Shooting Recommendations

J

jonaswray

Member
Hey guys,

Thanks in advance for the help. I'm going to be shooting a martial arts instructional at this location and want to ask you guys what settings some of you would use. I know it's a matter of preference but I would like to know what you guys think. Also, we are going to shoot at night so the skylight won't help with the light. The building has 4 fluorescent lights. I want to make sure that it's consistently, brightly lit. I shot some footage there a while back, and it wasn't lit as bright as I would prefer. How should I light this place and what type of lights would you recommend? please be specific with the light so I have a better idea. I'm new to this... Thanks

link to clip - http://www.siteillusions.com/sample.html
 
The main reason for me to get a DVX was the 24p (well, 25p in my case). So I aim to shoot always in progressive mode (f5), with detail turned up a notch or two. I haven't changed a lot of my settings as of yet. If you are not going to light the place then maybe progressive isn't sensitive enough.

Seems like the place is reasonably well lit, there is not much depth in the picture though (due to the overall lighting and the white walls). I dont know if you encountered some flicker in your footage. If you did I would certainly light the place. I you would want to mix the fluorescents with the tungsten, I would gel the fluo's with some magenta to get rid of the green spike. Maybe some ND on the fluo's too, to get a gentle basic light.

You will need some spotlights (at least 4-6 x 800watts?) and flag the light reaching the back wall, or better still, use some blackwrap to get some nice shadows on it. Maybe even some colour on the wall too? Or use some gobo's or dedo lights? Assuming the martial arts people will be wearing white too, this might be a good idea. Advantage of the white: you can bounce your light.

The lights from the back can be a little less soft to create a nice rim of light on the backs of the subjects, loosening them from the background.
Also, I would put frames with diffusing paper/gel in front of the lights to get an even, soft picture without too many harsh shadows.
Good luck!
 
I agree with SlowKarma. 4 flouro's are deffinetly not going to enough. You're going to need lots of light to make this look good. Adding some backlight would deffinetly be a good idea, seeing as your walls seem very flat and uninteresting. You will need to set them apart from the background. Like Karma said, adding color would be a good idea too, to liven things up. When in doubt, those clamp on "bowl" lights from the hardware store can work wonders. They can produce a broad spread of light, and if you use lower wattage bulbs, or flourescent bulbs, you can even clamp gels and/or diffusion straight onto the front of the light with c-47's. If you don't have alot of money, you can also do some pretty good stuff with cheapo home depot or sears construction lights. They put out alot of light, and you can get a dual head 1000w light with its own stand for 20 bucks from sears. Add some black wrap, diffusion, and bounce cards and you can get some nice effects. The color temp of the lights can have a big effect on the feel of your video as well, cooler seems a little more dramatic. As for your frame rates and settings, I would say if you want to slow the footage down, use 60i, if you don't, use 24p with a 1/48 shutter speed. This will smooth out the fast movements a little more, but still give you that film look we all love.
 
Thanks guys... I can hang stuff from the top beams. Do you think if I picked up some of those lights from sears and put some diffusion on them that would work? I don't have to light up the whole place just the area where the logo is(about a 15 feet wide by 10 feet length area). All I really need is for it to be well lit and consistant. I can get as many of those lights as I need. I'll try to get some today and test tomorrow and let you guys know. I was looking at the Britek light but with the softbox they come out to over $1000 for about 5 of them. If I had to I would buy them but I really can't afford them. The sears ones with the difussion seem WAY!!! better for what I need. What do you guys think? Thanks again for all the help guys this has been killing this newbie for a while...
 
Update:

I got 5 of those lights from sears and I wanted to know what kind of diffusions I should use on it. Also, this may seem like a stupid question but with the sears light how should I clip the diffusion on? Most lights have the barn doors but these don't. How much heat do those diffusions handle?
 
You can tape the diffusion to a frame and attach this frame to an extra stand or a griphead, so there is some distance between the light and the diffusion material. An added bonus is that you light will be more even have less had shadows. Maybe you can also hang some diffusion material from the top beams. There is diffusion material from Lee that comes on a roll. It is not a gel but feels more as paper. If you are going to clip the material directly on the lights then I would use gels. Also check out these 2 pages, they might be helpful:

http://www.jorenclark.com/whitepapers/lighting.html
http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/barn/barndoors.html
 
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