I'd like to resurrect the "Post a lighting setup" topic from a long time ago!

[Chris Keth]

A while ago we had a big long thread where people could post a lighting setup they did and then explain how they did it. I loved it, learned a ton from it, and even mimicked some of them when the time was right.

 

I'd like to start it up again. I think we need to get back into some good discussion on important topics rather than arguing about RED so much ;)

 

I'll start. It's certainly not elaborate or flashy but it worked nicely for the story. This is on location in an old high school and we didn't have the money for a generator, so we ran power from the building. Well, schools don't often have outlets in the hallways. All I did here is punched 2 micky-moles through a layer of opal and full CTO on the little window in the door. A bit of bounce for fill on the face and that's it. It's 7229 processed normal and, in this scene, underexposed by a half-stop and printed back up.

 

Edited April 25, 2007 by Christopher D. Keth

[David Sweetman]

Nice, I really like that underexposed look. I agree this is a very valuable thread to keep going.

[Michael Nash]

Here's something from a very low budget music video I gaffed a while back. This picture is a very contrasty still I took with my digital camera, not a frame grab, so it's only a poor approximation of the final shot:

 

 

Here you can see the setup:

 

 

This is a good example of what you can do with only a modest "student-sized" kit. The girl's key was 2' 4-bank kino, tungsten with 1/2 CTO and diffusion inside the doors. You can see we added a solid topper and improvised a flexfill as a right-sider (we were out of flags for this setup), and a double bottomer to take the heat off the front of the bed.

 

Over the dresser was an Arri 300 fresnel with some kind of CTO, boxed in with the barn doors to a slash, supplementing the glow from the candles on the dresser. On the floor in the corner was another kino covered half with blue, half with red gel to supplement the glow from the hanging lanterns. Finally, the left edge was a 650w tweenie with 216 on the doors, and flagged off the wall with blackwrap.

 

I can't remember now the scrim pack in any of the units, although the left tweenie was probably more than doubled-down and the 300 over the dresser may have been on a squeezer. Note the scrim bag properly hung on the tweenie stand on the left -- the scrim bag should ALWAYS be with the unit, so you can adjust brightness quickly.

[Chris Keth]

This is a good example of what you can do with only a modest "student-sized" kit...

 

That is remarkably similar to the standard kit I use at school. Nice work. Is the blue between her head and feet actually from the candle lantern or is there a fixture?

[Michael Nash]

That is remarkably similar to the standard kit I use at school. Nice work. Is the blue between her head and feet actually from the candle lantern or is there a fixture?

 

That was a kino on the floor, covered half with blue gel and half with red gel. The candles in the lanterns gave almost nothing for output, just for "looks."

[Chris Keth]

That was a kino on the floor, covered half with blue gel and half with red gel. The candles in the lanterns gave almost nothing for output, just for "looks."

 

Thanks. I just realized I just overlooked that part of your original post. Sorry for making you answer that twice. :P

[Jimmy Browning]

I love these threads!

 

Here's a few stills from a student film I shot last semester. The scene was a congregation gathered at a Sunday sermon. Unfortunately we had a large church, a micro budget, and very few extras to fill in the pews.

 

 

 

My solution was to stick to tighter shots, both to hide the fact that we had very few "brothers and sisters," and to make the lighting work within the budget. I hung four chinese lanterns from the cieling, each with a 500W Photoflood bulbs to raise the general ambience, and for some of the closeups I also had a 1K shooting through a 4x4 silk just off frame to camera left to keep it from being too flat. This was motivated by a large piece of stained glass that is shown later in the film.

 

[Chris Keth]

That's pretty nice looking high key stuff. I miss the CP-16 in a way. That was the first film camera I used.

