Lighting Large Room

[Matt Dennie]

I will be shooting a film in a few weeks and one of the scenes is in this large room:

 

 

 

 

There will be dialogue shots between two actors sitting in the seats, as well as an instructor at the front of the room. The setting is a film classroom. I have a very limited amount of lighting equipment and am looking for suggestions on lighting this room. I have 2 1k softboxes (2700K and 6500K bulbs for each), a homemade 2k light (2700K), (2) 1k halogens, (3) 250w halogens, and a clamp light. There are can lights in the ceiling that are 2700K and the main room lighting is made of florescent lights from 1980 (they look awful). The projector will be on (only displaying a still image). The room starts out with the lights "off" and as the instructor enters the room he turns them on.

 

I am currently thinking to bring the whole room up in ambiance with the halogens bouncing off the walls or ceiling and lighting the two actors with colder light from the softboxes to highlight them from the rest of the students. What are your ideas?

[Michael Kosciesza]

What if you were to replace the ceiling fluorescent bulbs they have in right now with new brighter ones. Then bounce some of those scoops off the ceiling or walls to add a little more ambient light. Use those soft boxes on the actors during closeups to eliminate shadows and brighten up their faces. As for the room being dark before the teacher walks in why not use the projector light and some of those soft boxes or scoops to simulate projector light on the student.

Florescent lighting is already pretty bright and soft so i don't think you'll need much to light this scene.

Move those lights around in the room.