Lighting Scenario

[sbryan]

Crude Drawing

We're shooting in a vacant gas station. I plan to block out the windows with cardboard, or something equally effective. The important thing to remember is that the lighting needs to stay consistent, as I'll be keying out an actor's leg, which requires that the shot of the actor matches the shot without the actor.

The crude drawing shows the shooting area outlined in dotted lines. I'd guess that's something close to a 15' x 15' area.

The look I'm trying to achieve is exemplified 1:18:24 minutes into The Departed. There's enough light to add definition to Leo's outfit and the background is dark, but not too dark -- there's still enough detail.

If I covered each corner of the 15' x 15' square with 250 watt Nylon China Balls, would that be enough to artificially light the scene? As seen in the drawing, I'm contemplating shooting a 1000 watt soft light at angle through the window to add something different to the setup.

I'll try to location pictures by the weekend.

 

[Cool Lights]

Consistency shouldn't be so much of a problem if you lock down the camera, don't change anything with the lighting (keep it lit too) and just shoot the plate of the empty area and the one with the actor in the scene wearing a green long sock over their leg up to the point where it should be cut off. I don't know if the four 250w bulbs will be enough. You may still need more in the center. Also, you realize that will be pretty flat. What about other accent lighting and things to make it all more interesting. A cookie pattern on the wall behind the actor like a window, or whatever. Just an example.

 

[Arson]

You might want to consider a black sock rather than green. I know the idea of "green goes away/blue goes away" seems prevalent. But in reality it spills up onto other areas that are light or specular and take a lot of rotoing and masked area CCing to remove the spill from the sock color. Were as the small amount of time to extract a black area and create an decent travelling matte with the manipulated footage and a garbage matte, and maybe a little roto for some special cases. And in a lot of those situations a luma matte works just fine.

 

[sbryan]

Consistency shouldn't be so much of a problem if you lock down the camera, don't change anything with the lighting (keep it lit too) and just shoot the plate of the empty area and the one with the actor in the scene wearing a green long sock over their leg up to the point where it should be cut off. I don't know if the four 250w bulbs will be enough. You may still need more in the center. Also, you realize that will be pretty flat. What about other accent lighting and things to make it all more interesting. A cookie pattern on the wall behind the actor like a window, or whatever. Just an example.

That's a great suggestion. I'll look into using a light-ray pattern. I'd be shooting towards the boarded up windows, as the gas station is supposed to be boarded up in the reality of the story.

 

[Cool Lights]

okay a pattern on the boarded up windows suggesting another window somewhere else or a vague pattern of some kind suggesting who knows what. Really adds some drama. Just make sure you don't bump the pattern projector in between shooting the background plate and when the actor is there or you'll have an inconsistency for sure...