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Lighting Hospital Scenes


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Hi. I am about to start on a 16mm shoot with the new Kodak Vision 7218 and the main location is a hospital. the three prime locations are a corridor, a waiting room and an ER room. I have a fairly modest budget. As far as dealing with fluorescents goes, what's the best way to go? Some have suggested Kino Flos but I imagine I would need a lot and that would be cost-prohibitive. Are there smaller fluorescent units or should I think in terms of filters and gels? Again, gelling down an entire corridor ful of floursencent lights may be time prohibitive, but I will do it if I have to. Any thoughts?

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One way is to shoot under the existing fluorescent lights in the location, use the same type fluorescent bulbs in your kino flos, and then have the lab time out the green. I believe this is one of the methods Haskell Wexler used when photographing "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest".

 

Some have recommended using a low contrast filter in order to keep your blacks from becoming too contrasty, so you do your own tests to determine what grade, if any, you'll use.

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Hi-

 

You can also use a mix of approaches- I did this not too long ago for some hospital scenes in an Animal Planet movie- In the rooms (and a large hallway) with a lot of exposed windows, we balanced for 5600k, bouncing additional daylight in with shiny boards (left on the flourescents, only if they were in the shot, just so they wouldn't look "off" but didn't have any problem with green cast). In areas with no windows, we lamped our kinos with tubes from the hospital. In an O.R. scene, we lit entirely with 3200k kinos and a few tungsten units. We also bounced a 2k into a room we could see through the doors in the background to keep it from going too green (but kept its' flouros on, again, just for effect) It all worked out quite well and kept us from trying to "muscle" around different color temps!

 

Now, if you have a shot following someone from outside, through the halls, into the basement.....

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On a modest budget it's usually best to find a way to work with what's there, rather than fight it. In this case, use the existing fluorescents as a base and add fill or shape with either Kino's of the same color, or gel tungsten or HMI lights to match. Often it's a combination of both, as you've got to work with what you have.

 

A common problem is that adjacent rooms don't always have the same color temp. though. For example, the waiting room might have daylight coming in through windows, the desk area may have warm-white tubes, and the hallway has cool whites. In that situation you need to decide whether you can adequately frame out the other color temps, or if you're going to take the time and expense to color-match all the tubes and gel the windows.

 

I'm not sure about the low-con filters, though. Usually overhead fluorescents produce such a flat quality of light that you try to build UP your contrast through lighting. The only time that fails is if the overheads are oddly spaced and you end up with actors walking in and out of hot spots and shadow. And even in that case you'd be more likely to compensate with fill light rather than low-con filters.

 

I've used Ultra-cons in fluorescent-lit environments too make them seem even more flat and ugly, but not because the ambience photographed too contrasty.

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