Need some tips with lighting this place

A

amoildani

Well-known member
UPDATE: added pics

I'm DPing for a friend who's making a short film this weekend about a 'scrooge' type guy who's against christmas. The shoot is in his 'grimy' house while he's watching TV and being disgruntled by the amount of christmas 'garbage' on each channel. She just showed me where the house is and I got really worried about the lighting.

I'm probably gonna be quite vague on this, but lets see how it works out.

Here's a pretty bad diagram of the room (bare with me, done on a powerbook touch pad)
http://www.nucleistudios.com/images/plan.jpg
Here are som pics (sorry, they're huge, no time to edit!):

https://webspace.utexas.edu/jmc96/random/House 001.jpg
https://webspace.utexas.edu/jmc96/random/House 002.jpg
https://webspace.utexas.edu/jmc96/random/House 003.jpg
https://webspace.utexas.edu/jmc96/random/House 004.jpg
https://webspace.utexas.edu/jmc96/random/House 005.jpg

(actually looking at it, I think the curtains behind the one person couch are solid white, that might help a lot)

Notice, she wants a lot of shots of him sitting on the couch watching TV. However, there are two huge windows on both walls with white semi-see through curtains. I know shooting directly into them will severely over expose the shot and under expose the guy sitting on the couch. Im pretty sure she doesnt want to move the furniture around as its not her house, but I'll try to get her to do so.

She wants to go for a grimy, semi dark look (complete contrast to the really bright room it actually is). Of course, she wants it as 'filmic' as possible.

She has rented 2 500w fresnels, with 1 softbank. I told her to get some Blue gels to match the day light. I imagine what im going to have to do is light the subject with blue gels then just drop the exposure on the camera dramatically?

She has two days left before teh shoot this weekend, and probably doesn't want to spend much money blocking out the windows or anything.


If only she could do it at night, agh.

any help would be appreciated!
 
1. Why cant she do it at night? not only is it better for lighting but also u'd think it would fit the story.

2. she picked a hell of a room to shoot in. It so small and the onlt place to put lights is in an adjacent room. Here's my shitty adviced or rather insite rather than advice. If shes not taking it serious enough that the only set she considers is the room that already has the furniture in it, she can't expect you to be serious enough to light it great.

so pick a day before the shoot to take the lights over and play a little (2 days or 2 weeks until the shoot, you HAVE to do this) and see how good u can get it.

Sry for the cynical attitude. :/
 
You could also forget the CTB gels, and use CTO on the windows, or a combo CTO and ND that way bring down the contrast by lowering the sunlight. That might be better cause after gelling those lights, you'll lose a shitload of the light.

I see a lamp on the TV, you could also use that to add another light beside him, maybe on his right side. It could be used to motivate a more powerful light from that side if you need to bring up the light on his face more. Just thoughts, I don't really know what I'm doing :)

Aaron
 
thanks for the tips...

I recommended she do it at night and she wants to, but she can't because she'll lose her main actor at night. Plus, this is for a class and its her very first time directing/making anything on set. She got this place at the last moment from a friend, so its the best she could do. Im going a few hours earlier to see how well I can light it although I too am cynical

hehe thanks Aaron, i'll give it a try!
 
Good luck, hope it goes well! After my recent shoot last Saturday, I can only tell you that exposure is everything...OK, you need a good story, good actors, good crew, good director, good framing...etc etc....But I had a few badly exposed shots, and they just look terrible.

Aaron
 
You could just fake night. That way you don't loose the main actor and (if this is a weekend shoot) you won't have to worry about crew members wanting to get out early so they can meet their buddies at a club or something. All you have to do is tarp the windows. You can get a 10' by 100' sheet of black film-gard construction sheeting for like 26 bucks at home dept. Cut it to the sizes you need and place it over the outside of the windows. We did this on "Geekin" all the time (somehow everyone's schedule always kept us working in daylight hours) A bit of advice; use nails or tacks to hold it up if you can. She shot at a house with vinal siding and had to duct tape it and it kept blowing off when the wind blew. Even if someone has to go in and out of the front door you can just put tarp around the outside of the porch cover. We had to build our own frame out of some 2x4s to do the same thing.
 
hmmm, I may actually have some tarp laying around, I'll suggest it to her today, thanks, it would be a lot nicer to do, sets the mood a lot better too
 
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