Lighting for Web interview show (black background)

A

argo27

Member
Hi All,

A group of us are interested in doing a sports discussion webcast. I thought the easiest way that would look somewhat presentable is to pick up some black muslin and use that as the background for the 3 hosts. I have seen a similar look on Charlie Rose on PBS and other similar type shows. Looks very basic but very clean especially for web. Here is my problem. We would like to accomplish this in my basement, since we are limited to available space, however I know nothing about lighting at all. I have read and saw videos about lighting but the most i can find is 3 point lighting which is fine for 1 person but I have 3 people conversing back and forth (or do i just have to repeat the process 3 times?)

Right now i have 3 sets of halogen work lights (2 x 500W, 2 x 250W, 1 x 500W) however I am not getting very good results at all. I don't know where to start in positioning as well as how much light i need. I know these lights are probably not the best, but I didn't want to waste money on more expensive lights until i knew what i needed. I have looked at cool flo and the softbox types as well if those are worth looking at.

I really dont have much of a budget for this. Maybe at max of $300 if need be. I dont mind spending more if we continue to do them though. Again not looking for perfect as its a webcast, but decent enough to watch.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Mark
 
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/album.php?albumid=32


A few basic questions:

1. How many cameras will you be using?
2. How are the three people going to be arranged?
3. What is the space available between where the people will be seated, and the background? And I mean the MAXIMUM space.
4. What is the maximum height you can get those worklights to?
5. Do you have or have access to any C-Stands?


Let's start there and see if you can't make this work. But goodness, doing a black infinity background is about the hardest layout of ALL. Why people want to start with this I don't know. They must have over a 2 dozen lights on that Charlie Rose set, and they are HIGH. There is absolutely NO spill onto the background. I'd also bet their background is a good 20ft from the stage. When I did my first infinity background I referenced that show and tried to find out as much as I could about how it was done.

What you are trying to do isn't easy. Don't kid yourself into thinking that just because that background is pure black, it's somehow "simple". It would be a HELL of a lot easier to do it an infinity WHITE background.
 
Black infinity backgrounds aren't too hard as long as you know what you're doing. I've done them when I was a beginner just fine... though they were for one subject only. It's just about having a large enough space.

Also, please don't use halogen worklights. I don't know who came up with the idea to use them in amateur film-making, but they're not like movie lights and they're difficult to use. The purpose of these work lights are to be simple and to get as much lights everywhere as much as possible. You can work with them if you do some tricky work, but I really don't recommend them. Even after experience with lighting, I went back to using them once because I had no option, and it was awful. They were just a pain to work with. The only real use for them might be to bounce some light on a large white surface, but this is to spread light everywhere.
 
I will be using 2 cameras for now. Ceilings are 7ft high. Maximum space between background and people right now is maybe 4 feet, however if I sit them around a table in the center of the room instead the distance of the background would be increased. People are going to be arranged on one side of a counter at bar stool height.

Anything other recommendations other than black? I would have thought that it would be fairly easy but I have only seen it used with 1 subject so I dont know what happens when multiple people are added. Sorry for all the questions but I am a total newbie at this.

Mark
 
Find another room. Seriously.

Here's the trick with doing a black infinity background...

You need to keep light OFF the background. The way you do this is to back light the subjects. Imagine you are looking down onto your subjects, you'd want this:

-------------- WALL ------------

-------------- Lights ------------

-----A------ Subject ------B----

------------ Camera ------------


The lights should point from behind at subject A and subject B. At about 45 degrees. So the light behind subject B, lights subject A, and vice versa. This way the light is directed AWAY from the background. Your problem is that you have two cameras so those lights need to be quite some distance away from the subjects. And you're going to need to get some light onto the front of the subjects with bounce or fill. And that fill light CANNOT hit the back wall so it has to be pointed DOWN sharply enough so that it never reaches the wall. Or it has to be flagged off like you saw in my album. Where I have the big softbox flagged off with black foamcore to keep it off the background.

If you use ANY other color then there is nothing that says the wall behind them can't be varying levels of whatever color. It just doesn't matter as much. If you do white, then all you have to do is blast it with light so that it's 3-4 stops hotter than the subjects and it will read PURE white to the camera. Easy as pie.

