small room lighting

Azmyth

Azmyth

Veteran
I'm trying to light a interview for a crowd funding video for my new feature, and I'm having to use a realllly small room to do it in. There's not a whole lot of room for lights. I'm shooting into a corner to try to make it appear bigger. How can I get away with this? lighting wise? I'm assuming its usually good practice to avoid really small rooms? due to shadows?
 
Not much info on the size, color, shape, windows - the features of the room. Or the look you want. How close you want to be on the talent - head/shoulder, full length? Do you want it to clearly be a residential room or an office? Hang a backdrop? Just plain white or black? Does "due to shadows" mean you don't want any shadows? Not even shadows that look cool?

The man reason to avoid a small room might generally be distance issues - needing a wider focal length (vs a flattering tele length), separation between subject and back wall (and the ability to backlight) and limited space for lighting/grip. Also that very small rooms can sound pretty bad if they're very live (no furniture/carpet to absorb sound reflections). But if it's all you have, make it work. Figure out the look you want and try to achieve it with as little compromise as possible.

If I were assigned "funding interviews" in a 10x10 room, I'd probably hang some black across a corner, try to get a small fresnel overhead (behind the backdrop) and maybe hang a flagged china. I'd bring some moving blankets. Or perhaps try to get the camera outside the room and shoot through the doorway.
 
I was looking to setup a similar scene. Wanted
to frame a character in the corner in a chair.

Tight confined interview. Got nasty shadows from
my 3 point setup. Not to side rail the thread. How
can I eliminate the shadows in such a setup? For
reference i'm using 3x 650 equivalents.
 
I like bounce off the ceiling, for a general high key, low contrast ambiance. With a 3 point light set up, it is useful to place you lights up high, so that the shadows fall toward the floor, or otherwise out of the frame. For Stancemedia, you may want to shot a scene like that in a small room by just useing one of your 650a, diffused (And maybe dimmed down) as a key light and just through up a bounce board for some fill, if you need it. If you really want an edge light, or back light, In a small room, I would boom or clip to the ceiling, a small hard light. I have a small 100 watt sealed beam light that works good for that. I also have been looking at some small 100 watt halogen accent lights, from a big box retailer, that I can use for edge/back/kicker in tight spaces. They can be taped to the ceiling using a DIY baby plate or something like that. One thing to remember about edge/back/kicker lights, is while, yes, most times they are placed above the subject, sometimes you can place them from below the subject and get close to the same effect.
 
If you can get your hands on some pole cats, auto poles, or any other extending poles, it really frees up space in a room because they eliminate stands.
 
Just got finished with another test and found the
Rosco #3026 Tough White Diffusion works
quite well.

Soften the shadows out to basically nothing by
pushing the gel back. Used a scrim on the other
light with another gel doubled up for better
ratio and seemed quite good.

Still open to other suggestions to check out
just to see the difference in outcome.
 
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