Need white stage lighting advice

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
Hi all

I have a shoot coming up, trying to put together my lighting order. Problem is, I have only seen a bad cell phone image of the room we are lighting and the location is on the other side of the country. So no location scout. The room is 29' wide and about 24' deep with ceilings at 9'. A set is being built, all white. I have the possibility of using rolling mirrors that are on wheels that are about 4x6', so I could arrange them artisitically so as to not show the crew. So I can only light from the floor, no grid and not much height, makes it more challenging than a proper stage would be.

Walls will be white semi gloss with a huge logo that will be white, but painted full gloss and it is raised a bit from the wall, perhaps 1-2" we will be shooting groups of two dancers with two cameras. Not sure what our G&L truck will have but I am putting in a lighting order. I am thinking of ordering six Kino Four Banks or possibly six Image 87s to light the set. I know from other music videos I have DPed that the white set will essentially be a big softbox with a ton of spill on the dancers.

Trying to decide what I want to light the dancers with to elevate the levels and make them pop against the white set. Not sure of their wardrobe yet but could be black or darker colors. If I wasn't shooting in a white box, I would have ordered a 6x6 frame, perhaps a silk or medium diffusion and keyed through it with a 4 or 6k. But this will not have a genny or stage power, probably just 110v so might be two 1200 watt PARs as key? Or I may go all tungsten and use two Mightys with the 1500 watt bulbs? Fill would be perhaps a 1k through a 4x4 with some diffusion? Rims to pop them out from the white, perhaps a few 650 fresnels from the back/sides?

1. I've used the Kino Four Banks to light white and green screen. I've not used the Image 87s, do they have a lot more output than the four banks?

2. I'm concerned about fighting hot spots with the semi gloss and with the full gloss on the logo? Any ideas if this will be a big concern?

3. Will order some Duvetyne and 4x4 floppies for negative fill, if needed.

4. Director wants wide on a Dana Dolly, second camera longer lens stealing mediums. This is sort of a dance instruction video so it won't be too cutty as the moves are too difficult to pick up if the image is cutting all over the place. So this will not be as cutty or frantic as a music video. Any tips/ideas about framing for dance instructional where it looks dynamic and interesting but can be followed by an audience literally trying to nail the moves being shown?

Client wants a clean, minimalist yet sophisticated look. What do you think of my lighting order? Would you light it differently than to cover the entire white BG with soft Kinos, then use soft sources on the dancers too? The only hard lights I am planning would be the rim 650s? But I am afraid of it being too flat. But with the client wanting all white, you kind of have to light the BG all with soft light, can't have gradients or shadows on the BG for what they want. I suppose I could get daring and try some harder light fresnels as keys but these are actor/dancers and they get nervous when they see hard light on them as it can look too harsh.

Would welcome suggestions and input or how you might go a different direction. I think client is thinking of sort of a Michael Jackson "Scream" sort of vibe, except we are not on an enclosed spaceship? But that sophisticated B&W kind of look although producer cannot yet tell me if the actual video will end up B&W. But the set and at least some of the wardrobe will be B&W, mostly white.
 
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Your item 2. If it is semigloss on a hard wall, then yes, there will be sheen marks if you aim the lights towards the back wall. Of course, the gloss will give hot spots, but you may want that to 'show' the logo. It depends on the texture of the wall. Orange peel drywall finish will help, but if it is smoothwall, then it gets tougher. The only way to get away from that is to go totally soft and bounce everything off the ceiling, sidewalls or use big diffusion as used in car ads, which may be what you need anyway considering you say they want the background to be and even shade with no gradient. It also depends on how much of that 29' they are using. Most of it I suppose.

If they are going for the all-white-bright-food-ad look or something close to it in the BG, then you need lots of even diffusion and maybe the kinos are not enough. Scream has the whites rolling off in the BG, which does give some dimension to the look. If the Dana wide is running back and forth with the two dancers (most of the 29'?) then maybe you want a Kino or a hard light (depending on your look) mounted with the camera on the dolly. That would give a flat look on the main camera and some modeling on the mediums. I would not concern myself with a rim light. Unless the costumes are a disaster (white wigs and white outfits), they will pop.

I'm not sure where to put the 2nd camera for the mediums if the 1st camera is running back and forth. Even if the first is on a shorter dolly, It depends on the movement you plan for the two cameras.
 
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If it's a white "limbo" look and you're letting the white wall slightly blow out, going against Paul's suggestion, you can use harder lights for the wall. E.g. A flooded 575 from either side, light diffusion directly on the barn doors if needed.
I've attached an image from a white wall shoot, using 2x575s on the wall. I'm pretty sure the BG could have been pushed brigher than the grade they did but you can see how it looks.

I'm struggling to picture the white wall/white logo, I know it'll be raised but won't it be difficult to see?

