Lighting choices

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Deframer

New member
Hey guys!

I'll keep it short: there's an experienced crew here in Melbourne are shooting an action flick, using an school as a location. Most of the locations are pre-war Victorian era or neo-gothic buildings, sort of in the vein of the linked pictures below. Lots of muted creams, blues, greens and pinks (primaries) with shoddy, workaday wooden desks and chairs:

http://image.shutterstock.com/displ...f-neo-gothic-town-hall-in-poland-51692173.jpg
http://www.valsparatlowes.com/export/pics/ideas-section/nt_victorian_interior.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ihu7BWIJinM/SqOL_OJ3iRI/AAAAAAAAALs/EVy9Eji7bQY/s400/stpauls_2.jpg

There's also some renovated circa 1950 war era style no-nonsense stuff, which tends towards being a little darker.

We're also shooting exteriors, on the same building where we're doing interiors pretty much in exactly this location:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Melbourne_Grammar_School_quad_play.jpg

I mentioned that there's an experienced crew. This is true of all of them except me. I am not their first choice, but their lighting guy broke both his right leg and arm in a boating accident, and the location is a one off. Someone passed my name and some of my work to them and they decided to go with me. So, I need help:

They're shooting largely mounted on the shoulder to save time, and are looking for a look similar to 0:00-0:10 and 0:45-1:06 (minus the fire) as examples of highest key and lowest key respectively. For exterior references, 0:36-0:43 work, but I suspect that's just time of day plus maybe a silk and reflectors/balanced lights. I'm probably wrong though.


I know Community (the reference) tends to use Kinos (or fluros of some design, at least) integrated into their set design, and we are being given access to 2 Diva 400s, 2 Diva 200s and one Kino 4 footer. I also have a lowel tota, omni and pro light to supplement. Problem is, I've never used Kinos before and after spending hours looking at videos online it's starting to look like those lights are too bright in a class-room sized set to be keeping the talent lit while keeping the background textured and low key i.e. not flat. Unless I'm wrong about their throw, or just wrong in general. We're shooting mixed with daylight, too, which complicates things although the quality of light coming in through the windows tends to be quite nice at the right time of day. Also, we're shooting on a 7D.

Any help on lighting setups would be appreciated...and is sorely needed :S
 
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Kinos can achieve looks like your example (which does look like it had a fair amount of post grading). Looks like you'll need a way to rig them from the ceilings while being able to aim them. The sets in the example are pretty dark design-wise and the light doesn't seem greatly different between talent and walls.

You can control a lot of the spill with barn doors and flags; if you can't dim flos, you can wrap them in cheap black mesh (check a fabric store). They're cool enough that it won't melt.

Mixed daylight and Kinos should be fine, you may need to fine tune color temp if the daylight gets that cool/shady look. 1/4 CTB could help on the kinos in that case, then balance and check.

Some of the example shots look fairly simple, seems like an overall wash of low light to open up the set, soft light picking out talent, and the occasional harder light. For a 7D, you might want to bring up your shadows a bit more than normal, and crush them back down when you grade.

My worry would be having enough light with those few fixtures. With your existing tungsten fixtures, bring a variety of lamps (whatever they'll take, from 150 to 1k), dimmers, and plenty of CTB, and make sure you can gel without melting the gels. My guess is you can gel the tungstens and use them for any harder back or side lighting. You may find lamping vs. dimming to help if you're gelling; sometimes just a half CTB can look great, especially if you go with an overall cool look but hit key talent with a touch of warmth. Dimmers can warm tungsten up, making it harder to go blue (more gels = less lumens) - so a variety of lamps can be a big help.

I'd really try to get the DP and test at the location, try to have some plans ready so you're not endlessly experimenting on set.
 
Indoor: With the 7D your easily going to be able to shoot 800ISO indoors and use the ambient sunlight coming in from windows as lighting your background, and then can use the divas for key and fill since they are dimmable and go .5 to 1 stops over your background to keep a "flat" almost natural type of look. I suggest you use a light meter and measure your ambient light, then with your diva adjust it to at least the same or slightly higher on your subject to get the look you want.

