Advice needed for permanent studio lighting setup

Simon Bjork · March 4, 2009

Hi,

I work at a newly build green-screen studio. Everything is working very nice, exept for one thing - the lighting. The idea is to have a permenent lighting setup, both for the green-screen, and for the ambient light over the actors. Then we fill in with other lights on stands.

The studio is 25x13 meters in area, and the height is 10 meters. One of the long walls and one of the short walls is painted green. (the rest is doors and black walls.) Our main shooting area will be against the green short. That area will be around 10x8 meters. This is were we want our ambient light to hit. The area is about 6 meters away from the green-screen.

As we see it, we have several different routes to go:

GREEN-SCREEN:

- Kino-flos' with green chroma bulbs, mounted in the roof, lighting up the screen only. We use green kino-flos' with green bulbs on stands at the moment as they seems to be pulling a very good key. The problem is to get enough of light over the entire screen. I guess it's gonna be brither at the top, and not enough at the screen bottom. We did a quick test and barley got a t/2.0 at the bottom, and if we wanna do high speed that's not going to be enough. With this option spill is going to be a big problem as well.

- Space lights, flagged of as much as possible, hitting the screen only. 6x500 tungsten bulbs in each lamp? Problem is that it's probably gonna spill at the actors.

-Big tungsten our HMI hanging in the roof, shooting through silk to make it kind of a soft box. Opinions? We could have several of them in different sizes. Problem is to get the same amount of brightness for the entire screen.

AMBIENT

(every option is haning in a 10x8m rig, that you can vairy in height.)

- Space lights. 500W bulbs? 800W? How many of them would be neded to get a nice ambient light, say exterior day for our 10x8 meter area? Hang a big silk under them? I heard a gaffer saying that they are a little to spotted, even with the skirts on. I guess if we only have enough distance to the screen, we should be able to flag them from hitting the screen pretty well.

- A lot of Kino-flos in the roof, pointing down, lighting up the area. Through a silk maybe?

- A lot of color-balanced flourecents, basicly building lamps. We're thinking about having something like 100x85W bulbs placed in the area, shooting throug a silk. Good or bad?

So, I need you help deciding withc way to go. Me personally is leaning towards green kino-flos' in the roof and space lights for the ambient. But I'm unsure. Do you have any other ideas? Please let me know.

And another thing, we kind of need to decide yesterday as we have some pretty big shoots coming up.

Thank you for your help,

best regards,

Simon

(sory for the spelling, I'm in a hurry)

JD Hartman · March 4, 2009

Cyc lights. If you could hang them far enough from the greenscreen to get even fill without any spilling on the actors, that might be the optimum solution.

David Mullen ASC · March 5, 2009

Spacelights generally have three or six 1K tungsten nook-type globes in them, so you can wire all six or just three. I think there may be a smaller version that is just 2K. They would be good for a soft toplight, not so good for just lighting the greenscreen.

As for high-speed, the question is do you want to light the whole space for a really high stop, or do you want to light it for a normal exposure and figure any high-speed work will require pointing more lamps on stands at the greenscreen?

I agree that cyc lights, perhaps gelled green, would be good for the back wall if you need more stop. You could somehow wire or rig them so you can switch off every other unit or globe maybe when you need less exposure, or put it on a dimmer.

But if you are using Kino greenscreen tubes, which I like using, just remember that the screen becomes such a narrow wavelength of green that it may not need to meter as brightly as you'd think. But if you need more stop, use more Kinos.

You may also want a vertical rigging pole or truss to sidelight the screen as well.

Simon Bjork · March 8, 2009

Thank you for your help!

I think we'll go with 500W or 800W bulbs in the spacelights as they seem to be working for a longer period than the 1000W.

Do you think we'll need a white silk under them or just go with the normal skirts?

David Mullen ASC · March 8, 2009

Thank you for your help!

I think we'll go with 500W or 800W bulbs in the spacelights as they seem to be working for a longer period than the 1000W.

Do you think we'll need a white silk under them or just go with the normal skirts?

If you want them to act as softlights, then they'd have the normal diffusion side skirt and bottom. If you need to separate them from the background, you'd need some long teaser skirts across the ceiling, I wouldn't use the black skirts on the spacelights.

Hal Smith · March 8, 2009

True cyclights are mounted close to the top (and/or bottom) of the cyc. They're designed with an asymmetrical reflector so they cast more light farther away on the cyc resulting in an even illumination from top to bottom even though they're close to the cyc. The theatrical versions of them have three or four individually controlled light units per fixture which simplifies controlling the total amount of light (in theatrical use the individual cells are usually gelled for color mixing).

Anton Bergstrom · April 2, 2009

I also work in this studio and wonder if anyone has worked with these cyc lights on a filmset?

My other question is do you try to get the perfect greenscreen as in

1. As narrow band of green as possible

2. As even screen as possible

I hear different things all the time, post production people love the kinos with green tubes and sometimes they dont want them.

For example in a wide shoot of the floor included where you really dont want to blast green tubes och the floor and automaticly bouncing it on the actor.

But you dont want that big gradient of different types of green either, and that is whats your about to get if you have green tubes on the wall but not on the wall.

So should we use kinos with greentubes and just get both the floor and the wall bright and in different types of green or does anyone have an idea?