lighting a black studio

[marcelo kron]

Hi guys

I would like to ask an opinion for you. How to light three people in a studio with the floor and the back wall completely black

 

the studio is deep enough to not let light leak in the back wall but my doubts is how to make the floor black. I'm thinking of using three Arri's fresnel 1000w one on eatch person in the fornt and 3 650w for backlights. Bul all will end up hitting the ground too.

 

you have any suggestions on how to make everything 100% black?

 

I will be using Canon 7D

 

Thankyou for any help!

marcelokron

[Brian Drysdale]

Using black velvet type drapes on the floor usually kills the light that would reflect off painted surfaces.

[Chris Pritzlaff]

throw duvetyne on the floor - that will usually suck up most of the light

[Albert Smith]

In the end though there is no way you can light the whole person...catching there feet and not have light hit the ground....their feet will be on the ground...so if you need that wide shot I would just put light on them and plan on taking some stuff down in CC....although the 7d isnt the best camera to be doing that with.

 

if the talent is wearing lighter colored stuff you could under expose a bit and pop em with the backlight on the feet.....I would probably but the 1ks behind them and scrim them down up top so you have a subtle backlight on the top of them and have it pretty strong by their feet and do the reverse with the 650's in front pretty high up maybe with some opal so its not too hard...and use a lot of flags.

[BenjaminCarey]

If you're in a studio, why not try to rig some lights from above? Maybe the effect will be too dramatic for your purposes, but a nice tight shaft of light properly cut and aimed could do nicely at hitting your subject/keeping spill off the floor. Maybe some PARs or 800w HMI's?

 

Anyway, throw as much light as possible on the subject to create as much contrast as possible between them and the background so it falls totally out of detail. You can crush the blacks in post very easily if it isn't perfect.

[JD Hartman]

Why not green screen the floor and remove it in post? For me, this seems the easiest approach, let the post production people deal with all the problems. Another way you could light the talent and not light the floor would be to suspend them with harnesses and wire rigs above the floor. Probably not practical in any sense of the word.

[Mathew Rudenberg]

Just put black duvetene or velvet everywhere, add a bit more fill light then usual and crush the blacks in post. I've done this plenty of times and it works great...

[John Sprung]

Hard light on the people, flag it off of everything else. Do a John Ford, frame their feet out. That way you can flag off the floor, with the hard cut in the ankle to knee region.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[marcelo kron]

hey everyone, thanks for all the tips... in the end everthing worked out well, we ended up usinng arri's fresnels with some flags and lights on the ground were deleted in post production pushing down the blacks.

 

regads

marcelokron