it is probably the best thing anybody could have done. I only listed the few I could think of.. It didn't even dawn on me to look for boxing movies which are much more plentiful, and would have the same lighting aspects as I'm looking for. The layout is a ring, inside a building with chairs around it.. Its the same thing you see at every independent wrestling show ever. Not much to it. It looks pretty much exactly like the picture above this reply.

I understand where your coming from though, so no offense taken. I was just trying to clarify the kind of assistance I was looking for. I'm aware that no one can give me an exact lighting diagram. Was just looking for general, "looks like they did this... in this movie".
 
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Something like this maybe? A few Parcans shot through a 12x12 butterfly.
 
That's an interesting way to do it. So far looks like all of these are at least some point lit similarly.. with the goal being overhead soft light as someone else mentioned.
 
legrevedotcom said:
Check out Fat City as well... it's a classic and had some pretty nice fight scenes. You could use those as an idea to find out how it was lit.

Without having seen your location, I'm thinking overheads with skirts could look nice. Adjust the skirts so your background falls off just over black.

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I have read where "Fat City" was one of the late great Conrad Hall's favorite photographed films and was the film that he took with him to show when he did cinematography seminars. I really like the movie.
 
experiment with lighting the background (the seats)?

blue is often used for "audience light" a wash of blue over the seats could work well to seperate fg and bg and create interest, perhaps try raking hard (blue?) side light over them to give them form?
im a newb but im discovering that background light can be super useful in getting a "cinematic" (starting to hate that word) image-- attached below is a frame from my not-that-brillliantly lit short that I need to buck up and finish editing already.

notice the ring in Million Dollar Baby here is soft lit, the bg is broken up with harder lights...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcXErUFrA68

lighting the bg you can "break it up" in a pattern to create depth and realism and interest, get silo effects, create hot spots in the frame for more contrast...

I <3 lighting the bg!
 

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Here's some "Raging Bull"(1980) shots:

lowangleshotsforthewin_ragingbull.jpg


RagingBull8.png


raging-bull-wide.jpg



A couple of points. In several shots, a 'row' of lights are seen in the distance... these did not make any real contribution to the light on the canvas. They are just there to punctuate the 'darkness'...

Speaking of Canvas... white unbleached muslin would help bouncing the top light back onto the faces of the contestants/performers in the ring.

From my measurement of lights at my work place that has a 'high bay' are, illuminated with fluorescents, the result is about 10 footcandles at about 20 feet down from the lamps. If you pack several banks you probably can get up to about 100 fc fairly easily, and get a f/5.6 @ 1/50 @ ISO 400 exposure.

The biggest problem is rigging the racks for holding the lights, that looks 'integral' to a 'boxing/wrestling' venue.
 
I don't know, never shot there outside of actually shooting live events. This is for a movie. I want it to look like a movie, not a live event. The lighting that is there may be perfect, I was just trying to get ahead of the game since up til now I've only really done horror films.
 
My humble opinion: don't light it "realistically", that's a trap. Take cues from realism, but FIGHT FOR YOUR SHADOWS. Watch "ring" scenes from maybe 5 or so big movies (raging bull, million dollar baby, think of others), take notes, come up with 2 or 3 things to try out on location. I watched a lil raging bull and noticed that the ring scenes are sometimes backlit, putting the actors in shadow. Fight for your shadows. We don't have big money, we have to work harder to get our "looks" and be more creative than the big boys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wwItkoapuA


EDIT: I just watched th vidoes and there's big hard lights in there rim lighting everyone. It already could be "cinematic", its the same basic setup as raging bull )--- hard lights from outside rim lighting folks inside the ring, ya know, like a er...boxing ring.

use your eyes, brother! Deres shadows in dem dere lights!
 

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Azmyth said:
I don't know, never shot there outside of actually shooting live events. This is for a movie. I want it to look like a movie, not a live event. The lighting that is there may be perfect, I was just trying to get ahead of the game since up til now I've only really done horror films.
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For the wide shots, my opinion is, the existing lighting looks 'fine'... for the "Raging Bull" examples I gave, perhaps no other light than the central ring illumination should be on.

For 'tighter', shots, you may need to get bounces going to look like the canvas is illuminating the actors, but still maintain that feeling of the central ring light being the only light in town.

There should be any form of hard shadow, unless you've set up a 'spot light' in the master shot for the MC or the like, but that would be only for pre-fight or between round announcements.
 
David G. Smith said:
I have read where "Fat City" was one of the late great Conrad Hall's favorite photographed films and was the film that he took with him to show when he did cinematography seminars. I really like the movie.
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Yeah... I've started on Conrad Halls films (and apparently a lot of those I like are his work) after I found out Deakins likes him a lot. Fat City was a real treat, slow paced, but true to the time and a lot of nice shots in it.
 
It seems pretty straight forward to me. Use a soft light overhead or shot a hard source through diffusion. Add a little bit of texture to the background by something across the seats. A nice blue light maybe? And just add fill when needed for closer shots.

I was watching Real Steel the other night, and the final scene looks pretty cool but fairly simple to pull off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6pwHWsExbk

See how the blue in the background effectively provides depth to the shots.
 
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