Isolate light

O

Orangeday

Member
I've just filmed the first scene of my new shortmovie and it's a desaster: The light looks different in every szene, we filmed in the evening so some are in daylight some in night and the light is not very good isolated (actors and background are too even lit)
The result is here to find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEEVzS6t2Hs

I tried around with light some weeks ago, see: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...movies&p=1986524022&viewfull=1#post1986524022

but like you can see, the light is spreading around in the whole room.
Is it possible to take away the light somehow?
I tried to put the light higher so it doesent touch the background, but then the eyes of the actors arent lit...
I know, best idea would be to place the actors far away from the room, but in no budget projects its not always possible to find good and big locations
 
The lighting isn't bad. As you mentioned it's mostly soft light. When the one character goes to the window he's lit by indirect lighting and looses the highlight on the skin that's apparent in the other shots. Mostly I think this could be improved by selectively grading each shot to match the others in the scene. Then apply an overall grade so the sequence matches your vision.
 
One of your bigger problems is the room. The white walls act as huge bounce boards, spreading the light everywhere, making it all soft and flat. If you want control over the light, then you're going to have to find a way to cover the walls, at least the walls which aren't in the shot.
 
Some of the shots could have been flagged off... I know there are no set rules for how to light a shot, but I do love Deakins for his intuitive approach and use of motivated light or simply using practicals.

Theres some b-roll bts of Prisoners on YouTube where you get to see how a couch scene was shot.
And if you have his forum pages open on another tab at the same time you can read him explaining exactly what lights he used and how.

Also like Jimerson talks about, think set design into it. Like dark paintings, some posters, a tall bookshelf, something else... :)

This is by no means art, but the film below was my first real film gig... A no budget theatre school production. The room it was shot in was a white naked class room when we started. The students were tasked with dressing it up (all actors....).
But there were still a few spots where the walls werent helping. I made the rash decision to cut up one of my black moving blankets and tape them to the wall left of the door and above it.
It ended up helping a good deal.
again... Just an example, and not a great one :)

All light was either a 650w fresnel bounced on a 4x4 and flagged, a 100w mini spot or practical bulbs


In regards to sound... Remember its at least 50% of the production :)
 
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Orangeday said:
in this project there is no budget for a better microphone, so it would be nice if we could focus on the light in this thread
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I didn't say anything about needing a better microphone!

You need to match the audio between the shots, just like you need to match the color grade between shots.

By the way, it's been my experience that folks tend to hang longer with disastrous video than they will with audio of the same caliber.
 
Yep. I agree here. Your video not so bad and I think it can be matched and tweaked in Resolve or other cc software. But your audio drops all your work way down. This noise from computer or other device and room echo are very noticeable. Can you ask your actors to record only their voices watching your film to try to match it with video?
At least you should try to remove the unwanted noise from your audio. With some of the noise reduction plugins. If you cant do that try to mask it by putting in some other domestic noise or music (from radio or tv set). And also you need to tweak your audio with EQ and compressor to get the voices closer to us.
 
Thanks a lot for the help about the audio, but: it was the first szene we filmes for that project, all I wanted to do is make a fast cut to see if everything matches and to get an impression how it would look at the end. The sound of the video is from the internal microphone, I recorded it also on my Zoom H1 but its not synced yet. Its also not graded or matched in any way right now, and I'm not sure if I want to put that much effort in it because probably I would prefer to film the scene again (because the lighting and set doesent looks like in a professional movie and thats what I want to practice). I thought about going on with the next scenes which will hopefully be better, and when all scenes are filmed I will ask the actors to repeat that scene.

I will describe my concerns a bit more detailed:
First szene (until 0:02) is a desaster because the shadow of the curtain in the background. The actors are kind of nice lit I think (left one is a bit overexposed but its possible to fix it in post)
0:06-0:08 it looks totally unnatural. On the set I thought it looks really good, but now I can't really name it why it looks so bad. probably the actor is too bright or something
0:29-0:35 now idea why this looks so bad. probably he is too close to the wall?
0:40-0:50 I remember seeing a similar shot in a couple of movies, but in my project I think its even worse then all the other shots of this scene. I still dont understand why
1:00-1:05 same like 0:40, but here with a really annoying shadow on his right. probably I should have placed him a bit further away so the shadow is not that obvious, but otherwise now idea why this shot looks so bad

here are 2 screenshots of the film "a garden state"
could someone explain me, why this looks so much better than my shot? mainly focused on the light, because handling the light is fixable for me, changing locations sadly not



 
In second shot here we have a large room to get this kind of view. Looks like 10 meters behind the acor and at least 5 meters to him. It is a large room. Just compare the dimensions of the furniture and the room itself.
 
