Quick lighting setup

[Matt Dennie]

I have decided to film at least one shot/scene every week regardless of if I have any real film projects, mainly to practice lighting because I am inexperienced. I lit this with a 1K Mickey Mole as the rim/key light and a 500W halogen work light coming in through the window. The overhead lights were dimmed to fit the scene. I wish I had brought my baby solarspot to shoot through the window instead of using the work lights. My main question is how much power would I need to get a good "morning sun" effect though the windows? I'm guessing 2K.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I have decided to film at least one shot/scene every week regardless of if I have any real film projects, mainly to practice lighting because I am inexperienced. I lit this with a 1K Mickey Mole as the rim/key light and a 500W halogen work light coming in through the window. The overhead lights were dimmed to fit the scene. I wish I had brought my baby solarspot to shoot through the window instead of using the work lights. My main question is how much power would I need to get a good "morning sun" effect though the windows? I'm guessing 2K.

 

 

 

It's a little crude and harsh, though that sort of fits the tone, but that hard key light doesn't necessarily simulate anything practical. If this is a daytime (morning) scene, you first have to ask yourself if the room lights would be on, and if so, would there be a color difference with the exterior light.

 

But since these are experiments in lighting, I think the first thing would have been to be bolder, take your strongest light and made it as bright a backlight as you could get (for example), maybe even spotted so that the hot spot was on his arm or shoulder rather than his hair, as if the sun was raking low across the table. Then take a white card and seen if that was enough to key his face, from the return from the backlight.

 

Trouble with faking daytime at night is that it is a lot of work because you have to recreate both the sunlight and the ambient skylight and light the background outside the windows, or blow it out. You could have taken a large white board, for example, and put it outside the window and hit that with some light to create a white background. With just two lights, that starts to get difficult, recreating daytime in a room with windows in the shot. Maybe it would have looked more stylized, but rather than shine the worklights through the window, I would have lit a white card or sheet outside the window so that the blinds, cracked open halfway, were a pattern of dark and bright lines, you just wouldn't have the light shining through them, you'd have a silhouette effect. Then used the 1K as a strong backlight, then filled with a bounce card returning the backlight. That's just one idea.

 

If you shot a magic hour, then the 1K might have played for the setting or rising sun, especially if you set the camera's color temp to something closer to 5600K daylight. Once you start talking about needing a stronger sun effect, you need a stronger light, though a 1.2K tungsten PAR 'firestarter" is pretty intense, just spotty.

[Matt Dennie]

It's a little crude and harsh, though that sort of fits the tone, but that hard key light doesn't necessarily simulate anything practical. If this is a daytime (morning) scene, you first have to ask yourself if the room lights would be on, and if so, would there be a color difference with the exterior light.

 

I completely agree with you here. I do like to keep the lights motivated, I guess that's what practice is for.

[linus rosenqvist]

I think one good thing for you would be to study how light reacts in real situations. I looked at you aother work and the thing that stands out is that they all look pretty lit.

I think you should try to use softer sorces and not place you sorces that close to the actors, i know this is a budget isue but if you try to use the natural light a little bit more i think that can take you in the right direction