Izik Nox

Hi everyone, this is my lighting set-up for a short film I did back in the day. It was an interesting 15 hours, stuck in a little crowded room. In the particular set-up that I have illustrated, 4 - 100 W lights were used enclosed in aluminium cones to give us a spotlight effect. We didn’t want to set up a large light as it would illuminate the whole room and eliminate the contrasts, however we did have a 500 W in behind one of the walls with a grill in front to emulate sunshine peeking through a window. Yes the 500 is extremely low to simulate sunlight, but we didn’t want to blow out the scene with the sun rays if we used a 2K or an HID. The scene shown in A1 was kind of tricky, because the lights where about 7 feet off the ground, and when the talent got up from the horizontal position, they where suddenly half way from the light source creating some hot spots. In order to resolve this we re-shot the scene with some diffusers. During the entire shoot there were frequent repositioning of lights except for the 500, which stayed in its spot. The lights where the clamp type 100 W. Since we were very restricted on space with no room for any sort of light stands this was very convenient. If anyone has ideas on how this could have been lit in a different manner, I would appreciate your input. This would not be the last small set for me to light and film in but at the end of the day it’s these challenges of filming in difficult areas that make our lives even more exiting. Happy filming. Izik Nox.

Sometimes you could get an idea of the lighting setup by looking at any reflections in glass or chrome objects in the scene. Looking at the clock on the wall it might be a soft box. If you have a larger still, it would be easier to tell. You could also use the shadows of objects to guess the approximate height. Most soft boxes I have worked with have a natural falloff like that.