Music Video: How would you light this?

Liam Hall

Liam Hall

Veteran
I'm doing a low budget music video in a couple of weeks. The band have just sent the below picture of the location.

I'm thinking of backlighting (reverse key), decorating the set with outdoor practical lights and filling the place with a hazer. Maybe throw some neon colours in there too as the song has an 80s vibe.

How would you do it?

Band room1.jpg
 

I guess that there is no budget for set designer, you can do a lot with printed self-adhesive wallpapers and transfer folies.
 
Can you strobe the lights and/or have color shifts or panning lights? I think it can do a lot to add visual variety to a single location video and definitely fits the 80s theme. DJ lights are probably cheap and effective if you cant build out something more complicated

Dua Lipa did quite a set-up here and I enjoyed the evolving toplight bath of hues, though surely beyond the budget of a low-budget music video:

 
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Just prepare a good story, sketch it on a paper and everything else will come naturally as you follow the storyboard.
Since this is team sport, include as many as you can to contribute to your vision.


Don't forget to have a party after the shooting.
 
ahalpert said:
Can you strobe the lights and/or have color shifts or panning lights? I think it can do a lot to add visual variety to a single location video and definitely fits the 80s theme. DJ lights are probably cheap and effective if you cant build out something more complicated

Dua Lipa did quite a set-up here and I enjoyed the evolving toplight bath of hues, though surely beyond the budget of a low-budget music video:

Click to expand...

I thought about using a bunch of DJ lighting, but frankly, I know zero about that sort of kit and would hate to be in flicker hell.
 
Liam Hall said:
I thought about using a bunch of DJ lighting, but frankly, I know zero about that sort of kit and would hate to be in flicker hell.
Click to expand...

I dont know anything about DJ lights but I rin into them all the time at weddings and usually they dont give me trouble. Usually it's the cheap LED par uplights and fake candles throughout the venue that put me in flicker hell.

B&H doesn't mention if their DJ lights are flicker free. But this one runs at 50 or 60 Hz, so I imagine if your shutter speed is 1/50 or
1/100 that you'd be ok: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1454196-REG/american_dj_contour_led_effect_lighting.html

What's also cool is the sound-activated light transitions, like this but more complicated:

 
ahalpert said:
I dont know anything about DJ lights but I rin into them all the time at weddings and usually they dont give me trouble. Usually it's the cheap LED par uplights and fake candles throughout the venue that put me in flicker hell.

B&H doesn't mention if their DJ lights are flicker free. But this one runs at 50 or 60 Hz, so I imagine if your shutter speed is 1/50 or
1/100 that you'd be ok: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1454196-REG/american_dj_contour_led_effect_lighting.html

What's also cool is the sound-activated light transitions, like this but more complicated:

Click to expand...

That's exactly the type of stuff I was looking at earlier, along with garden lights, Christmas lights and lasers!
 
Liam Hall said:
That's exactly the type of stuff I was looking at earlier, along with garden lights, Christmas lights and lasers!
Click to expand...

I feel like Christmas lights only look impressive if they're well out of focus. Otherwise they look a bit DIY and hardly clean.

Lasers could look awesome in the haze - is there any risk to your camera sensor?

It seems like this cage of tube lights is increasingly popular (here being constructed around the drum set):

Screenshot_20200816-122724_YouTube.jpg

Probably wouldn't work without a lot of time and resources or for the whole band unless they were shot individually....
 
Maybe keep it simple. Colored/neon hard backlighing and white hard key/spot on each musician or even flip it and go white back, colored key/spot. Spot/pool the light on each individual and let the room fall to black. A little haze to see the light beams(?). But such a small space, it may be hard to get the fall-off without it looking like you just didn’t have enough lights to “light it”. Hard to say without testing.

I agree with the “Christmas lights”, that they’d need to be completely out of focus to play well. You could do large bare bulbs, which can play well in or out of focus, but I don’t know if that goes with their style/music or the vibe you’re going for (80’s).
 
This is only tangentially related, but did you see the Billie Eilish Ocean Eyes video that basically made her famous? It's a master class in simplicity and relies heavily on the sort of genius of her subtle visual performance. I think she was a home-schooled high-schooler at this point

 
Run&Gun said:
Maybe keep it simple.
Click to expand...

+1

Smoke and haze don't play nice in less then ideal reproduction environment.

DJ lights look cheep when using auto mode which demos all the possibilities. They usually have dmx interface, so spend some time to program few seqences and have someone driving them to follow the song.

Regarding keeping it simple, here is one of eight no budget demos I made for my nice in one evening.


HV20 in full HDV glory.
 
The warehouse, some black drapes, lights and a hazer
and the other one - same place changes to lights only.
 
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