Night time restaurant lighting

M

mrbrycel

Well-known member
I'm trying to prepare for a restaurant shoot coming up. I've been trying to research both the lighting and cinematography in restaurant scenes, as well as production design/art direction. I'm having trouble finding sources, does anyone have any suggestions of specific restaurant scenes to look at?

I will be shooting a student project, a 30 second spec commercial. It is two people dining in a fancy restaurant. The location is a small on campus restaurant which is about 30 to 40 square feet. Unfortunately the walls are white, but I kind of want this to be a dim, romantic restaurant, so I'm thinking I can throw some pictures on the wall and not light it too much. I'm thinking maybe white christmas lights around the windows in the background, but that's just an idea.

My immediate thoughts were to light the people overhead with tweenies/softboxes, and work from there.

But does anyone have any tips or advice for me? When it gets down to the day, I really want to be confident I'm making the right lighting decisions.
 
Pin lights in the background way out of focus is always nice and romantic. It might be interesting to put a large sheet of Hampshire or Opal behind your subject to the exaggerate a shallow DoF. You still get the pretty play of candles flickering with the isolating super shallow focus.

This is what I am planning for a similar scene I will be shooting in a short while.
 
Try out the dinner scene in fifth sense, which is rather warm and subdued where Willis talks to his wife who we later know does not see him. And then look at the dinner date scene in Reality Bites between Ryder and the Zoolander guy - a cooler, brighter look with good use of practicals. I can make a good guess as to how they lit those scenes, but won't postulate too much here. Lighting is such an amorphous subject to discuss in written word.

Lighting people from overhead is probably the wrong approach for restaurants unless you're trying to get a general ambience: in which case you wouldn't do it with a tweenie or a small softbox but with a broader much larger source. For dinner scenes in the home, yes, lighting from overhead is very common.

I'm never confident about lighting. The mastery of it is elusive because every space, every scene is so different. Thats what makes it interesting of course.
 
Last edited:
mrbrycel said:
I'm trying to prepare for a restaurant shoot coming up. I've been trying to research both the lighting and cinematography in restaurant scenes, as well as production design/art direction. I'm having trouble finding sources, does anyone have any suggestions of specific restaurant scenes to look at?

I will be shooting a student project, a 30 second spec commercial. It is two people dining in a fancy restaurant. The location is a small on campus restaurant which is about 30 to 40 square feet. Unfortunately the walls are white, but I kind of want this to be a dim, romantic restaurant, so I'm thinking I can throw some pictures on the wall and not light it too much. I'm thinking maybe white christmas lights around the windows in the background, but that's just an idea.

My immediate thoughts were to light the people overhead with tweenies/softboxes, and work from there.

But does anyone have any tips or advice for me? When it gets down to the day, I really want to be confident I'm making the right lighting decisions.
Click to expand...

Well, here's an example...

Nighthawks.jpg
 
I remember in the special features of Rodger Dodger they talked about gluing tons of tiny little mirrors and reflective bits on the tables in a bar scene to help get an exposure on the actors faces.

I don't know if you're going that dark though.
 
Thanks for the tips guys. I don't think I wanna go as dark as Roger Dodger. That was more of a club scene (but a great one).

So an overhead keylight is a bad idea? I'm getting confused on where the main light source would come from.
 
Candles are good motivating sources, generally in this case I wouldn't worry too much about where my key is coming from... the most important thing is to keep light off those walls. Use as few lights as possible and use your flags carefully and you should be able to give it a nice dark feel.
 
I'd go for china balls with duvateen skirting to keep the light off the walls. They're light and you can practically tape them to the ceiling. I'd use the softboxes for your keys and closeups.

Post some pics and tell us what you did...
 
most importantly, take your lights and camera and some stand-in actors to the actual location (presuming it's available) and do some test shots before the real shoot
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top