Tech Demo in Warehouse - How would you light this?

QuickHitRecord

QuickHitRecord

Veteran
First, a little background: the video is to showcase a technology integrated into a roadside security checkpoint. The gist of it is that cars drive up to badge reader, the driver puts his badge up to the sensor, the gate lifts, and the car goes through the gate -- exciting stuff, I know.

The client has a demo set up in a large warehouse, right up against the shelves. The client would like to keep the focus on the car and the gate technology, basically everything in red here:

Warehouse2_zps3cfda026.jpg



I've begged and pleaded but we do not have the ability to move the demo at all. So rather than creating separation with depth, I'm going to try to do it with lighting. There is natural light coming from skylights, and also fluorescent (?) fixtures. We have the ability to get onto the roof to tarp the most immediate skylight, and I can turn off the overheads.

As far as manpower goes, I have a colleague but I am the only able-bodied person able to squat, lift, and carry. I do not have a solid figure yet, but I may have budget for a gaffer and/or some lights. One thing that I should have is time: a half day to set up, and the rest of the day to shoot and break down. Here’s hoping.

I have a couple of ideas for how to light this:

  • Rig lekos on booming arms to the tops of the shelves, positioning the lights over top of the car lane and hopefully simulating street lights. If I am able to flag the light off of the shelves, we could also put pipe and black drape across the aisle. This would give me the ability to crush the unlit background in the grade. Unfortunately, the facility does not have a scissor lift, but they do have a forklift with a man cage.
  • Alternatively, I could rent an HMI on a stand, put it in the man cage of the forklift behind the camera and raise it up, trying to flag the light off of the shelves and the aisle.
  • Another crazy idea I had was to put a pair of combo stands just outside of the head-on wide shot and run some kind of a cord or cable from which to hang china balls (probably directly over the space between the car and the badge reader/gate). I could possibly use LED bulbs to take advantage of the rapid falloff to try to most of the light off of the shelves or out of the aisles.

These are just some thoughts but I would love to hear your ideas.
 
I have no idea what you're trying to do.

Let me try and get this straight-- they're going to take a structure that's meant to be out on the road, and place it in their warehouse, then have a car drive up to it? Put it's just in the middle of the warehouse?


Black drape is going to look like garbage. And it's going to be more hassle than it's worth-- you'll be severely limited in angles. Unless I'm just totally misunderstanding what you're trying to do.

It really seems like you're not going to have much luck getting it to not look like a warehouse. I would just roll with it. Assuming the flourescents are daylight balanced, I wouldn't do much to it at all. Just embrace the fact that you're shooting in a warehouse and make it look like a warehouse. Maybe some diffusion over the skylights to help with the specular highlights.

And that's going to be the biggest issue here-- specular highlights. I'm super confused as to why you're trying to get lights up to mimic streetlights, but for lighting cars you typically want sources that are bigger than the car. Issue you'd have here is... you're in a warehouse. So all those flourescents are going to cause highlights. That's why I say just roll with it and let it happen.

You COULD turn off all those flourescents, but then you'd have to light the warehouse yourself. Which could be a strain on budget, but more importantly if you don't have a crew with you, you don't have time for. There's really not a whole lot I can suggest with just one able-bodied guy and a half-day to set up.

So yeah. Again maybe I just don't get the concept at all, but if you're at all able to, in my opinion what I would do is... almost nothing. Just let it be lit like a warehouse. If you really want to, get those lekos up (make sure they're balanced with whatever the flourescents are at, or replace the flourescent bulbs if necessary) and throw a huge sheet of diffusion up there for a nice big, soft source.
 
edithouse said:
How about hanging some green material across those shelves and chroma key in your background later
Click to expand...
Again - How in the world is one guy with half a day of prep going to pull that off?

My inclination would also be to just roll with it. I don't think I would "light" anything wide enough to see the whole demo setup. If you don't even know if you have the budget to hire a gaffer, you're off to a really bad start in terms of creating separation between the demo and background with lighting. I think you'll be better served focusing very closely on your composition and devoting a good amount of time to color grading.
 
I will try to clarify: the demo unit (i.e. badge reader, CCTV cameras and gate) is already in the warehouse. It is bolted to the concrete and I can't move it. It was there before the shoot and will be for several months after the shoot.

