shooting in a men's room with flurescent's

[venix]

Hi,

 

I am a student and I am shooting a scene which takes place in a small men's room. Its a scene where a character pulls a gun and fires it at someone to show him that he wont die if its not his time (there is one bullet in the gun) resulting in the other characters emotional awakening or some such.

 

Here is a picture of the floorplan http://groups.msn.com/locationpictures/sho....msnw?Page=Last

 

 

The room is full of fluroscent tubes two over the two stalls. One in the room next to the stalls and two over the urinals, two on the opposite end of the mens room. The director wants to harness the green that some fluro's give off. We are thinking of taking out all the tubes except the two tubes above the two stalls and position the actors side on to the stall's. Then maybe add a really diffused 650 w omni with 1/8 or 1/4 plus green gel on it. The walls have a real nice texture with tight white bricks but the director wants it dark in the upper corners of the room and with green in midtones and shadow but not so much highlights on the actors. All the tubes are cool white tubes and we are going to do tests to make sure they look green but will the added tungsten green cancel out at all any of the green coming of the fluroescent's? I am shooting in Australia so i dont think flicker will be a problem

 

I want to give the characters dark pools in their eyes and one of them is a large bald african american male in a cream suit, the other is a caucasian male.

 

We are shooting tests there soon so hopefully il get more of an idea then but any advice is highly appreciated

 

(Apologies if this post does not make much sense)

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

What format are you shooting?

 

Video hardly sees the green in fluorescents at all, so you'll almost certainly have to reinforce it for the effect you describe. I'm more concerned about your director wanting dark shadows in an effectively white room lit by big soft sources - it will, by its very nature, tend towards even lighting. You will need to ensure that you can sufficiently flag off the fluorescents to stop them spilling all over the walls and retain the toplit effect you describe elsewhere.

 

Phil

[venix]

oh sorry i forgot to add. I am shooting Kodak vision 320T on super 16

[venix]

Sorry again, forgot to add that it is going straight to telecine and not being transferred to a print.

 

Thanks

[Mark Sasahara]

You may have to put a combo fluoro filter on yout tungsten to make them match like cool white, which are usually around 6500K and 30CC green. Try using plastic grids on the fluoro fixtures in the bathroom. These should work well because they are eggcrates and are available at electrical supply houses and larger hardware stores. Get the ones that are black, or spray paint them black.

[Michael Nash]

You can fine-tune the color balance very easily in telecine color correction. Even if you're doing an unsupervised transfer, you can ensure you'll get enough green in your transfer if you shoot a gray card lit with tungsten and some minusgreen gel.

 

Your only concern then is balancing the color of your movielights with the overhead practicals. Instead of using tungsten, consider filling with Kino units tubed up with the same cool whites as are in the overheads. If you can't get kino's, you can use hardware store type shop lights for the same purpose. Sometimes you get lucky with the balasts not buzzing too loudly for sound.

 

Regarding the "toppy" quality of light, you can make skirts for the overhead fixtures out of duvetyn, blackwrap, or even ordinary aluminum foil. If the white walls and floor bounce around too much light, you can strategically place negative fill with floppys and duvetyne, even on the floor if you have to.

 

Regarding flicker, Australia is 50 Hz., right? (I always forget). To shoot 24 fps under 50 Hz. lighting you need to use a shutter angle of 172.8 degrees, or else shoot 25 fps at any shutter angle.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> Regarding flicker, Australia is 50 Hz., right?

 

Yes, and PAL TV system, so it's an awful lot easier from both perspectives to shoot 25.

 

Phil

[Paul Bruening]

Hello,

 

If all you need the flos for is motivation, then tungsten lights will override most of the color spikes from the flos. That will give you the moody lighting control that you need anyway. You can throw the color over to green in post if you're looking for that "Fight Club" look. This would save you money.

 

Just a thought.