lighting cosy

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David Evans

Well-known member
Hi guys,

I need to light a scene (medium shot) of a father reading a story to his 3 year old girl. They're both in her bed and the mother is sitting on the bed, in front of them (back against the camera). Motivating light will be a lamp placed on the left side of the frame and I wanted a very cosy feeling, so a yellowish very soft look, just iluminating both father and daughter, with a soft fill on the mother (maybe left side to simulate a sort of bounce from the lamp hitting a wall). How would you light this? Fresnels is what I usually use, but I'm opened to suggestions :)

Thanks!
 
Fresnels are easy to cut but rather harsh for what you describe. Some flavor of soft source with grid to control spill on the walls. You'll want to come in sharp with siders right on the edge of frame to cut light off the practical lamp and minimize it on the mother. It might be nice to add a little extra edge onto the mother upstage from the main source. For color, add 1/4 or possibly even 1/2 CTO to your source. If the shadows are too deep, you can add a very small amount of ceiling bounce (your fresnels will work great for this!), possibly blued down to suggest ambient moonlight.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Fresnels are easy to cut but rather harsh for what you describe. Some flavor of soft source with grid to control spill on the walls. You'll want to come in sharp with siders right on the edge of frame to cut light off the practical lamp and minimize it on the mother. It might be nice to add a little extra edge onto the mother upstage from the main source. For color, add 1/4 or possibly even 1/2 CTO to your source. If the shadows are too deep, you can add a very small amount of ceiling bounce (your fresnels will work great for this!), possibly blued down to suggest ambient moonlight.
Click to expand...

Thanks Charles. Here's a picture of the room.


61581d82fab089bb615731c0889020b0.jpg


My idea is to move the bed away from the left wall to place a table with the practical there. And also have space to place lights there as well. What would your lighting scheme be? Fresnels are particularly cheap to rent, that's why I like going with them and the use some sort of diffusor to soften them. Would this be ok? Or would you use a different fixture? I guess for color, I will just have to balance the lights with the practical. Since I'm recording in RAW, I can change white balance in post. If you'd share a lighting scheme of some sort, that would be fantastic! :) I would guess some sort of very soft light on the left side of frame to light the father and daughter and a backlight on the mother to silhouette her. But your advice would be greatly appreciated :)

Thanks!
 
Guys, what if I move the bed really further away from the left wall and place two 500w fresnels bouncing off unbleached muslin and lighting both father and daughter. This should offer very good diffusion, right? And then I could flag the light and keeping it just below their faces. Not sure if that would work, but I'm guessing a grid wouldn't help, as the bed will be right next to the back wall, so that they can lean on it while reading the story. What do you guys think?
 
CharlesPapert said:
Fresnels are easy to cut but rather harsh for what you describe. Some flavor of soft source with grid to control spill on the walls. You'll want to come in sharp with siders right on the edge of frame to cut light off the practical lamp and minimize it on the mother. It might be nice to add a little extra edge onto the mother upstage from the main source. For color, add 1/4 or possibly even 1/2 CTO to your source. If the shadows are too deep, you can add a very small amount of ceiling bounce (your fresnels will work great for this!), possibly blued down to suggest ambient moonlight.
Click to expand...

Charles, what do mean by "come in sharp with siders right on the edge of frame"?

Thanks (love the tip of the bouncing moonlight!)
 
David Evans said:
Charles, what do mean by "come in sharp with siders right on the edge of frame"?

Thanks (love the tip of the bouncing moonlight!)
Click to expand...

What i'm referring to is using flags (solids) to cut the light, and having them as far from the source as possible, so they would likely be just up to the edge of your frame (when calling for cutters of this type, we use "sharp" and "soft" to describe how far they should be from the light which results in a more or less defined edge to the cut). You don't want your source hitting the practical lamp since that is supposed to BE the source, and you'll probably want to regulate the amount of light on the wall, so a sider (flag that limits the spread of light on one side--essentially a more effective barn door, if you will) will manage both the wall and the practical, leaving the actors open to the light.

Hard to get a sense of the entire space--can you make up an overhead diagram of the room, where you see the three characters and the camera?

Mus bounces are great, but very hard to control in a space this small. Fortunately your walls are fairly dark which helps. A soft source (LED etc) that is the same size as the mus will have a similar effect, but you can start to limit its spread via grid aka eggcrate.
 
You likely will want the light in the room to feel as if it is coming from the general direction of the table lamp, correct? If you bury it in the corner that makes this pretty hard to do. Would the light be motivated from somewhere off camera? A soft light from behind where the practical light is placed can "extend" the illumination from that lamp. A softbox or a light with a Chimera on the front can do this nicely, but you should make sure there's a gridcloth on the front to control spill on the wall. A flag armed out on a c-stand can be used for more precise control of spill. You may also want to add a soft source from behine or near camera to raise the ambient fill level, but be prepared to diffuse it considerably and have dimmers or scrims so that you can dial in the light level. Lastly, if you do have a light in the corner, you may wish to get light coming from that direction to help separate the characters from the background. In order to do this you can tape a white showcard to the ceiling & wall, bend it into a cove, and then point a focusable light into it from across the room to then bounce back onto your actors. The best type of light to use for this is an ellipsoidal spotlight, when may be more commonly known where you are as a Source-4 or a Leko. This works well and I often do it for characters in a bed where I can't have lights hanging over or near them.
 
Guys, here's a picture of the shot (sort of) I will be framing (art direction will redo that table and cover some of the blank in the left side of the frame).

