How to get the white room effect

RyanKR

RyanKR

Active member
Sorry guys but I'm new with some of this. I'm going to be shooting my first music video with a good camera :laugh: and I was going through some videos with the white backdrops. Some you can tell if it was filmed in a room, and others kinda look like it could have been green screened, or chroma keyed

What do you think about this video? It was shot on an HVX with Nikon lenses

http://dandobi.com/media/mission/mission-final.mov

Sorry if there is a thread like this. I looked around, but I couldn't find much on making the room look this white :lipsrseal

The video will only be like that about 10% so if its something I should stay away from I don't need to do it.
 
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That's shot on a white stage. Usually you'll have solid white walls, and the curve down to a solid white floor. There are no seams, just curved walls (called a "cyc" or cyclorama; when it curves to the floor it's called an "infinity cyc"). Any sound stage should have at least a 2-wall white cyc (or, sometimes, painted green but they'll paint it white for your gig).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclorama_(theater)
 
you need to shoot on a cyc or cove. if you don't know what this is, it's a room with rounded corners between walls and from wall to floor. i don't know sacremento at all but if you were to shoot in l.a. i could point you to several good spots. if you are looking for a white-out look in the background you will need a LOT of light. for pure pure white like you see in hip-hop videos, you light the background to the point of blowout and you will have pure white. i know a couple of really nice white 3 wall full coves in l.a. that are pre-lit. these rooms can be expensive. we have paid up to $1000 a day for one of these.

of course you can get similar results using simple photo background paper but you are limited on angles and how many subjects you can fit on the set. however, if you expose the background all the way past blowout you don't have to worry about keeping the background in frame. since you will be dealing with 100% white, you can use cropping or a garbage matte in post to get rid of the areas you don't want. then just put a pure white slug underneith and you wo'nt see any seams. here is an example of what i mean. i shot this video on a single wall cyc only 14ft wide. for wide shots i had to crop out the left and right.

1188855859.jpg
 
RyanKR said:
What do you think about this video? It was shot on an HVX with Nikon lenses


The video will only be like that about 10% so if its something I should stay away from I don't need to do it.
Click to expand...

As far as the music video sample, it reminds me of A Flock of Seaguls for some reason.

The advice the others gave is good. If you need to shoot in a white cyc, there is one in the SF Bay Area I've shot several times at (40' wide) and it's not too expensive. You'll need to bring your own lights though, and do bring a LOT. You'll have to make sure the background is about 5 stops over.

You mention it's only for 10% of the video though. So you may want to look into cheaper solutions than a big cyc. How wide are the shots planned to be, and with what type of movement?
 
I've gotten great success by using an opaque white painters drop cloth and then lighting it from behind it.. blows out to a clean even white limbo. Really as good as a sych or something to front light and it's just so darn easy to do. I think I have some samples onlien so I'll check.. but going this route is easy and with the spot meter on the cam.. you can see how well you are blowing it out... cheers
 
Ryan, why dont you just PM the DP of that music vid, he's a member here, creativeeye.

I would suggest a 20' x 20' silk and a few 10K's if you have access.
 
Wow thank you everyone for your help. I met with the band and we decided it would be best to not do this in the video. Thank you all for your help and now I know what i'm going to have to do when I eventually do this.
 
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