production design solutions for white walls

[Zak Forsman]

this, of course, should be in the filmmaking section but there is no obvious home for production design questions (although we have separate cinematography and lighting forums?)... anyway...

one of my potential interior locations will be an apartment with stark white walls that ive been forbidden to paint another color (this might be a dealbreaker actually). but that launched me into a search for alternative solutions. my first thought was there has to be some sort of temporary wallpaper product out there. i came across this...

http://www.paperapartment.com

...but this just looks like rolls of art paper you could buy at dickblick.com and nothing more than that. the other alternative I found was putting up starched fabric "wallpaper" which apparently comes down very easily leaving no residue behind...

http://www.linit.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?p=907041523

has anyone tried this? it looks like it could be a big, messy pain in the ass to get it up there.

anyway, im looking for a solution for some kind of temporary wallpaper that won't peel/discolor/ruin existing paint. advice anyone? sad max?

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Hey those look like cool finds. Yeah, white walls are an indie bugaboo and a personal pet peeve. I will definitely look this thread up next time this is an issue for me.

If you have to shoot them white there are a couple of things you can do to minimize the flatness and unproduced look.

Undecorated white walls are usually accompanied by two fairly easy to avoid mistakes which emphasize their negative impact.

Mistake 1- Shooting them straight on. Never shoot them straight on. This should be avoided with any wall except when entirely appropriate, because our goal is to make things look 3-D, not flat. But straight on those white walls are more boring and uproduced looking than ever. Seen it a million times. Guy on a couch or easy chair with the wall perpendicular to the shooting line like it was the evening news.

Mistake 2 - The whole wall is lit up, or there is just so much general light that the wall looks evenly lit. Read evenly as flat. Don't light the wall evenly, a scallop of light from an instrument turned away, a crest of uplight, are examples that will make the shot seem less flat

18Seconds used white walls well, though they work contextually because the characters life is supposed to be dull, but doesn't look flat because the walls are not evenly lit. Macgegor does do a talking head shot of Amy on the couch, but it works as a choice instead of lack there of and the door in the background is 3/4 open to show dimensionality in the shot.

In S I M I L O the set is all white and a stylized look is achieved by either some diffusion or blowing it out some - it's whiter than white and the actors almost float in a sea of white. Also the walls in the room in that luxury hotel where they shot haver rounded corners I believe.

So if you have a super clean aesthetic white can work THX1138, 2001, but most of the time white walls suck.