Shooting car commercial in all-white studio

[Nicholas Shields]

I've done a brief search here and didn't find anything relevant so I thought I'd ask... I'm shooting a car commercial in an all-white studio. I'm familiar with the basics of shooting vehicles and have been doing so for some time, but this will be my first in an all-white studio. I was wondering if there was any specific advice anyone has that may help my cause. Thanks in advance.

 

Nick.

[Chris Keth]

I've done a brief search here and didn't find anything relevant so I thought I'd ask... I'm shooting a car commercial in an all-white studio. I'm familiar with the basics of shooting vehicles and have been doing so for some time, but this will be my first in an all-white studio. I was wondering if there was any specific advice anyone has that may help my cause. Thanks in advance.

 

Nick.

 

I have never done it, but it seems like you'll want to have tons of duve around. :lol:

 

Keep us posted, it sounds interesting!

[Joe Movick]

Hi Nick,

I just shot a quick car white cyc spot and thought I'd share my thoughts.

 

The size and shape of the cyc as well as the lighting you have available is really important. Things can be fun and creative with 30 foot soft sources and egg shaped cyc's but seem harder with fewer toys.

 

I shot in a 40' wide by maybe 25' deep white cyc that was arranged in a C shape and had the set pre-rigged with just some standard cyclorama lights evenly. We had to be in and out in a couple hours so I was kinda feeling the pressure. We only had a few 1k's available to us so I tried a few rigs with white sheets / large silks and some strange bounces but every tiny little piece of metal and clothespin mignified itself tenfold off of the silver suv.

 

What I kept overlooking was my largest sources of soft, even light were all around me. I started taking all my small lights and pointing them at the floor and unlit wall sections and all my pains were alleviated. Soft light wrapped the car, client was happy, I was happy and we all went home paid.

 

Find a place to position the car in the set where you are taking advantage of all the wall reflections you can. I realized after I got home that had I angled the car another 15-20 degrees in towards the center it would have been that much better. Because even in a huge C shaped cyc set, you are still only lighting 1/2 of the three dimensional space around the car, and the way you initially think about placing that car in there positions all the reflections to come from the 1/2 of the space you don't have any light/walls.

 

Let me know if you have any questions. I wanted to post something because when I was in your shoes a couple weeks ago I couldn't find any help anywhere either.

 

Joe