To give it some shape, why not use a key light only? Then put up a large negative fill just out of shot on the fill side. For the backlight I think the 650s are a good idea, although you could put them in softboxes, which would be less forgiving on the dancers.
I've attached an example of an Arri 750 through a chimera softbox as the back hair light. The light was pretty far away far away so I think you'll be fine with 650s as close as possible.

white BG.jpg

backlight eg.jpg
 
To make the logo show, you could actually have it reflecting all/most of the time from a diffused source so it stands out.
 
A lot of these questions will remain unknown until I arrive. The set doesn't yet exist and I have no control over it's design and construction, it's being built Saturday, prelight is Sunday and shooting is Monday and Tuesday. I guess the best I can do is show up with a lot of gear and use what works. I do have a full prelight day, thank God. I shot a thing for Sony with kids dancing on a white cyc a few weeks ago so I am recently familiar with dealing with and how to best light a white cyc. But that was matte, this will be semi gloss and full gloss on the logo. I just found out the logo is huge too, like 8' tall by 10' wide. If the producer doesn't shoot me down, I ordered a pretty big lighting package, exactly for this reason because I don't know yet what is going to work and I don't have all of the information. I did order something like 6 Arri 1K open face or equivalent which I was going to put through the 6x6 and 4x4 frames as key and fill. And I think I have half a dozen Arri 650s too. But I could take your suggestions and try the open faces to light the set and use the Kinos on the talent too. The good news is that the client wants a stylized look so I may be able to get crazy and paint the whole thing with pools of dark and light (Chiaroscuro) or put crazy gelled slashes of light all over it, it's up to the director and client. In a way, this will be fun because I think we will have to somewhat make it up as we go along. And those can usually be fun unless the client has a vision that we cannot see.
 
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It seems that maybe the first part of your job is communication. Working with the client to deliver what they want.
I mean they care most of all about getting it right don't they?

Some things kind of just don't work

I had a really stressful job shooting some white furniture in a white background once - I'm still scared!

Could the matte paint be more matte? Maybe even a light grey. Could the logo have a black edge?

Maybe the logo could be made of Perspex and backlit through a cutout in the flats

Ultimately if this is a shoot - not a recording of a stage show you all are only there to catch some ire values into a digital space - nothing else matters.
 
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Been on the phone all day with producer, production designer building set, gaffer, etc. The biggest source available is going to be four Kino four banks, which in the grand scheme of things are not very big. Gaffer has a way that we think he can remove ceiling tiles and mount the four banks up in the T-Bar Ceiling so I may be able to at least get them evenly spaced overhead as if we were on a stage. Still need to have a conversation with producer that if the back wall is semi gloss, we are going get hits and reflections all over the place and I vote that we embrace that rather than fight it. I will have my B camera on a Dana Dolly and I think those moving reflections and hits will look pretty cool with lateral camera tracking. I advised production designer to please outline the raised edge of the huge logo in either red or black so once again, it will at least be semi visible on the moving camera It's coming together, I managed to line up an Arri L10 for my key source, still using Tungsten for my fill and rim lights so at least it will hold down the heat on the crew and dancers over using stacked Tungsten 1ks through the 6x6 for key. It's not going to look like MJs "Scream" but I am pretty sure I can light it to look cool nonetheless. Per usual, the video is about dance so if you are watching the BG too much, the video may look good but it won't be a success in teaching you dance moves ;-) It's got to highlight the choreographer and actors.
 
You may be in better shape than originally thought. With the kinos up and forward, you likely will be able to place them so they don't give you reflection issues on the back wall. I'm not sure about the key and fill; they may also not be much of an issue (except on the logo and as you said, go with it).

Have you considered the floor for issues? Is it going to be ruby red? :)
 
"Need white stage lighting advice"



^^ dat's rayciss!!

[ sorry, couldn't resist. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
Paul F said:
You may be in better shape than originally thought. With the kinos up and forward, you likely will be able to place them so they don't give you reflection issues on the back wall. I'm not sure about the key and fill; they may also not be much of an issue (except on the logo and as you said, go with it).

Have you considered the floor for issues? Is it going to be ruby red? :)
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Actually I believe they are also going to paint the floor with a white reflective epoxy finish, I am told it will be shiny. My main concern is going to be trying to keep it clean and not too scuffed up as different groups of dancers move in and out, we are going to have a mopping crew, I was told it cleans up with a soapy wet mop. We shall see.
 
Follow up to this project. We did a full 10 hour set build/prelight/camera test day yesterday. The set looks good but has some challenges, the main one being this is a room full of mirrors and the production designer put up painted Luan panels for the set walls over all of these mirrors, mainly just with double sided tape. The are fighting the seam uneveness and bulging and we can't nail or drill anything down because it is mirror behind the Luan. So it works but requires periodic "adjustment" which is my grips pressing it down and wrestling it back into place. Such is the nature of a temp set.