42c0f7a03aa2fb5290fd2d2234365760.jpg



And a picture of the space to the left (there's the same space to the right).

a937a0deaf3d5e9fe3b44ea401f98f39.jpg
 
Great tips on that Deakins thread.

I'm also thinking of changing location to this (but changing the lamp to one with shade):

b30a19be14a6ee2ff9b1a3585daf1dc7.jpg


Looks better for my purpose and the browned color of this room will help with light spill.
 
You don't have a lot of space for that instrument to the left, so I would strongly recommend using an instrument that has grids, the narrower the grid the better (you can stack two of them to help with this). The mus bounce you mentioned earlier will be too hard to control with that little space to the side. I would actually suggest you can continue to cheat the set to the right, since you won't need much extra space on the right side, to give yourself all the room to the left that you can for the possibility of flags to be set out of frame. That white stripe on the wall is going to be a bit of a PITA as it will tend to pop.

I'd suggest pulling the practical away from the wall a little, and knocking down the backside of the bulb to minimize how much light pushes onto that wall (carefully applied blackwrap, or spraying it with Streaks 'n Tips). I'd also think about playing that practical on the hot side so that it actually lights the actors a bit, it will help the realism of the shot.

One thing that will help you with the left side of the wall is that you've got the mom filling that side of the frame (I am assuming from the angle of the shot you provided that she will be on the left side of frame). With this scheme she'll be essentially silhouetted against that wall, and if you find that you need a little more level on her you could give her a liner from an instrument just to the right of the bed, up against the wall. I'd keep that dimmed down quite low, just a little kiss of it to give her face some definition. That could be a small fresnel if necessary, although I think given the nature of the shot a little softer unit would look better, like a 1x1 Litepanel again with grid (to keep it off the rest of the bed).
 
Ah Ok, you just posted that new pic. That room will definitely look better in terms of wall color. I'd change out the bedside table if possible, the white will pop pretty hard with that practical on it.
 
Thanks Charles, great tips! I hadn't thought about the white bedside. Maybe getting a dark cloth over it will fix it. Something in the same tone as the wall and bed.

In this new set, I have a lot more space to the left and right. So maybe I could get away with bouncing mus (I love the soft light of bounced mus, I must say) and flagging it hard. What do you think of getting a 500w fresnel unit against a 4x4 frame of muslin and then two black solids cutting the light and allowing it to reach ONLY the father and daughter?

On the mother, from your tips, I would use a backlight to silhouette her from the background and a dimmed fill light from the right side of the frame? Would the fill light be CTB'd to simulate moon light?

Thanks
 
Bounced mus is indeed lovely, but it is tough to work with when you need to make sharp cuts, and here you are trying to keep it on the subject but off the wall and the practical. That's a pretty tight cut, and you'd need at least a 4x4 sider (probably more like 6') to get it sharp enough. And while you are at it, you may want to top it to keep it from picking up the ambience in the room...and maybe another sider to regulate the amount on the mother...before you know it, you've made a really huge snoot for that bounce! It can be done but it's a lot of work and gear to control a bounce in that environment.

You wouldn't need a backlight to silhouette the mother, you'll probably have enough light on the wall from the practical that she will be silhouetted against it already. I'm suggesting something like a 3/4 backlight on her from the right. Again I'm not positive of your intended frame but it seems like in order from left to right it will be the mother, the practical and then the father and daughter, so the "logic" of her getting some edge light from the right will look correct in this instance since she is effectively to the left of the lamp as far as camera sees it. So the instrument would be just out of frame right, up against the wall, giving her a little rim. Again, keeping this very low level will make it more subtle. If you have the ability to arm this head out over the bed (essentially above the headboard), that might be nice too. Could be as small as a 150 fresnel for instance.
 
Got it Charles! So a chimera with eggcrate should be the way to go. I'll still need the solids but it'll be much easier to control the spill.

The 3/4 light on the mother... would you place diffusion paper on the barn doors just to tame it down a bit?
 
David Evans said:
The 3/4 light on the mother... would you place diffusion paper on the barn doors just to tame it down a bit?
Click to expand...

Sure. As I said, I'd probably do this with a 1x1 myself. You just have to make sure that it doesn't start leaking onto the father and child (or if they swing an arm out etc).
 
Thanks for all the help!

Here are two grabs. Well, it's a bit yellow, but I haven't color corrected and graded yet. And I actually like the warm tones. I may have gone a bit overboard with the light on the mother, but it's not too distracting, I think...

bfbf8d3d732a711189e71b3612b6bb1f.jpg

007ee94dead12c57a22cb155abedca2b.jpg
 
Nice! Didn't realize it was happening so imminently.

Yes, you probably could have knocked down the return on the mom a half stop, a little goes a long way on that--and she does seem to be blocking up slightly on the left side of frame against the background, you did a very good job flagging over there! I think the fix for that would have been to move her closer to camera and a little camera left, making her larger in frame and blocking less of the side table and lamp. That's based purely on looking at this isolated composition--not knowing the story and how connected or not connected she is to the other two at the moment would dictate how she is presented in the shot (your version serves to connect them more than what i suggested above).

Otherwise though, looks good! Did you end up using any fill or is this just natural return from the key? (depending on the room, sometimes that just does it)
 
Thanks Charles. Yeah, I wish the rental company would have the set of scrims I asked but unfortunately they didn't have any for that particular set of lights. I was still able to use a nd gel on that light. It's not too distracting, I hope.

Yeah, it was crucial for the mother to be close to them story wise. It's a family moment.

I didn't use any fill. Right side of the frame there's a white wall that served as the perfect bounce :)
 
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