Stage Lighting Help

[Adrian Ramirez]

Hello,

 

I'm a cinema student in California and have turned to this forum countless times for advice, so you may see a few posts similar to this coming from me in the immediate future. I'm recreating the lighting from the stills I've attached below from the Hungarian film On Body and Soul, and I'm hoping to get some guidance on how to achieve it. We will be filming on a sound stage, and we have half a dozen Mole Richardson 2K Fresnels, 2 Mole Richardson 4k Super Softlites, and varying diffusion available to us. I based my overhead on the angle of light and different contrast ratios I was able to read from the images. What should I change, what am I doing wrong, is there overhead lighting that I'm missing, and what's the best way to approach this ?

 

[Adrian Ramirez]

Edited June 21, 2018 by Adrian Ramirez

[Adrian Ramirez]

[Giacomo Girolamo]

Hello, to me the pair of 2ks has to be a couple of feets on the left, just by looking the psychiatric still. The lights looks high too, looking the cups and the different objects on the table.

Oh, and don't forget the sparkle light on the eyes of the patient!

[Ryan Emanuel]

A silk probably wont work on that window unless you booklight it, if you want the window to be evenly exposed. Its 50/50 whether the patient is being lit by the window or a separate small source. There should be two specular square highlights in their eye from the two windows but they have one, so they might have blocked the window light and used a small source for the window light. Or they did use the windows and the lower window just didn't catch in the eye.

 

If the patient angle looks to front lit, i.e. you aren't getting the rembrant triangle, either move the desk and chairs camera right until the shadows look right, or turn off the window light and get a small source to come from further upstage camera left.

 

I'm not sure about the fill soft box, seems you can achieve that contrast ratio with a passive bounce instead. The shot reads very single source. Air on the side of subtlety with the exposure of the fill light. You shouldn't have to raise the fill level more than a stop at most.

 

The Doctor has two extra things. They have a hair light from above right behind them, which is important since they are at least a stop down with a window 3 stops up camera right. The extra hairlight is helping bring focus to the subject. Second they have a bounce or dim light coming from camera right. Its slightly low angle since the nose shadow is angled up. I'd assume its a bounce catching the window light and angled towards talent. Might be a larger bounce.