This entire project has been pretty much, "I'll show up and will do the best I can with what I have", I am sure many of you have worked the same way. No location scout, just a couple of sketchy cell phone pics and conflicting details about the location/set. I really didn't have a concrete plan on how I was going to light this project, just a rough idea. I ended up throwing every pre-conceived notion I had about how I would light this out the window and just played around until it looked good, basically. I feel in my little strata of the business, I am not nearly at Charles Papert level, I must be flexible and okay with not having every detail nailed down as far as resources like you more often have in TV and feature production. Sure, things change all of the time in TV and features, but you generally have the crew and gear to be able to know you can make it all work, you do a plot, have a plan, order the gear and go from there. The room turned out to be smaller than we were told, very little space to work and stage gear and the ceiling was 8', not 9' as I was told. Trying to light a big wall of white with no grid and no room above the set line, withought getting too many hits and hot spots, it was a little bit of a challenge. Never have I had to remember that angle of incidence equals angle of reflection so many times in one day ;-)

Pleasant surprise, last minute I was able to source a pair Arri S60 Skypanels for my key source and an Arri L10 for my fill source. Gotta say, the Sky Panels are fine but that L10 is a sweet machine, if you are considering buying one, highly recommnended, it's such a useful and flexible instrument, well worth the money. I decided to go with 1000H Vellum as my diffusion. We played with 250, 216 and a few others but I liked the lack of nose and double shadows with the 1000H, it's good stuff but you have to be careful using it with hot lights. But with LED, no concerns.

Another last minute change, I ended up using my 4x4 frame I was going to use as fill as my key and ended up using my 6x6 frame I was going to use as key as a side fill with the L10 through it. Luckily my gaffer had both an 8x8 30 degree egg crate in his truck that we adapted nicely to the 6x6 frame and he had an egg crate for the 4x4 frame. You'd normally think you'd use your larger source as your key and perhaps your smaller one as your fill but I played with both and liked the slightly harder, more contrasty look I was getting with the two Arri Skypanels through the 1000H with the egg crate. This piece has an urban feel, it's all hip-hop based so I didn't want the talent looking like a perfume commercial with everything looking so ultra soft with no shadows.

I ended up lighting the letters on the wall with some 5000K cheapo Lowes LED tubes suspended from the ceiling, producer LOVED it. I recall in my previous post that a concern was making white on white letters pop and this worked well, they are brightly rim lit from the top with a nice fall off toward the bottom of the letters. Contrast ratios are brutal on this project, some of the talent has very dark skin and I am photographing them against pure white semi gloss and high gloss painted BG. The producer was trying to send the director some cell phone images and kept wondering why she couldn't make her cell phone pictures look decent. It's hard to explain contrast ratio to producers. As a DP, this is one of the more challenging lighting jobs I have done over the past few years, not a big setup but challenging to walk that fine line between blowing stuff out and being able to see some facial detail on the talent.

Using the C200 on a Sachtler DV12B head (like it, just a bigger version of my own DV6SB at home) on a Sachtler CF Hot Pod. I have not used a Sachtler Hot Pod in years but I still like the design. It's not good as a travel tripod, too long and heavy, they are made for news shooters but it's all the rental house had for legs and I know how to use them. It is kind of fun to have your tripod set up, head leveled, ready to shoot in less than 5 seconds. Cool tech. So my C200 will be static, through a teleprompter. B-cam is be rented C300 MKII on a Dana Dolly, which is a lot of fun to shoot with if you have never tried one.

I am using my Canon 17-55 2.8 IS on my C200 and using my 18-135 STM IS 3.5-5.6 on the C300 MKII on the Dana. Lack of lumens is not a problem with this shoot and this producer hates when I use primes, she likes to have a zoom as a variable prime so we can change focal length on a dime. Luckily no servo zooms needed on this. The 18-135 STM IS, even though it is a cheap lens, works pretty well on the C300 MKII and I have to say, when using face tracking as we are, the 18-135 STM IS is faster to grab focus and smoother than my 17-55 2.8 IS which is slower and noisier to track focus.

Today was to be our first day shooting but producer pulled the plug this AM due to the Governor declaring a state of emergency for Georgia for Hurricane Irma so I am sitting here, bored, as Irma pours some rain and wind on us outside the hotel. So we are going to try to cram two days of shooting into tomorrow as the rain is supposed to taper off in volume Tuesday or we may stay an extra day to shoot the rest but we are dealing with IATSE for the crew, who told the crew to stay home and the talent has wrapped their show and many were on planes tomorrow so all of our segments are hinging on talent availability. Great G&L crew here, although I am amazed at the rental prices, Georgia must be hopping with production, rates and rentals are more expensive than LA, which is weird as Georgia has been growing in production obviously but we used to come here to shoot to save money. Not so much anymore.

That's my report from the eye of the storm.

300 MKII Dana Dolly.jpgArri L10C.jpgArri Skypanel Key.jpgCamera Setup.jpg
 
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puredrifting said:
Great G&L crew here, although I am amazed at the rental prices, Georgia must be hopping with production, rates and rentals are more expensive than LA, which is weird as Georgia has been growing in production obviously but we used to come here to shoot to save money. Not so much anymore.
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This isn't aimed at you, PD, but I've mentioned it before that this always cracks me up when someone from LA, NY or the like calls "down here" to the south and is always seemingly surprised when they hear the rates.
 
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