Suggestion for small kitchen lighting

[fixxxer76]

Trying to film a conversation between 2 actors in a small kitchen at night, there are no windows. The practical in the scene is an overhead china ball between the 2 characters, high enough to be out of the shot. I don't like the quality of the light it gives off, but there isn't a lot of room to set up lights. I have a par 1k, 2 500w softboxes and some small led's at my disposal. Any suggestions. I tried bouncing off the ceiling but it doesn't look quite natural.

 

[Moseph]

Before I even read past the first sentence I was going to suggest a skirted china ball for starters. I see you may not like that look (I don't particularly care for it either), but without more details that's about all I can suggest.

 

[Grug]

How high is your ceiling? One of my favourite tricks for creating nicer-looking overhead sources is to gaffer a reflective white umbrella to the ceiling and fire my bounce light into that. It gives you a nice, large, overhead soft source - but with more directionailty than a straight bounce off the ceiling (which can flatten everything out a little too much).

Plus if the stem of the umbrella is too long, you can just cut it off, which makes the 'fixture' pretty narrow and compact (so that you can keep it out of frame).

 

[clang]

Side lighting from a hallway (real or implied) would help avoid an overly flat look in the kitchen.