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Lighting for a dressing room


Ross Cullen

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Hi there! 

I'm a young student about to start their final film project this year, a music comedy set in a dressing room. Unfortunately our cinematography module did not cover lighting that well.  I'm the DoP on the project and I've always had lots of fun with compositions and movement yet lighting would be my weakness. I've joined the forum recently to gain a better insight from some of you out there that could perhaps offer me some advice/tips.

We've built our set and will be setting it up at our University's film studio - we've access to overhead lights such as several ARRI 1200 HMIs and Kino Flo Diva-Lite 415s. I intend to setup a few practical lights around the room at 2000-3000k. Although the film is a comedy yet we want to achieve a low-light in the dressing room. It will only let me upload two images so theres a still from Submarine, similar to what I'm aiming for, and also a floor plan as well! Any sort of replies/comments would be great - Thanks!

 

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Edited by Ross Cullen
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Your reference pic seems to be mostly lit with dimmed practicals. There is an overhead lamp which is giving the room a sort of base level, then the close lamps right and left are lighting the actor's face. They are pushed against the wall to create nice shapes that quickly falloff, and they are dimmed down to make them warmer. The light to the bg right could be used as a soft-ish key or backlight if an actor moves towards the foreground table (where they would also be lit from top). But it also provides a nice contrast between the two spaces on that particular wide shot.

Placing practicals close to things (walls, furniture, actors faces like here) will allow you to keep the light contained and create the contrast you want for a moody look. You can put them on one or several dimmer circuits to warm up the colour and have them adjusted to be not too bright when in frame.

If you want some practicals around the sofa area as key, like the reference, it might limit your actors movements too much so you might need to supplement with a bit of extra light in a similar direction.

If you use the overheads as a top light in the centre sofa area I's suggest trying to keep the light off the walls to not interfer with the background. That way you can get nice moody pools of light from the background practicals. Skirting a toplight or using barndoors/snapgrids for instance works well.

You have a built set so that gives you options to remove walls. But black solids out of frame (black curtain on speedrail or in a frame) can help you get more contrast and avoid bounce from the white walls if needed. You could also ask for the walls to be a mid to light grey instead ? They'll look sort of white but just darker. Should give you a bit more margin if you want to keep the light moody ?

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