Lighting Setup - Seedy Office

[Charlie Manton]

I am shooting two scenes next week set in a Seedy waiting room and office. Shooting on the Sony A7RII

 

Locations -

 

Waiting Room INT.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/88377241@N06/albums/72157656792164673

OFFICE/Nightclub/Rooms etc

https://www.flickr.com/photos/88377241@N06/albums/72157659120247681

Have attached a picture of the effect I'm going for in the Office.

The setup for the office/surgery is a man sat at a large desk, and a young girl walks in.

I was thinking how to achieve this - would Kino Flo's with daylight tubes create a similar effect?

Would be great to hear your thoughts and advice.

[Charlie Manton]

[Satsuki Murashige]

Cool location, especially the green hallway. I don't see an office space in the location pics, so not sure what space you are trying to light.

 

But no, Kinos will not be enough to create the 'shafts of light' effect from the Blade Runner still. You basically need a hazer and a point source unit like a fresnel, ellipsoidal, par, or even a broad open face like an X-light. Backlight from a high position and far back to get enough spread to cover the window, and place the subject against a dark background. Not sure what ISO you will be shooting at but if you're around 3200 ISO then a 2K may be enough.

[Dan Muchnik]

A kino alone won't do it. What you see in the attached photo is a hazy room with a relatively hard light backlighting. To me, it seems like either a single source, or with very soft fill from the front. If I were you, I would try to get my hands on a solid fog machine (or several for a space as big as the nightclub) and an hmi fresnel or par. A kino would be a good choice for front fill, but I would preferably shoot it through at least an 8 by grid. Anything smaller would be too "sourcy".

[Charlie Manton]

Thanks for the reply - sounds great!

 

The office location/room is a large dark space (picture below). Where the desk/man will be is in front of a large DJ booth which is positioned slightly off the ground - around 15 - 20 feet - so ideal to place the light source.

 

There is the option to have the source in shot.

 

Would the light then need to be diffused through a large silk?

 

The space isn't too wide - so I don't want the light to spill to far to the side and reveal not so nice walls/things.

[Charlie Manton]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/88377241@N06/21105390333/in/album-72157659120247681/

[Satsuki Murashige]

I see, sounds like it will be easy to get the light high up. The only tricky part would be if you want to see the light coming through a window like in your reference still. Definitely don't diffuse the source, you want a sharp point source for this effect. Diffusing will just make it harder to flag the light off the areas you don't want to see.

 

You may need to get more than one hazer to really fill the large room. Try to get a DF-50 if possible, much better than a smoke machine that just puffs out plumes.

[Charlie Manton]

Thanks Satsuki!

 

Yes - will be easy to get the light up high - so maybe I have it out of frame as don't have the budget to rig a big window etc.

 

Would you suggest a 2K HMI? or 4K?

 

On the desk will be an old computer monitor, which I want to slightly light the actors face. And will also have a magnifier lamp.

 

Thanks!

[Satsuki Murashige]

Which lighting unit depends mostly on how many footcandles you require to get the exposure you want given your ISO, shutter speed, fps, and filters. But an Arri M18 would probably be a safe place to start, especially if you want the light to be on the bluish side. You could also gang a few 1k parcans together in a row if you are on a tight budget and gel them blue.

 

You'll want to flag the light somehow so that you get the sharp diagonal edge of the light beam. Otherwise the whole frame will just be bright backlit smoke. That's really the purpose of the window frame. But you can get a similar effect with flags, you just won't get as sharp of a cut when you place the flag closer to the light source.

[Zsigmond James]

The above BladeRunner refference was acheived by reflecting light off a 12x20 Bleached muslin, the lights were positions at both the right and left flank. The harder shaft of light hitting the table was acheived with a large fernel that was positioned behind and above the muslin angeled directly through the right secetion of window, the spill was flagged.

[Stefano Stroppa]

Hey Charlie!

I once lit for a similar scene in a prison, we made everything in a room, we built the window and covered the ground with a black cloth.

You need to think well on what's going to be your window, whether or not you use an existing one or you recreate one, and how large you want it to be, then you can work on which lights to use.

I used a 1.2HMI to get that harsh shaft of light, plus an open face through a large diffusor frame to fill completely the window. I used just a bounce board at an angle to front fill the actor, and then as the director worked on the blocking I made final adjustments to the direction of the shaft from the HMI.

Smoke plays a major role.

[Charlie Manton]

I was thinking if the light source came from out of the frame - above - there wouldn't need to be a frame at all. It just comes from above so to say.

 

Which would be the best - Arri 1.2KW HMI, Arri M8 or Arri 2.5KW HMI???

 

Love the shot Stefano!

[Bradley Stearn]

As Satsuki mentioned, the power of the light depends on how many footcandles are required. I have used dedo 150w's in the past and achieved similar beams of light. It just required for me to have the light a lot closer in the frame. I recently shot a prison cell scene which was quite right, and had lights rigged up on an autopole just out of the top frame. I found that placing objects in front of the shaft of light created an interesting beam, so I clipped some croc-clips on the kino, to create shadows in the dedos beam.

 

 

 

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

As long as you have the ability to easily power the bigger lights, bigger would be safer. You can always cut the light down with scrims and nets but you can't make it stronger.