Help with school project...(High School)

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vhuskey

New member
Hey guys, I have a quick question about lighting. I hope you guys can help me out.

Basically, I am directing a short commercial for a club. I want it to have a more quality feel than just any old school video.
The only equipment I have currently is a T2i and a tripod. I want the lighting to be good, but obviously have next to no money. The commercial takes place in the locker room, which has very "yellow" lighting. (I'm not actually sure what they are) The commercial revolves around one of our star football players, who is in great shape.(If that adds anything)

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
vhuskey said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question about lighting. I hope you guys can help me out.

Basically, I am directing a short commercial for a club. I want it to have a more quality feel than just any old school video.
The only equipment I have currently is a T2i and a tripod. I want the lighting to be good, but obviously have next to no money. The commercial takes place in the locker room, which has very "yellow" lighting. (I'm not actually sure what they are) The commercial revolves around one of our star football players, who is in great shape.(If that adds anything)

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

For a 'locker room' or even an indoor gym, I would imagine the lights are either fluorescent or high pressure sodium. (The building management just switched out high pressure sodiums for fluorescents at my work place...). If when you switch on the lights they take about 5 minutes to 'get really bright'... I'd say HPS...

In any case those are ugly lights... ever thought of going monochrome aka Black and White... give the shots a 'gritty' old fashion look?

The biggest problem with that sort of lighting other than the odd color, is that people's eyes tend to be darker, more 'socket' light and so one needs to have a fill light coming in, but not so obvious
as to make shadows or really give highlights. Bouncing 'work' likes, from a large white card could help. If the walls are 'whitish' then you could bounce off walls to kick light in as well.
 
You can white balance, but the CRI of those lights is usually so bad that things still look "off". I hate those things.:)
 
vhuskey said:
I want the lighting to be good, but obviously have next to no money. The commercial takes place in the locker room, which has very "yellow" lighting.
Click to expand...

Probably high or low pressure sodium. They are very efficient (lumens / $) but sacrifice light quality. Basically, you're getting just yellow light -- no green, no blue, little red. Nothing you can do to a light like this to make it look good on camera. Unless of course you're going for a monochrome look (black and yellow).

A few thoughts come to mind. First -- move to a location that's more video friendly -- with better lights.

If you can't do that, see how much outside light you can drag in -- use reflectors outside to bounce daylight in through windows, and use reflectors inside to bounce that light where you need it. Use this daylight to supplement your yellow practicals. You might get lucky, IDK.

Third, you could work on a way to capitalize on it -- turn it from a failing into a feature. Camp it up.

Forth, have a bake sale or something to raise enough money to rent a light for a day or two. You might be able to get by with just one. Use it to light the back of the talent (light facing the camera) and use bounce cards to bounce the light onto the front of the talent (of course, use a lens shade to prevent lens flare). This will give you some rim lighting to make your talent stand out a bit from the background, some cheek bone flare on one side or the other (if you want it), and the bounce will give you some nice soft lighting into the face to fill the shadows and control the contrast ratio across the face. If you move the bounce to one side, maybe 30-45 degrees off from TDC, you'll get some highlights and shadows on clothing to show the texture. Depends on what you're after -- I'm just saying this approach has a fair amount of flexibility. It's amazing what you can do with a single light and some bounce cards.

Fifth, forget the color and convert the video to black and white. Call it a artistic statement, or retro, or whatever you want. Just remember that bright yellow clothing will go white in such a video, and colors like blue and green will turn out to be very dark gray (because there's no blue / green light to reflect off the red / green clothes). Because of the weird lighting it'll take some experimentation on your part to find a clothing color scheme that gives you a pleasing range of grays in the final video.

Good luck with it.
 
You would be surprised by how much control you can get from cheap, clamp style light fixtures like this:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Note that these fixtures aren't legal in all states... and incandescent light bulbs are going away soon... but having said that, if you are somewhere where you can use such lights and get tungsten bulbs for them, you might be able to do the "pools of light look" in a locker room and make it be pretty dramatic looking. The lights weigh nothing, don't draw much in terms of watts, so can be readily plugged in with normal extension cords. Many people have them in their garages, so you might even be able to borrow them from friends and neighbors. Because they are light, you might even have a locker room with pipes above the locker area (not uncommon) that you could clamp them to and then safety them with some simply safety wire so if they are loose they don't fall onto the talent.

You might also consider looking at some inspiration for lighting from some fine art photographers that specialize in dramatic sports photography. Bill Frakes has a pretty wonderful website with some really inspirational stuff, like these:
http://www.billfrakes.com/main.php#/PORTFOLIO/Faces/23
http://www.billfrakes.com/main.php#/PORTFOLIO/Faces/22
http://www.billfrakes.com/main.php#/PORTFOLIO/Faces/15

Good luck!

Jon Thorn
Senior Product Manager
AJA Video Systems, Inc.
"Used to shoot a lot of no-budget stuff that I tried to make look good"
 
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