florisvaneck
Active member
Hello everyone!
At this moment I am shooting my first documentary. It is a portrait of my grandmother. I did a lot of research and prepared my questions. And recently I started production. My grandmother is a difficult person to handle. My aunt already tried to do something similar but she could not make it work. I have a special bond with my grandmother and she is surprisingly open and answers all my questions so far.
I first started with a setup with a lot of lights inside her house with curtains closed but it just did not work. I have a nice lighting kit (the one from the Doug Jensen DVD, slightly customized). I did some test setups at home and they looked nice but while I was at my grandmother's house I just could not get the lighting right. I also noticed that in a "studio" type setting my grandmother did not answer my questions. I asked for memories and she kept saying "I don't remember those things very well because it is like 60 to 70 years back". But while I was not filming she started talking vividly about memories from her past. So that's when I decided to use a different approach.
The sun was shining so I picked up my camera and reflector screen and we sat down in her wonderful garden. I started with my camera handheld and asked some questions and she answered them very comfortably. The image looked great and I got the images I was looking for. However, the sun was shining but there were a lot of clouds that changed the contrast drastically. So the image looked great and the next second it looked very flat and dark. I found it hard to compensate for this. So I put my key light outside with a CTB gel which improved things but it still was far from ideal. In this situation it was not possible to start over or stop in the middle of an answer.
So my question is: how to handle these situations? I discovered that I prefer the natural look where you make maximal use of natural light. I want to make it authentic and with all the lighting it looked to artificial. Besides that, all the lights and stands intimidated my grandmother which did not result in nice answers. So I would like some advice in how to achieve great results with natural lighting (with maybe a reflector and one or two lights).
- Do you use an on-camera light?
- Do you wait on the right moment with the sun/clouds?
- Do you move the interview to the shade?
- Do you film on cloudy days?
- Which gear do you absolutely need to get nice results?
- How much can you compensate in post?
I am also looking for input on how to deal with windows. I really like to use them but they are a pain in the ass. I read things about ND gels and correcting gels and also the other way around that you place 5,500k lamps inside. What works best and how much does it cost to do those things? I was shooting with a daylight filter as well as daylight from outside and I still noticed that the light had a slightly different color. The light from outside was warmer. I was wondering how you guys handle this.
I am shooting with a Canon XL-H1 and Canon XH-A1 (although I discovered that using two camera's creates an even bigger mess and takes more time to setup). I am shooting 25P and use the build-in ND filters. I mainly used default daylight WB setting (with the exception of the first indoor thing which I shot with 3,200k lights and WB setting). I also have a reflector screen (Lastolite 5 in 1) but I was wondering when you use which (like gold, white, striped etc.). I used the gold one.
I am thinking of getting a Litepanels Mini but only when it would help.
At the end the first two shooting days went well. I got some nice results but somethings very much more difficult then I expected them to be.
I will continue shooting next week. I will then go to the village where she was born so that will be a day of outside shooting near the seaside.
At this moment I am shooting my first documentary. It is a portrait of my grandmother. I did a lot of research and prepared my questions. And recently I started production. My grandmother is a difficult person to handle. My aunt already tried to do something similar but she could not make it work. I have a special bond with my grandmother and she is surprisingly open and answers all my questions so far.
I first started with a setup with a lot of lights inside her house with curtains closed but it just did not work. I have a nice lighting kit (the one from the Doug Jensen DVD, slightly customized). I did some test setups at home and they looked nice but while I was at my grandmother's house I just could not get the lighting right. I also noticed that in a "studio" type setting my grandmother did not answer my questions. I asked for memories and she kept saying "I don't remember those things very well because it is like 60 to 70 years back". But while I was not filming she started talking vividly about memories from her past. So that's when I decided to use a different approach.
The sun was shining so I picked up my camera and reflector screen and we sat down in her wonderful garden. I started with my camera handheld and asked some questions and she answered them very comfortably. The image looked great and I got the images I was looking for. However, the sun was shining but there were a lot of clouds that changed the contrast drastically. So the image looked great and the next second it looked very flat and dark. I found it hard to compensate for this. So I put my key light outside with a CTB gel which improved things but it still was far from ideal. In this situation it was not possible to start over or stop in the middle of an answer.
So my question is: how to handle these situations? I discovered that I prefer the natural look where you make maximal use of natural light. I want to make it authentic and with all the lighting it looked to artificial. Besides that, all the lights and stands intimidated my grandmother which did not result in nice answers. So I would like some advice in how to achieve great results with natural lighting (with maybe a reflector and one or two lights).
- Do you use an on-camera light?
- Do you wait on the right moment with the sun/clouds?
- Do you move the interview to the shade?
- Do you film on cloudy days?
- Which gear do you absolutely need to get nice results?
- How much can you compensate in post?
I am also looking for input on how to deal with windows. I really like to use them but they are a pain in the ass. I read things about ND gels and correcting gels and also the other way around that you place 5,500k lamps inside. What works best and how much does it cost to do those things? I was shooting with a daylight filter as well as daylight from outside and I still noticed that the light had a slightly different color. The light from outside was warmer. I was wondering how you guys handle this.
I am shooting with a Canon XL-H1 and Canon XH-A1 (although I discovered that using two camera's creates an even bigger mess and takes more time to setup). I am shooting 25P and use the build-in ND filters. I mainly used default daylight WB setting (with the exception of the first indoor thing which I shot with 3,200k lights and WB setting). I also have a reflector screen (Lastolite 5 in 1) but I was wondering when you use which (like gold, white, striped etc.). I used the gold one.
I am thinking of getting a Litepanels Mini but only when it would help.
At the end the first two shooting days went well. I got some nice results but somethings very much more difficult then I expected them to be.
I will continue shooting next week. I will then go to the village where she was born so that will be a day of outside shooting near the seaside.
