Lighting a big room

So is it an empty white room with only a table in the middle with two people sitting there?

Or is it in a restaurant or hotel ball room or dining room or living room or gym...?

What practicals are in the scene? (lamps etc. that the audience views as lighting the scene)

If it is just an empty room, then you can always move the actors and table up against a wall and just shoot across the room.

Now what is the look? Is it stark, dark, contrasty, shadowy? Is the table the only thing lit or do you want full bright saturation of the entire room?

How many and which camera angles? What needs to be lit? How about just table and back wall?

Are there other actors or objects in the scene that need to be lit? Other tables?
 
It's an apartment. The apartment has olive green walls. A large window is all the way across the room, unseen. That's the primary light source. I want the scene to look as natural as possible. I want the actors to be lit as naturally as possible. A chandelier might be above them (haven't decided where to positiion the table yet). So that could be lighting the scene.

It's supposed to be during the day so I want the room to be pretty well lit. I want the wall behind them to have a sort of nice falloff (not perfectly evenly lit).

Oh, and I don't know the proper term, but I want to try that lighting technique where the wall about 3 quarters of the way up, is shadowed off up to the ceiling.
 
The sunlight is going to create a really difficult situation unless you have enough light streaming in for all your needs. The look can be very dramatic; however, if it is only for an establishing shot, then setting up the room for the dialog shots is going to be a little trickier when you mix in the practical lights.

Incandescent is much easier to engineer. In a living room/dining room scene, you have furniture and a variety of practicals. So you can now use multiple smaller lights to do things like wash the walls and highlight the furniture and actors in the scene. The lights can be hidden behind the furniture and off camera to the side and behind.

You'll need to spend a lot of time to set up the lights and then to flag or block the light from spilling and causing shadows in the wrong spot and to only highlight it's target. Get a few inexpensive light dimmers for all the practicals so you can turn them down to avoid blowing out.

Your biggest problem is with the window if you are shooting during the day. The suggestions above pertain to incandescent light mainly. Shoot it at night or cover the outside of the window to block that blue light if you shoot during daylight outside. If you want to use the daylight streaming in, then you can certainly get that dramatic look. Just be aware of the color shift between the blue and the orange light. "Natural" light from a window also creates a lot of natural shadows.

If you have the time and money, I highly suggest a DVD course on lighting. Rush Hamden has a very good one advertised in the DVXuser sight. His course even addresses mixing daylight and incandescent. There may be a link or two in the sticky at the top of this string.

There is no big bang light solution for that much real estate. It will take several lights well placed.

Have fun.

Indy
 
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