Albion Hockney

It can be easy to conflate the look of lighting w/ other production elements (PD/Art direction, Good Casting, camera angle etc). Not all high key commercial's are lit super soft, although book lights or larger sources through windows are common. I would look for specific references that are similar to your project and analyze all the elements that came together to give the look you like. There is definitely no one size fits all approach. If you are matching daylight outside of windows your light sources are too small to come through the windows. shoot at a time of day you like the look of the background and then just lift your talent up with the sources you have. If you can get your hands on them Skypanels, 800W joker's, Light panel Astras, or even Kino's can do this. You just need bright, soft, daylight balanced lighting.

I always wonder about this. my approach has been that eye lights are reflections therefore a point source far away is the best bet - like a household bulb. The source itself will reflect brightly, but the distance will minimize actually lighting talent. Usually works ok, although I don’t do it very often.

I would recommend trying to not light the background. use practicals or natural light and just light your talent. that is a good way to learn and honestly in many situations especially on smaller shoots how a lot of people work.

there edge light is more toward the rear and hitting a little hotter. The key light is much more sidey almost rear third so the front/front fright of the raspberries go a little darker which creates that nice contrast ratio. They are probably using bounce or another light to fill in the front camera right side of the raspberry. There key light does look a bit softer to me it has a nice fall of from the back of the raspberries, but I wouldn't assume its super far away or huge. you could probably get away w/ a 4x4 frame or even a 2x3 frame close the edge of frame. notice the difference in the lighting on the spoon. see how the front edge of theirs barley has any light on it. that shows the angle of the key light they also have a little pop light in the BG that is either coming from the source creating the edge or a 2nd source just for that BG effect. you could achieve this with a small amount of haze in the room and have the light just outside of frame. this light was also cooler or colored cooler in post for a nice color contrast w/ the red raspberries Lastly they are using shallower depth of field w/ only part of the raspberries in focus, which gives a nice polished cinematic look. oh and there camera angle is a bit lower shooting up which really gives the raspberry a hero effect. to me looks like they are also on a wider angle lens. the cameras color depth and post work is a part of it too, but you can get a lot closer with the lighting. With the color red for something like this almost always in color grade you can pull a selection on red and work on the saturation/hue to get a really clean vibrant color - all cameras have trouble capturing that.

I would recommend "Mother of George" it was a smaller movie and Young's approach is super daring and beautiful. Chayse Irvin is also excellent, his work is very grounded and honest. There is so much good interesting work right now from DP's. I think people are taking more risk then ever which is very exciting.

Bug foggers should not be used for interiors.

Thank you - looks great.

There Is an almost yellowish tone from right on his face in the close up - Is that just from the lens of the Source 4 then? There is an interesting complexity to the color and reflections from his skin tone - I think that is part of what Mark was eluding to. Would you be able to give a rough idea of where the lights are placed for the close up?

I've never tested, but I thought placing Diffusion in front/Behind ND would effect the intensity of the effect in certain situations. General practice is placing diff closest to lens

money doesn't effect content a straight forward a linear way. for example in commercials a lot of the money has to do with needing specific things to happen on a specific day and needing it to run very smoothly - I suppose features are no different actually. For example an 18k's doesn't necessarily give more quality, but if you can't rely on the sun and need to shoot at a specific hour in a large space you may need them to have the shoot go a certain way. If you don't have that ability you will need to work with the sun OR change your plan which will effect the creative approach crew is no different, more crew allows working faster and a proper sound person frees time so a DP or Director don't need to think about it. A true sound person may have more equipment to allow more complex setups (multiple people mic'd for example)

if it works for your budget LitMat's and other LED's are a really versatile tool for this type of job if you want soft light. I think most DP's have pushed in that direction just because it allows you to get a good quality soft light with much less concern about space and having to control spill from things like bounces. they are also very light if you want to arm them out or even tape to a ceiling and of course also dimmable + color temp adjustable on the head.

The basic way those type of filters work leads to halation in highlights. If you don't want halation I'd try Low Con - you get some softness and lifted shadows, but a much more subtle/diffuse halation.

Yes. A 2560 would be easier to operate then a 1030 and be more stable for large zooms. it takes larger sticks, 150mm ball mount or mitchell base. Why don't you ask to test at your local rental house? It is much heavier and promotes a different style of shooting then the 1030.

I think that your intuition there is Negative fill is a good one. However that is generally decided upon while lighting and can be hard to tell. If your in a space with white walls you may notice too much light bouncing onto your fill side and need it. Or your key light is so strong the white walls help even the contrast out. I would say its the last step in the process. You can achieve high contrast with soft light. It will just depends on the angle the source is coming from and lighting ratios. This example has soft light coming from mostly the rear third and a little bit from the side so her fill side gets very little light on it. Just be careful that your soft light doesn't wrap around the face/front of the scene too much - keep it coming from behind and a little on the side.

I think the practical China ball is filling the scene with a good amount of light so I would start by dimming and find a base level for the back. Then worry about the actors. Bruce, really curious about your idea becaus I would never do that! Do you have examples where you did that?