lighting a band performance in confined space on HD

[sarah cuming]

Have to light a band in their recording studio doing a performance. The room is low-ceilinged, somewhat cramped with no natural light. have never lit for HD before. We want to grade towards a black/white look. I've been advised to use soft light for flattering look (the band are not young! - but not at all vain either!) but i'm worried it'll be too flat-looking.

 

Could I use a couple of 650`s as a 3/4 back key light and kino as fill under the camera from the front?

 

 

are there any light s which might be ok in shoot? e.g.light tubes?

 

Using sony 750.

 

 

Any comments very gratefully received.

 

Sarah <_<

[James Brown]

Hi,

 

You wouldn't want to flatten it out too much with kino under camera. What sort of black&whiteish look are you after? Is it just the band playing on a stage?

If your taking a lot of the colour out maybe you could replace it with some contrast. Why not bounce a 5k or something from the side to give some definition, filling slightly from 3/4 frontal with either kino or bounce. For your frontal fill maybe Bounce a low level tungsten source (blondie?) for the eyes above camera . Then you could add your 650's for the backlight. Some subtle subdued colours could look nice.

 

>are there any lights which might be ok in shoot? e.g.light tubes?

 

You could mount some 4ft double bank fluorescent's in frame either on the roof or on the back wall and could give a nice glow for depth.

Edited March 16, 2007 by James Brown

[sarah cuming]

Thanks Very much for replying,

 

I haven't actually recce`d the studio yet, but am led to believe it's pretty small. the band are playing to the record co. who are at one end of the room behind mix desk. so they're not on a stage, just in the room. it's about 25 ft long and 12 ft wide. Therefore I imagined a 5 K might be too big cos I'd only have a few feet either side of them. When you say a 5 k are you suggesting HMI or sticking to all tungsten?

 

Yes I certainly need to add contrast. Would that be better achieved with a hard source (I was thinking 2 k through some diffusion)? or could I get that contrasty look with a kinoflo cos of the space issue?

 

flourescent tubes on back wall could look great - really graphic - and add some backlight too. they will be pretty close behind the drummer however.

 

As the room is so small - do you think 650`s for directional back light or something even smaller? although I don`t know what!

 

 

As you can probably tell I haven't done this before (am usually a focus puller) I guess I'm just not really sure how much light I really need in a room this size.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi,

 

You wouldn't want to flatten it out too much with kino under camera. What sort of black&whiteish look are you after? Is it just the band playing on a stage?

If your taking a lot of the colour out maybe you could replace it with some contrast. Why not bounce a 5k or something from the side to give some definition, filling slightly from 3/4 frontal with either kino or bounce. For your frontal fill maybe Bounce a low level tungsten source (blondie?) for the eyes above camera . Then you could add your 650's for the backlight. Some subtle subdued colours could look nice.

 

>are there any lights which might be ok in shoot? e.g.light tubes?

 

You could mount some 4ft double bank fluorescent's in frame either on the roof or on the back wall and could give a nice glow for depth.