@ Jon Starr: One subject is trivial. Doing cross-lighting with fill in front of a background with tight space is no joke and requires a lot of grip gear, and probably specialized lights. At least to do it well. Everything has to be flagged. PITA.
 
Thanks for the scenerio. Just wondering, how would I light 3 people the same way it if i was not worried about the background? Not saying i need black but that was my first choice. I can go with others as long as they still look good if it lets me use the room i'm in.

Mark
 
argo27 said:
Thanks for the scenerio. Just wondering, how would I light 3 people the same way it if i was not worried about the background? Not saying i need black but that was my first choice. I can go with others as long as they still look good if it lets me use the room i'm in.

Mark
Click to expand...

How do you light them? Your choice. There's 100 variations on how to do it. Studio lighting tends to be VERY flat. Meaning all the lighting is very even, quite bright, and there are really no shadows on the talent anywhere. Where people tend to go wrong in thinking about lighting for film/TV is they think about it like they re lighting an inanimate object. You can't think that way. When you put a reading light in a room, you aren't lighting a book. And when you put people in a room, you aren't lighting their heads. In both cases, you are putting light into AN AREA that is going to be filmed.

Walk into your local library. The very nature of that library means that people will need to sit at tables and read. So the lighting levels ON that table need to be very even, and bright enough to make reading a book easy. Walk into a nice restaurant at 9pm. The purpose of that lighting is very different. Therefore the lighting level will be different, the light COLOR will be different, and the shadows from those lights will be different.

Lighting a set is the same. Define the purpose. If the set is a kitchen, it should be lit differently than if the set is a bathroom, or a living room, or a bedroom. Make your lighting appropriate to the room at hand. In your case, it's a sports show. So go watch SportsCenter. Or any other high-end TV sports show. Note what areas are bright and which are dark. Note where the shadows are on the talent's face (if there are any). Try to replicate this. And honestly, you will be doomed trying to do this with your workshop lights. Absolutely the wrong tools for the job though they can be made more effective with some foamcore for bounce.

The primary concerns with lighting talent are the color of the light, the direction of the light both horizontally and vertically, and the softness or hardness of the light. Soft light is more flattering to talent, but much harder to control where it goes. Hard light is easy to control, but gives a lot of strong shadows.
 
Great advice PerroneFord. I too have wanted to learn how to do the infinite black background. Im surprised that you said that infinite white is easier! Which would you say is easier then to do for head-to-toe shots, infinite white or black?
 
Hi PerroneFord. Just wondering again what would you recommend would be the minimum distance the lights and hosts should be from the background. If i skip the whole counter idea and just have stools in front of a black wall, then there may be enough distance.

Thanks again for the help
Mark
 
argo27 said:
Hi PerroneFord. Just wondering again what would you recommend would be the minimum distance the lights and hosts should be from the background. If i skip the whole counter idea and just have stools in front of a black wall, then there may be enough distance.

Thanks again for the help
Mark
Click to expand...

Minimum distance? About 15ft. If you had 20ft ceilings I'd say different. But you've got NO height, so you are going to be firing those lights nearly straight at the talent. I'll make it easy for you...

Go into your basement with one of your lights. Place one of your cameras where you intend to have it. Put one of your lights 90 degrees to the camera and aimed at a chair where the talent would be. Turn off all lights so the basement is pitch black. Now turn on that light. If the back wall is still pitch black you're in business. If the back wall has light on it, adjust it until it doesn't. Adjust the height if the light so that the shadows from the talent or the chair the talent would be in, hit the floor and not another wall. If they hit a wall, then the shadow would fall onto another person, and you don't want that.

Let us know how that experiment goes.
 
Boncrek said:
Great advice PerroneFord. I too have wanted to learn how to do the infinite black background. Im surprised that you said that infinite white is easier! Which would you say is easier then to do for head-to-toe shots, infinite white or black?
Click to expand...

I can't think of an instance where infinite black is easier.
 
I always listen to my man Perrone.

If you go for black you might find it helpful to hang Duvetyne on your background. It has one side that is very soft and non-reflective, sort of like felt or flannel only better. It's much better than black paint even matte black.
 
Black is the absence of light. On a set, this is the very opposite of what you are doing otherwise. White is the overabundance of light and as long as you've got lights, isn't too hard to pull off.
 
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