I have to carry like 6 tripods, lamps, camerastuff, audiostuff and so on anyway, the difference would be only the two cheap 50 euro gallows, so its not a big difference.
Maybe you noticed the tripod at 0:06-0:08 in my video, I could hide it with the gallows what would be really nice

thanks for the videos, I will watch them
 
I think having a TV gag could have made it a bit more convincing. There are several ways to pull this off, really any soft source with a blue gel and a dimmer to change the brightness a bit every few seconds will do. If you have a projector, you can also use that as your source and feed the video that you see on that TV into it so that the changing light really matches up with what you see on screen.

As far as your lighting goes, I think some careful color grading will go a long way in making it look a bit more cinematic. The quality and direction of the light is OK. To me what's most problematic is the skin tones and the lack of practicals. I'm not sure what fixtures you were using but it sure doesn't look like the warm tungsten that we're used to seeing for small night interiors like this.

As far as your specific concerns go, here's how I would have addressed them on set:

1. The shadow on the curtain is really nothing, I would have dimmed their key light WAY down and maybe moved it upstage a few feet and used an egg crate to focus it mainly on them. I would probably pulled the camera back a few feet and not have it focused on the back of their heads as well, but that's a different conversation.

2. I think the main reason this shot looks so bad is the camera placement. We don't really see your actor's face I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you were trying to frame out the door since there was daylight coming in? Also you have a light stand right in the shot, a classic mistake on no-budget shoots where there's no real monitor for everyone to look at to catch stuff like that. A dimmer key light that was closer to the camera might have also helped.

3. Again, dimmer key light. I think this is where a TV gag could really shine (no pun intended). And get rid of that awful magenta backlight, there's no need for it.

4. His face is lacking dimension here and the light is also abnormally cool. I would have put an orange gel on the source, brightened it up a bit somehow whether it be using a different light or walking it closer, and I would have put some sort of neg fill on his right side to cut down whatever return he's getting from nearby walls. I would also have experimented with those track lights to make the background a little less boring.

5. I don't think that shadow is much to worry about. You could always have moved him to his left so that it's entirely cast on that dark window, where it would be pretty much impossible to see. And like your second problem shot, he's looking way off camera, but I think in this case I would have cheated the other actor to make his eye line more direct rather than moving the camera. You actually have a decent looking background there, might as well keep it. But in the interest of having a better composition, I would probably move him away from the wall a few feet, putting the corner of the room behind him. Again, that's a whole different conversation.
 
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here's a nice little two-minute lighting tutorial from one of the most consistently working DPs I know. Good simple, practical advice.

 
Orangeday said:
here are 2 screenshots of the film "a garden state"
could someone explain me, why this looks so much better than my shot? mainly focused on the light, because handling the light is fixable for me, changing locations sadly not



Click to expand...

In terms of 'where the light comes from, both of these example shots have light coming from 'very much the side'. In the first, it 'appears' to be from a table lamp next to the sofa. In the second, it appears to be window light from the day outside.

Further for the first image, there is a 'second light' that gives a bit of 'rim' effect on the couple's faces, and it also hits the dog cage/carrier in the left background. That is 'masked', 'flagged', such that it only hits a bit of their faces. There is a soft light closer to the camera left. which fills/wraps the light on their faces.

in your cases, in the first opening shot, you have bright light off to the camera left. This pretty much blasts the fellow with the white T-shirt into the 'stratusphere' of values. The light also blasts the curtains in the background on the left, and pretty much lights the was on the far right corner.

This does not 'look' like a table lamp at night in a house.

Perhaps you should:

1) lower the light power.
2) trade the guy in blue shirt position with the guy in white. With reduced light there would be more falloff.

Note the falloff on the 'example' second shot for the white shirt.

And notice the overall falloff in the first shot from bright, and note the placement of a 'red' blanket/cover which reduces the visual impact of light yellow couch. Then everything falls off into a dark corner on the right and rear of the subjects.

