Sunset Interior

[Lucas Arreguin]

Hello

I'm shooting a sunset scene in a soundstage. It want the room to look musky and old. Lots of wood and a light layer of dust. The room should have a very warm orange glow look and with the dust I'll get some rays of light. My question is some suggestions on how to accomplish this. Lighting wise and if anyone has better suggestions than a hazer for the dust let me know. All the advise is appreciated.

Thanks

Luke

[Esteban Rodriguez]

Hello

I'm shooting a sunset scene in a soundstage. It want the room to look musky and old. Lots of wood and a light layer of dust. The room should have a very warm orange glow look and with the dust I'll get some rays of light. My question is some suggestions on how to accomplish this. Lighting wise and if anyone has better suggestions than a hazer for the dust let me know. All the advise is appreciated.

Thanks

Luke

 

 

Luke,

 

What sorts of lights are available to you? If you are able to get your hands on big sources then that is what I would go with. You could go with HMI, but I don't like using HMI's too much myself, just a preference. What I would do though is...

 

First , STUDY YOUR REAL SUNSET! What does it look like to you? Just remember how things look at sunset, long shadows, light coming in at a lower angle 45 degrees or so.

 

SO I would blast a 10k through your main window. Then I would throw up a frame of Roscoe Full Straw, or any other Warm gels you can get your hands on. Use smaller sources to throw rim lights and kickers wherever you may need them in the room. If you want a softer more full look then bounce the 10k through some source of diffusion in a 8x8 frame.

 

After that it is really just a matter of taste, where do you want your shadows to fall? How do you want to break-up your light? How soft or hard do you want your light? There really isn't a Right way to do things, and we all have our own styles and way of doing things, so what I have found works best is to just look at how light really falls in the situation in reall life, then, add some style. Do what feels right and looks "real" to you and you can't go wrong. And if you do go wrong, well then you learned what not to do next time.

 

As for the dust effect, without using a hazer, which would be the best, maybe a fog machine, send the fog in the room, waft it around and let it settle. The downside to fog is that it has a tendency to float away faster, especially in a big soundstage. One thing that will help though is using hard shafts of light and shooting to where your fog is backlit so that it is seen easily, but be careful not to make it look to unrealistic. if all else fails, take in a dust carpet and shake it around! ;)

 

Anyway, good luck in getting what you are looking for, I hope I helped in some way.

[Toby Gorman]

Here is a still from a shoot I did last weekend that sounds pretty similar to yours, only I went for a more late afternoon look as opposed to sunset.

 

First off, I would say make sure you get a great hazer, one of those cracked oil ones that put out a very fine haze that hangs around for ages. Expensive, but worth every penny. We had cheap party foggers and they drove me nuts and didnt work out in the end. They banged out far too much smoke at first, and when it started to settle and disipate, boom, it was gone. The film was one 10 minute take, so obviously by the time we would get to the end of a take there was nothing left! So i ditched the foggers and just lived with no smoke, which I was obviously upset about. This still was taken while i was still trying to make it work!

 

Besides the smoke it was just a 10k through the window as far back as i could get it for the pattern of the blinds on the wall, a direct tweenie through the window for her hard side key, and the rest were 2k skip bounces to provide directional fill on her and model the face a little more, and bring up areas of the set where necessary. The thing i love about interior sunny days, especially as the sun is going down, is the way hard light bounces off floors and walls etc to create lovely soft sources from where ever the hell you like! They can be more directional than creating ambient fill and still feel natural.

 

I would probably go with some kind of straw / orange on the 10k if this was sunset, and perhaps let your ambience run bluer, yet retaining the warmth of the 10k for anything motivated by the hard sunlight bouncing off the walls. Really depends on what the script calls for and your own preferences!