Lighting an Exercise Video

JaredSmith · November 18, 2011

Hello, I offered to help a close friend who is directing an exercise video. Originally I did not intend on being paid, then he told me I could get a paying position as part of the crew and now he is telling me he'll give me half a grand for the job.

For the budget that is involved... this is a lot of money (that I was not intending on receiving). So now the pressure is on... I am supposed to act as the gaffer and figure out what I want to do in lighting the video. The DoP is also a friend of mine and he'll have a good bit to say about lighting the video as well.

I don't have much experience at all doing this, so any suggestions on lighting would be helpful along w/ me doing my own research on the side.

Thanks in advance, Jared S.

Adrian Sierkowski · November 19, 2011

When I first started working with my dad, years ago, this was all we really shot. It was mostly in studios and overall it was for a nice soft lighting look. Often the sets were horrible, but generally, we'd have a front row of 2Ks or 5Ks boxed with 216 or 251 on the front of them from the grid providing a nice soft frontal light; then we'd go and backlight also with 2Ks or 5Ks depending on the size of the set, but put them through Opal or something similar to give and edge. The set was treated differently depending on how t was constructed either with soft lighting, or hitting it with babies ect to provide some punch. And the plants, as there always seemed to be plants on these damned sets, always got a 650 with jungle green on it to punch it up. Often we'd have 6K Space lights hanging to fill in and give an overall top light. Clients liked it, but it was the boring flat lighting of, well an aerobics video.

These were almost always 3 camera shoots on D-Beta with 2 on the pedestal tripods and 1 on a jib. Generally there'd be the one instructor and multiple "doers," just there doing the things.... I generally sat on teh sand-bag cart and wondered why on earth someone would wear such tight and brightly colored pants! (this was well before Kinos were anything more than a 4 bank and didn't really have the punch, hence all the tungsten)

For the times when we weren't in a studio, it would depend on where we were. Outside was always a PITA and generally was rigging an over-head and keeping the sun @ their back as much as possible. Then blasting in with a few HMI PARs to give some definition and control. Also there would normally just be the instructor then. If there was an instructor and a whole class; we'd try to shoot all of the wides very early in the morning and let the sun do our work with HMIs for fill, then dismiss the class and repeat under the overhead all the close up stuff matching the best possible the "look," of the sunlight.

This was all well over 5 years ago since I last did/saw/went onto an exercise video so I'm not 100% on all the details and certainly don't have set ups laying 'round but the overall idea of all of this was toe get nice even illumination with a bit of definition and a good stop to keep everyone in focus to display the work-out.

If you were doing something else, tai-chi, yoga, ect, then you might want to get a bit artsy, but in truth, this is what it is, a work out video.