[Rupe Whiteman]

 

This is a frame taken from some tests I did a while back at home... I wanted to muck about with candle-light, street-light and moon-light in one frame... I used 6 sources: Firstly the practical candle, this was augmented with a snooted 150w dedo with Rosco 156+118, another dedo 150w was used frame right for the hairlight, this time 117 blue and nd.3 were added. The moonlight coming down the stairs was a divalite with 117+191 blues added (stop 1/4 under key), the beam of street-light was another dedo 150w with nd.3+117 blue (this was 1/2 stop under key). The stair-light was a 300 arris fresnel with 156+118 'candle colours' gels. Lastly a silver bounce was placed on the floor behind the subject tilting up for a bit of bounce... It was interesting to me how the green came out on the far wall - it's actually an off-white but it's one of those 'warm white' paints that has a colour in it that comes out in lower light - which the underexposure has further enhanced... Dvcam tungsten 3200k preset, T2.5 at 320 iso....

 

 

On this frame I was mucking about with lowish key light and augmenting candle-light... The Key was an arri 650 fresnel with Rosco 118 and Spun bounced off of a silver reflector frame left, a bit of negative fill was used on frame right. The backlight was a low-set arri 300 with Rosco 156+118. Two dedo 150's were used low frame left with 156+118 again - these provided 2 candle-like spots in the subjects right iris. The painting was lit with another 150w dedo this time with straw + tough spun. There was also a practical lamp on a dimmer low off frame left... Again preset 3200k... T2.8... I should have controlled the penumbra's better but I will next time (there's only so long your girlfriend can stand under lights of an evening!..

 

 

This c/up shows clearly the reflections of the 2 dedos mimicking the candles in the background + the silver bounce/key...

[Scott W Larson]

This is a scene from a film I shot awhile back. We were on location on the second floor of an apartment building with a north facing window at about 2:00 pm, with very blue afternoon skylight coming in the window. The script called for this scene to be at about 6:00am with the girl sitting near the window and we had nowhere we could really put any lights.

 

 

After some discussion with my gaffer we came up with a simple solution. Luckily we had a tree outside the window, and we managed to use a c-stand arm to strap a 500 watt (or a 1K, sorry cant remember which) tungsten light to a branch. Then we switched to daylight stock (7205), let the blue skylight get closer to white, and the tungsten light to give us some orange morning light. So this is the color you get when shooting tungsten onto daylight stock.

Edited May 6, 2007 by Scott W Larson

[rohtash chandel]

hey Rupe,

pics look great, good job man, next time whenever you have chance to conduct a test, try out creating a moon light streak,

[Daniel Carruthers]

 

Well I hope I attached this right

 

To the right of frame I have a DPlight with diffusion on the actor from a high angle.

I have a 750 on spot hitting the chess board on the right side of frame

I have a 250 on the left side of frame hitting the curtains

and I have a 650 with diffusion on flood in the background hitting the piano theres also a little lamp on the piano

[Chris Keth]

Well I hope I attached this right

 

To the right of frame I have a DPlight with diffusion on the actor from a high angle.

I have a 750 on spot hitting the chess board on the right side of frame

I have a 250 on the left side of frame hitting the curtains

and I have a 650 with diffusion on flood in the background hitting the piano theres also a little lamp on the piano

 

What is the focal point of this setup? I assume it's an interview but the chessboard looks like the focal point. It's centered and brighter than the man. I would try to make the person the focal point in an interview setup. After that is established, then you can play with things like the surroundings, which I think you did very well. I think the man needs some fill, too.

Edited May 7, 2007 by Chris Keth

[Daniel Carruthers]

What is the focal point of this setup? I assume it's an interview but the chessboard looks like the focal point. It's centered and brighter than the man. I would try to make the person the focal point in an interview setup. After that is established, then you can play with things like the surroundings, which I think you did very well. I think the man needs some fill, too.

 

Actually the chessboard is the focus point. Its not an interview but an educational video. the topic was how everyday surroundings effect your life.

So I guess its a compliment because thats what I wanted to achieve. although any other time you would have been right

[Chris Keth]

Actually the chessboard is the focus point.

 

I didn't see that coming ;)

[Rolfe Klement]

Some stuff from a shoot I just did - basically a dance project,

lighting exercise to light black and white talent close up,

keep it dark and not blow it all out...

all shot on 5218,

All tungsten - shot with old zeiss lenses -

stills are from DV transfer (so bad quality)

shot with 800ft of film - budget £1000 (including a make up artist!)

