Need help lighting a laundry room...

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I'm shooting a comedy scene this weekend. I am going to be shooting in a small area - a laundry room in the basement of my GF's building. We are going to try and make it pass for a dry cleaner's. We have the props to make it look alright, but now for the lighting. I'm new to this, and I'm learning a lot from these boards but still need some pointers.

I'm using an Arri lighting kit - (1) 1k open face, (2) 650 fresnels, and (300) fresnel. Now I want it to look like a really BUSY dry cleaning service - run down, green neon lighting, etc. Real shabby.

How should I gel my lights? I was thinking of blasting the 1K through a silk, and then using the rest to add depth. Any ideas to make it look really drab and shabby? It really needs to look like a sweat shop - it's a comedy bit.

Any special lights I might want to rent to attain the look/feel I'm going for? Special gels?

Oh yeah, I also have a smoke machine that I plan on using just a little bit.

Thanks to all,
Damon
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

Here's what I would suggest (without being able to see any of it) Dry cleaners are usually blown out white. But you want some modeling, so here's my suggestion, I don't know if it will work, but here it is. Take the 1k and shine it at the ceiling, use it as a huge reflector. Then use one of the 650s as a key and the 300 as a fill. Use the other 650 gelled green (if you want that flouresent touch) and use it as a kicker or a backlight.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

TC, you are the man... that sounds like an awesome plan... although... what time of day is this taking place (not in real life, but in the scene)? Most dry cleaners will have a large open window in the front... if it's at night, it'll have a totally different atmosphere than during the day... might suggest taking that other 650 and gelling it to a flourescent hue and bouncing that off the ceiling as well to add that very cold flourescent light seen in most laundry mats...
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

Good call THiN, I was thinking that, but I wasn't sure if the green would get lost in the massive light of the 1k, and you definitely don't want to gel that, because it would be too much. So I went with suggesting the kicker because you would definitely get some green in the hair and around the border of the person.

This might be WAY too much light in such a small room though, I know dry cleaners are bright, but this may be excessive. hmm... I suppose we'll wait for Damon to come back and tell us if it'll work.

Hey! Wait a minute! He didn't say he was shooting with a DVX! Let's not help him!

I kid, I kid. ;)
 
TC - Of Course I'm shooting with a DVX...

TC - Of Course I'm shooting with a DVX...

...I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I looked at the space late last night. The ceiling is really low and it's almost cave like - now I'm thinking of trying to find another laundry room to use.

What color gel should I use to get that flourescent tint going? If I use that on the kicker, will it look funny with that being the only flourescent colored light in the scene? Also, should I gell the other lights any other color - or just let them burn tungsten?

Thanks,
Damon
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

You could use some sheets of "plusgreen" to add in the green hue if you really want to go for the sickly look. You might think about gelling all of the lights in your scene and "dialing out" the green until it's at a level you like in post. If you just gel a couple of lights, you'll really get locked into the look, as it's hard to color correct individual light within a scene.

Boucing the openface at the cieling is exactly what I would have suggested.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

I think you can make it look more edgy, gellying only a couple of lights and going for a double light feel, or it could look simpler if you just add an overall green hue in post (or in camera, either eletronically or using a lens filter). A intermediate for that would be gelling the lights to different extents of green and keeping the difference subtile. So if you mess around with it, you'll be able to get a slight greenish hue at some points of your image, without having the color fall in everything..
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

Geling all the lights is a bad idea if this scene is supposed to take place during the day, because you need to compensate for the huge windows that would be letting daylight spill in. I suggested to green for the kicker because (i feel) that it would hint at it ever so slightly (ie, use a small shift towards green gel) so that it would be accepted by the eye, and help convey the scene. Rather than calling attention to the overall hue of the room. You could also do some green in post, but I would be careful with that, do VERY little.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

Respectfully defending my suggestion...the original post did not mention anything about a huge window, time of day, daylight, setting, or any of the other things you mention as a reason why not to gel all the lights.

I don’t believe that a small shift towards green in an otherwise white-balanced scene would not be accepted by the eye because the eye does not see such shifts in the real world.  While we often think we can see the discontinuous spectra of a discharge lamp, or even the oft-referenced "green spike" we don't actually perceive that visually.  

We can see the slight effect of the discontinuous spectra in reflected color, but not in light color.  The green-hued fluorescent light that exists in the motion picture and video realm is dissimilar to the way our eyes render the same light.

(Obviously this depends on how small a shift you’re talking, but if you’re gelling a light in the scene, it’s bound to be more then a slight shift)

I suggested gelling all the lights with plusgreen because it is a pretty subtle effect primarily.  Putting lights into your scene of primarily different spectra insures that one source or the other will not ever be color corrected out, potentially locking you into a look you did not intend.  It’s very difficult to color correct different colored lighting within a shot.

Making ALL the lights slightly green allows you to color correct back to nearly white and still retain some of the gritty look that suggests fluorescent lighting.  Also, to my eye, color correcting green hued footage back to nearly white-balanced tones has a very gritty effect on blacks, desaturates certain colors and pairs well with a bleach bypass look.

Again, not saying anyone’s wrong…just suggesting one specific potential approach to it.  

(by the way, who farted?)

EDIT: Also, where I say you can see the green spike in reflected color, what I should have said was absorbed color.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

All good points James. Your knowledge of lighting quite exceeds my own, so thank you for the corrections.

When all is said and done, I would try out all of these ideas, and see which one is best for the scene.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

Ahh...TC...not corrections, suggestions!

Nothing you said was wrong, I'm just suggesting an opinion that is only slightly contrary to yours. I haven't shot this scene so I'm not speaking from any standpoint of experience.

Either way, Damon should take notes on his setup and post frame grabs to see what he did and the resulting effect.
 
Re: Need help lighting a laundry room...

[quote author=J_Barnes link=board=lighting;num=1099534175;start=0#10 date=11/05/04 at 06:33:02]Either way, Damon should take notes on his setup and post frame grabs to see what he did and the resulting effect.[/quote]
That's a good idea! This is fun! It's like playing Virtual-Gaffer!
 
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