Night time restaurant lighting

[mrbrycel]

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.

 

[DCSensui]

If you have a chance, have a look at some nice restaurants.

Try to figure out which ones have the right "atmosphere" and take note of where the light is coming from, the color of that light, and the quality of that light (soft? hard?).

I had to photograph a restaurant with a 4x5 camera and used three stobe systems to light it up. The trick was gelling the lights to emulate a warmer tungsten source. And then only lighting certain areas to create a sense of lower lighting... despite the blinding flashes everytime the shutter tripped.