 

 

For this above :

We used a 2k overhead as top light , flagged with black wrap to stop spill and with diffusion to soften - dimmed to 50%

A hard open face 2k as top back light - one sheet of diffusion - max power

Loads of negative light (black flagging) from up and sides and behind camera to keep contrast

Wide open dedo 650 provided the pinky | blue shaft of lighting on the cyc - I would have preferred a S4 but

we couldn't get one - stripes created with black flagging

 

 

For this above:

A 4ft 4 bank kino with tungsten bulbs from the left - built a black tunnel around kino to stop spread

Soft soft dedo, diffusion and flagging to create soft back light on cyc behind her

A tiny light lying on the floor (pointing at cyc) behind him to give edging on him and under her arm

 

 

For this above: Kino in same black tunnel (basically 4 6ft x 6ft black flags clamped into a rectangle shape

 

Only had 6 hours to do 58 set ups so a bit rushed but studio was pre rigged - all lights on dimmers and fantastic grip and AC

 

rough edit at http://www.creativesunshine.com/projects/movies/denous.mov

 

Lots of flagging to stop spill - the studio shot does not show all the flagging that went on later

 

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

[David Regan]

Here is a setup I had for a music video I shot recentlyC:\Documents and Settings\David Regan\Desktop\MusicVidPics

[Chris Keth]

Here is a setup I had for a music video I shot recently

 

 

So how did you light it? That's the whole point of the thread :P

[David Regan]

So how did you light it? That's the whole point of the thread :P

 

Lol yeah for some reason the forum is giving me issues and deleted what I wrote and only posted my pics and now the option to edit it is gone soooo, while I'm working that out here is how I lit it.

 

The room had one window set in a small recess in front of the singer at the desk, and another to the singers left side. To add light to her front I used a 250w photoflood bulb in a china-latern hung high in the recess. This combined with the natural light through the window is most evident on the CU of the paper. To the singer's left was a 300w fresnel with 1/2 CTB bouncing off the ceiling to add some light to the room in back (not visible in these shots). another 300w fresnel through 1/2 CTB and 216 added some light to the corner of the room visible in the first photo. A 1K fresnel outside the room was bounced through the door to add a touch of fill on the curtains just inside the door. It all added up to a look I was fairly happy with, and a practical combination of Tungsten, Daylight, and Photoflood (4800K)

[Rupe Whiteman]

Some stuff from a shoot I just did - basically a dance project,

lighting exercise to light black and white talent close up,

keep it dark and not blow it all out...

all shot on 5218,

All tungsten - shot with old zeiss lenses -

stills are from DV transfer (so bad quality)

shot with 800ft of film - budget £1000 (including a make up artist!)

 

'Looks nice Rolfe... punchy images...

[Rolfe Klement]

Thanks Rupe

 

I am going through my "how dark can I get film in a white cyc world "phase :ph34r:

Combined with a fairly complex problem of lighting a dancing pale Polish girl next to really dark African skin

and using "background light to seperate foreground elements" phase

 

The learning never stops...

 

As you can see in the studio shot we used a fair amount of light - it was just balancing the ratios using my trusty

sekonic light meter to create the look since most was shot at high frame rates

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

[Rupe Whiteman]

... Here's a digital still of a intv. I shot today for a doco'...

 

 

And here's the lighting set-up...

 

 

... The only light-source not in frame is the eye-light created with a dedo 150w, dimmed with full ctb...

[Glenn Hanns]

Hey,

Heres the setup from a recent short I shot S16.

Nearly 100000 Watts!!!! 100 ASA pulled to 50. Chocolate on soft boxes.

[Marc Levy]

Glenn,

 

Do you have any pics of wider shots from the same setup?

 

Thanks

[Chris Keth]

Glenn,

 

Do you have any pics of wider shots from the same setup?

 

Thanks

 

I'm curious about that too. Right now your lighting diagram seems extravagant to only post a few closeups that would only need a tenth of the kit listed.