As a note one can see the light stands in the 'very fair and pink/violet' fellow... which leads me to...

The one guy has a yellowish perhaps a hint of green cast, where as the other guy has a 'red/violet'. I've seen this with Canon 'colors'... don't know if that's the camera that you are using, but I think it lends to 'not natural' feel of the shot.

So, my suggestions... lower light levels. place the TV screen in the right hand portion of the frame, with guys to the left, perhaps moving the camera to the right to get that composition.

You can use 'white walls' to some advantage, by pointing the lamp into a corner/ceiling, you can get a 'softer light'. The light as it is, casts a harsh shadow in the upper left, from the curtains...

If by adjusting the light down to get a good falloff on the guys, the deeper part of the room goes 'black' other than the TV screen, you could 'add' a small amount of light perhaps in front of the couch, but hidden from camera view, with
'black wrap' to prevent it from going 'everywhere', but just enough to put a little detail in the deep portion of the room. The trick here is to get light in to dark places without it looking obvious...
 
The couch tv-scene from Prisoners with the finished result, the BTS and Deakin's own words as to how it was done.

Watch from 4:54

prisoners-3.jpg

All the interiors were lit. The daylight interior scenes scenes had to be lit as, being the middle of winter, there was rarely enough daylight getting through the windows to shoot by. The night scenes were also lit but in large part using practicals and gag lights rather than conventional film lights.
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That TV effect was done using an LED lamp. Often I will use a fluorescent fixture for a TV effect but the LED panel creates a similar soft light from a small unit. The flags you are asking about are often called 'meat axes'. Here I was suing them to reduce the TV light hitting the background. i wanted Hugh to be quite shadowed as he walked from the stairs as focus was on the two kids on the couch. Hugh and Maria were lit by the overhead ceiling lights and the Tweenie that I had bounced was just augmenting the practical that was to the right of frame. it was just adding a little shape to the light coming fro that source but not much else. There was another Tweenie bouncing off a card to the left of frame but I think I turned that off before I actually shot anything. I often try a lap out and decide to turn it off at the last moment.
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I don't think the set up was that complicated. We used an LED light for the TV effect and the background was lit by the overhead can lights. The Tweenies I used were just creating a little bit of warm edge light that was insignificant to the overall exposure, which I judged from the foreground without taking any other readings. The camera was probably set at 3200K.
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As taken from here:
http://rogerdeakins.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2632

In general I found that Prisoners had a nice atmosphere to it which is nice, because from what Deakins has said about it, it seems more a good example of controlled lighting than lighting. Most of his shots had very little if any film lights in them and Deakins is a great teacher in using motivated light.
You could also read up on his responses to questions about the lighting in No Country For Old Men. You can get far with taping some unbleached muslin on the wall next to a table lamp and shoot a 650w fresnel into it :)
 
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A couple of things:

First, there are shots in the first part of the scene where lighting stands and cables are plainly (and inconsistently) visible in the background, or where it seems the corner of a flag or softbox is creeping into the top of the frame. Those need to be kept completely out of frame.

Second, when working on a scene like this where you are in the evening hours and you know the window will be shown at one point, get all of your shots in/around the window completed first, before you lose daylight. You can always recreate that for the interior where the window isn't shown. As it is, we see a character standing at the window, looking out, and can see that it is daylight (enhanced by the added birds chirping*). Later, we see the window and it is dark outside. That's disorienting. Shoot out of sequence, especially when it means getting it right vs. not.

Last, the frames you reference from Garden State aren't afraid to let the background fall into shadow. Your key light is drastically inconsistent from shot to shot, and if it is too much and is hitting too much of the background you can back the light up, or cut it or filter it as needed. It also seems to be directionally ambiguous. The window is (at least, should be) a motivated source since the scene is theoretically during daylight hours. The TV is/can be a source as well. Instead, it seems your key moves to satisfy the camera angle.

*The birds are distracting, not because they take away from the shot where he's looking out the window (though, the level could be pulled back in the mix) but because they exist only for those few seconds. If they can be heard through the window when he's standing there, they can be heard through the window whenever he's in its proximity. Creating the sound world requires extending the aural environment beneath the entire visual scene, even if it's mixed so low as to be hardly noticeable. Its absence is more startling, and makes its brief presence stick out like a sore thumb.
 
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