I'm not trying to convince the audience that we are NOT in a warehouse. The lights I want to place overhead are not supposed to literally look like street lights. Rather, I am trying to draw attention to the demo itself using lighting. This is the best example that I can find of what I am going for:

chester-station-1.jpg

Imagine two pools of spotted light toplighting the demo equipment. The car driving up to the badge reader and then through the gate is secondary. The overhead lights are off, the most immediate skylights have moving blankets over top of them to block out light, and rest of the warehouse just fades into the background. It will be more stylized than most of the corporate work that I do, but it puts the attention back on the technology of the hour.

I'm about to put in an order for two lekos on menace arms. I am a little trepidatious about the idea of mounting this heavy hardware on the tops of the warehouse shelves by myself, so I may just build them behind the camera line and keep the camera lower to the ground on the wide shots.
 
Okay, fair enough. I think I get what you're going for and I stand by my original recommendation, but it sounds like you made up your mind so go for it.

But FWIW the reasons I stand by my original recommendation are:

I think turning off the overheads are a bad idea, if you don't light the warehouse yourself (which it sounds like is out of the question). I think you're going to end up with one of two things:

An underexposed warehouse, which causes problems (Why is the car in an unlit warehouse? What's back there? Are they in there after hours? Could they not afford to turn on the lights? basically, warehouses aren't underlit, so I wouldn't try to make it look like that. I think it'd just look very strange),

OR some lit shelves and things in the immediate vicinity with total blackness beyond them, which just raises more questions than it answers.

As for wanting to highlight the demo-- I get what your angle is, I still think you can achieve it while having the rest of the lights on, BUT I think just putting two lights up for "pools" of light is still going to cause some very unwanted highlights on the car. You might get away with it, particularly if the car isn't the focus, but I think you're much better with a very big, soft source. Would also make it easier to see the demo clearly instead of having harsh light. Dunno how you'll manage that with just yourself, but it could be done if that's all you're doing. Maybe think about side-light instead of top-light, less overhead rigging.

You can make it look slick without needing super high contrast.

But hey man, that's just my recommendation. You do what you feel is best. Hope it works out for you, best of luck with the shoot.
 
I appreciate your advice. I'm not dead-set on anything, but I hadn't gotten any feedback and the shoot is coming up so I've had to start to get my ducks in a row.

It might help to see the warehouse in full color, to get an idea of all of the orange and green and yellow elements. Visually, it's pretty busy:

Warehouse1_zps2a5cb934.jpg

At one point, I considered a side-light like you were suggesting. There are bay doors in the wall parallel to these shelves. I could open them and scrim the light that comes in, though it has been well-below freezing around here lately and I don't think that the warehouse staff would be very happy with me. I would have endured this if the focus had been on the car. As it stands, I am concerned that side-lighting will cause the car to cast shadows on the tech I'm trying to highlight.
 
A couple of things:

If you can't change the BG don't fight it, embrace it. Clean it up by moving those tables and boxes (anything on wheels) to make it visually less busy. Get rid of that giant bulletin board.

Cars are basically giant mirrors. Anything you light it with is going to show up in the car itself so think large broad sources instead of point lights. shoot through or into the biggest butterfly you can get either from overhead or the side of the vehicle. China balls are not going to be your friend.

I really would advise against trying to make the BG fall off. There is too much going on back there.
 
Looks to me like you have a combination of skylights (daylight) and metal halide lights (very bright, probably near daylight color temp and not that different from an HMI). Not the worst situation to be in, except for the difficulty of controlling the light. I would use daylight balanced lights on the ground to match.

..."but I think you're much better with a very big, soft source"

HMI through a shower curtain?
 
Not being in the room, it's hard to say, but what might be interesting is to turn the lights off and have selected skylights open (existing skylight diffusers removed) and tarp others. These shafts of light might be interesting. Add ND as necessary to control it. Of course, you have a moving sun to deal with then. Then add lights as needed for the shot.
 
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I may not be picking up on some implied sub-text here, but it seems as if your approach to "separation" and focus is solely on lighting, without taking into consideration your post-production strategy. Ideally, you'd be thinking about these things in concert.

There are tons of things you can do in post that are not necessarily about trying to mimic the real world/lighting. But with masks, tracking and different treatment of colors, detail and softness, you can go a long way. Think, vignette mask so that the area you want to focus on is slightly brighter and a bit more saturated than the area outside the mask. You could then turn down the Oranges that you don't want. This can all be done subtly and in a sophisticated manner.

And yes, I think framing and focus can be as valuable of tools as lighting...so embracing your environment may be to your advantage.

In any case, I wish you good luck and I'm curious to hear how it went.
-All the best, Rafael
 
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