If you like math, and technically want to know what's possible with your lights as far as "throw" before you even get on set - this is where a lightmeter, knowing foot candles and being good at math can be your friend. A diva 200 has an output performance rating of approximately 1404 (a diva 400 about 2808). Divide that number by your distance squared (where distance is from light source to subject) and you can figure out the approximate working range you can get out of it at max power non-dimmed.

I can quickly tell you that on an average day with light coming in through the windows a diva 200 will need to be at least 3 feet away from your subject to light him 1 stop over your background (approximately). :D

To put that into perspective: from my experience I know that at 800ISO you would get a range from between f2.8 - f5.6 on your background (depending on windows, time of day, positioning, and the room of course) so perhaps you want between f.4 to f8 on your subject so they are just a little bit brighter than your background but not too much that they look lit and POP out too much. Based on previous tests I have done, I've determined that at 800ISO you need about 42 foot candles and f4 aperture to expose for middle grey, or 50% on your waveform monitor. If at f4 you need 42 foot candles, then at f5.6 you need 84 (double it), and at f8 you need 168 (double it again). Based on the performance value numbers of the specific light in question it becomes real easy to figure out what distances that translates too. At 3 feet with the diva 200 at full blast it will give me 156 foot candles, or be f8. If my background is as bright as f5.6, I know at 3 feet between my light and subject I will have nice soft shadowless light at 1 stop higher than my background. If you hate math Kino, Arri and even Lowel publish their foot candle output in handy charts to help figure this stuff out. I just prefer to know how to calculate the number myself.

Here is the chart for the divas: http://www.kinoflo.com/Lighting Fixtures/Diva-Lite/Photometrics.htm

For more info on understanding light performance values have a look at an entry I wrote in my blog recently.
 
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As for outdoors:

The only way to do this on a budget would be a slightly cloudy day, or real early in the morning or in late afternoon when the sun is least harsh. Quick wide shots you can get away with not too much lighting emphasis, but on close ups nothing worse is a harsh shadow going down one side of the face or maybe lighting up half the scene or actor, but not the rest. This just looks bad, so for any medium or close ups on a sunny day you will have to use overheads, or get HMI's to blast your talent from far away and offset some of the harsh contrast created by direct overhead sun. I've had luck with reflectors, but using them depends on the location, etc.. .

Here are some frame grabs from an outdoor shoot I just completed on a bright sunny day with no clouds: bright http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?266399-Frame-grabs-Music-Video-beach-shoot-with-sexy-girl
 
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Thanks guys! All super helpful :) and I have a weird relationship with math. I can do it, but it makes me angry (for no particular reason. My rage slowly builds as I perform arithmetic like a super bar in Street Fighter). Having said that, that's super useful to know...the way the shots are blocked at the moment is going to make it super difficult to operate 3 feet from the talent, so I'm going to have to make some recommendations.

And Michael - we definitely don't have enough lights. I'm hoping for an extra diva 400 and 200 but it's looking unlikely, nor will that be enough; on the plus side, I secured 4 dedo 150watts but I'm pretty sure that with the amount of light pouring in the windows they're going to be highly situational or supplementary.

This is doing my head in. It's a good career opportunity, but it's come too soon almost I'm just not quite ready >.<
 
Remember its all relative - it would only be 3 feet depending how bright your background is. My example was worst case scenario with a pretty bright room. If you end up with less ambient light in your room you can move your light further away... ie. f2 ambient means you can match it in light level at 11 feet on your subject using the diva 200... with the diva 400 you have even more light!

I don't see why you would need more than the lights you've already described. The best thing to do is set it up first and test it yourself using a friend for a subject. I would suggest a 650w or 1k fresnel so you can use it to light up your talent a little on master wide shots. Just use CTB on it so it matches your daylight and your kinos later.

Have fun, let us know what you end up doing or deciding on..............
 
Cheers mate :)

Actually, I used to go to the school in question so I guess that makes me the expert on the team vis-a-vis the location. Having said that, I do think worst case scenario need apply, since the windows are tall, large, numerous, and unshaded (this was 7 years ago, though). We'll see when we do the location scout, *if* they let us do one. Thanks so much for the responses man, helped me understand things much, much better.
 
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