Advise on lighting a couple of interiors

[Ben Edwards]

I am shooting a short drame in a week 'Conversations with and about my Electronic Toothbrush'. There are three locations and two times of day. Here are my thoughts, and advice would be welcome. I am using a set of 3 open faced 650W tungston and a 800W readhead.

Location 1 - Bathroom

The room is fairly small. I have one light bounced off the ceiling and a key with defusers (coming from the middle of the ceiling, my logic is it is the main bathroom light). No space for backlight but as the wall is plain the actor seems to stand out well.

The bathroom does not have a window (but I could pretend is does). The only way I can think of differentiating between day and night is to have a light coming from a imaginary window which is slightly warm (1/4-1/2 OTO) for daytime shots and cold (1/4-1/2 CTB) for night. The other option is to have a 1/4 CTO/BTB on the fill light to give the whole room a slight cast.

Location 2 - Lounge

This has a windows (so dont have to pretend) but it wont ever be in shot. Was thinking of shooting this without gels in the day and putting a 1/4-1/2 CTB on the fill for the might stuff. I was also thinking of having higher key lighting (think this is the correct terms, basically having stronger key/more stronger shadows). The logic to this is that in the day it will be daylight and there will be lots of it of the same colour (so warmth can be added in the grade). At night people tend to use more practicals so there will be more shadow.

Location 3 - Hallway (talking to someone at the door).

The issue here is we have to use daylight from outside as we cant light the exterior but we can have a couple of lights inside. Well I think this is the case as we only have a 800 and dont think this will be enough for the backlight.

This is just a day shot so was thinking of having a 1/2-3/4 CTB on a interior light bounced off the ceiling as fill and use a key (for both the person outside and the person inside). The logic for this is the light inside would be a little warmer as it would be tungston. I guess for the shot to outside the key could be used for both the back of the head and the person outside, warm light coming from inside. For the reverse shot (into the building) I could use a 1/4-1/2 CTO to represent the daylight.

Any thought would be good.

Regards,

Ben

 

[Benny Tan]

Ben,

I'm starting to see where you are coming from. I wouldn't quite agree with your gel selection, however.

 

Daylight seems like the bluer of lights. Depending on the script, I'd imagine daylight to be harsher, meaning to recreate that you'd want to motivate a blue (daylight balanced) light and light with stronger contrast. That being said, the overall light levels of your scene should be far higher than your night-time shots, where background elements can fall off into shadows. In a bathroom and lounge, we'd expect lights from the house to be motivated by softer tungsten (warmer) lighting. I'd light them to a lower contrast ratio than your daytime scenes.

 

My only fear in your bathroom scene, if you're using your key light to be motivated by the room light and shooting against a blank wall, your shot may appear very flat unless you (more specifically, art dept) creates depth through thoroughly planned set design.

 

If you're shooting in the daytime and have trouble lighting to suit, always expose for exterior, then dial in your hallway and other shots to match.

 

Otherwise, you seem to be on the right track. I can't say too much without the script or any other information about your project, but all the best!