How to recreate this look?

[Ashley Barron]

Hello all,

 

I have a shoot on a set that is being built, and while that is still in progress, I am trying to figure out how to light it.

 

The link below shows the cold, empty, melancholy look I am going for. Also similar to that of the interiors in "The Road". I have been told that fluorescents are the way to go in such a situation, but I wanted to see what tips others could provide.

 

Thank you for your time!

 

http://bohemianhellhole.typepad.com/photos...7/pink_room.gif

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hi Ashley,

 

The pic you linked is just lit with very soft, flat light from low 3/4 left and high 3/4 right. Look at the shadows of the curtain and the chair falling on the wall, and also the shadows of the chair leg falling in the opposite direction. It looks like there's something playing from the right in the back room, but I would be tempted to not put a light back there so it goes very dark, and then punch a large fresnel through the little window and smoke up the set to create a shaft of "sunlight."

 

If you're on a stage then you may have access to some big lights like 10Ks. I would punch a couple of those through some large frames of diffusion to get the softness, spread, and output that you're looking for.

[Jamie Sides]

Ashley,

 

I had a very similar set this last summer. It was in an actual townhouse in Baltimore rather than a stage. Lit by just the light from the windows it is very similar to what is in your picture, which I don’t find to be all that melancholy. The room and it’s surroundings may be, but the light is soft & pretty, but rather flat as Satsuki said.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2781/439239...df78bab2d_o.jpg

 

We put up some walls & doors so we could shoot 360 when we went into the room.

This is what it looked like from approximately the same angle, from outside of the room-after we put up the wall & doors.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/439248...798f8872e_o.jpg

 

Since it was a “drug dealers den” I went for a less pretty look (which I would consider more melancholy) and used primarily hard sources. We blacked out the windows and in the middle of the room I hung a single lightbulb (photoflood) from a socket with a string to turn it on. There were open rafters that went about 5 feet above where the ceiling would be, so as high as I could go, I put a …200w HMI up there (I think it was 200w). The HMI was somewhat broken up by the rafters and we created some cookies out of black foam core to break it up even more. In a few places near the walls, where specific action would take place, we accented those areas with weaker instruments-250w tiny & midget moles w/ ¼ or maybe it was ½ CTB.

 

In this grab you can see the bare hanging bulb and then over to the left, is one of the mole fresnels (which should not be in frame incidentally). http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2721/439316...51dbd26a7_o.jpg

 

Here are some screen grabs of the scene:

w/ a midget mole overhead.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/439316...7e6aebac5_b.jpg

 

hanging photoflood & HMI high overhead. Background accented w/ ctb corrected fresnels.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2693/439239...a5a19292b_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/439239...e0dcacd57_o.jpg

(the green tights are for a VFX removal of actors legs)