Making a fairly dreary hotel room look nice for an interview (could be impossible)

J

John Waters

New member
Mtg room 3 Theatre style (1)(1).jpg

Hey Guys,

Apologies that one of my first posts here is asking for help but I'm trying to get a bit more active over at BMC User and maybe one day I'll know enough to give back to the community.

Anyhoo, I've got something coming up as a freebie for a charity I have personal involvement with - it's talking head stuff going through presentations interspersed with power point slides. I'll be filming while a conference is on and I'll be getting a plane over to shoot it (so no rentals or big bits of kits). Hopefully will be shooting on the BMPCC if it arrives in time, if not , it's back to the trust 550d.

I've been given the above room (which apparently is at least quiet). There aren't a fat lot of options there really - and making this look anything more than completely corporate is I think going to be impossible - my only real thought is have them talking with the chairs behind them, but it's kind of out of context for the presenter to be in the audience's seats.

In terms of lighting, I'm going to use the opportunity to get a few bits of portable lighting, probably a couple of flolight 110 /220w from here to make a simple 2/3 point setup. (I know and respect the value of more expensive kit, can't afford!)

http://www.videogrip.net/lights-fluorescent-lights-c-7_12/flolight-110w-p-274

The lights in the office are fluroscent - I'm hoping I might be able to keep these on as the quality of light coming off them doesn't look too bad, but obviously impossible to tell from the picture. As far as I know there are no windows.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!
 
Get the PPT file and cut to it whenever possible...

Audio will be your biggest issue. It's gonna sound like crap if you can't record as close to the speakers as possible, or get a feed if they use a mic.

Other than that, there's not a lot you can do with these scenarios. I would do anything possible to shoot with 2 cameras, one a little wide and one pretty tight. Having a "reason to cut" (to remove umms, dead spots, flubs, etc) for meeting kind of stuff is handy. Being able to cut to a tighter shot to mask an edit works great. Being able to cut to the PPT will make what they're discussing more clear. Keep the wide cam fairly static and work cam #2 with a zoom.

They may need to kill the lights for the screen to be visible, I'd check on that.
 
Ack sorry! I wasn't clear - we've got that room for them to do a presentation to camera, so there won't be an audience and we can use the room as we like.
 
Is there only one person presenting at at time? Have them stand/sit in front of artifacts of their charity; Posters, props, something/anything is better than that room. Make it more like an interview setup than a presentation setup. Don't try to show the projected image and the presenter. Just shoot a waist-up and close up (if you have two cameras) of the presenter and fill in the presentation in post.

If you have one camera, alternate between a tight shot and a wider shot and go between them with cut aways to the presentation

Turn off the room lights. Cheap lights from Home Depot with some cinefoil and diffusion would be better than that. Don't try to flood the room with light. Just put some soft light on the presenter and then put the charities poster (or other) behind them with a bit of light on it (in or out of focus) Buy them when in town. Two or three cheap lights($30-$60) some cinefoil, and some diffusion/reflection can go a long way.
 
^
+1

Turn every light in the room OFF! Pulling it down to darkness will allow you to light your subject with more pop - get a nice backlight on them and a soft frontal fill, and maybe consider using a cucoloris and colored gels with a focussed beam of light to throw something with a bit of colour and contrast onto the wall in the background, to help create a little visual interest.
 
Cheers guys, good tips. I've got a few studio soft boxes I can probably get into transit and keep the fluorescent from those in their original polystyrene boxes so those might be a better bet. I'll let you know how it goes!
 
If the room has nothing to do with the content of the statements, pack a roll of gaffer's tape and black cloth (or white). Or order a short roll of seamless background paper ( I like dark grey ), maybe even chroma green. So either a "classic" talking head black BG or use the chroma or luma keying to put in sth of relevance...
 
I would place money on that room having windows at the back of it. Hopefully they have those large hotel curtains that can cut the amount of light coming in.

Get good audio and shoot 2 cameras if possible. Also get a copy of the presentation if possible. It will look much better than recording the screen. Much better.

Good luck.
 
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