Help Shooting a White Background Shoots

[abdull_alhamad]

Hi Guys

I have a commercial to shoot.
we will shoot it in a studio with withe background
and the actors will be in black ( silhouette )
the white area to cover is about 15 meters width and 8 meters hight
the shots always will be wide shots.

help me with it please.


Regards,,

 

[Daniel Reichenbach]

Silhouette like in the apple spots?

 

[Dominic Jones]

Over-light the white cyc slightly to blow it out (you want it just past the point of clipping) with lots of soft sources, and make sure you keep the exposure even across the surface.

If you're looking for a total silhouette (i.e. completely black, no detail) then make sure you've got plenty of flags and blacks around to kill spill on your FG - and bear in mind that full-length shots pose a slight challenge, and will require very soft backlights from both sides of the subject. Your foreground (assuming that you're shooting on Red?) will need to be about 10 stops under your background exposure to pull detail into total black, although I would suggest that you'd be better off lighting to about 7-8 stops under to allow some detail to be kept, giving a richness to the darkness that can be controlled in the grade to get the precise look you're after.

Also, sounds obvious, but avoid bright clothing on your foreground characters, and if they can have dark skin as well, then so much the better!

Have fun...
Dom.

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

Over-light the white cyc slightly to blow it out (you want it just past the point of clipping) with lots of soft sources, and make sure you keep the exposure even across the surface.

If you're looking for a total silhouette (i.e. completely black, no detail) then make sure you've got plenty of flags and blacks around to kill spill on your FG - and bear in mind that full-length shots pose a slight challenge, and will require very soft backlights from both sides of the subject. Your foreground (assuming that you're shooting on Red?) will need to be about 10 stops under your background exposure to pull detail into total black, although I would suggest that you'd be better off lighting to about 7-8 stops under to allow some detail to be kept, giving a richness to the darkness that can be controlled in the grade to get the precise look you're after.

Also, sounds obvious, but avoid bright clothing on your foreground characters, and if they can have dark skin as well, then so much the better!

Have fun...
Dom.

You might want to test, but I think you'd get a cleaner white if you light to just before clipping, then push the rest in color correction later.

 

[SF Geek]

I would agree with Dylan, that you should get just under clipping since you are going to be pushing the contrast a lot. If you are seeing head to toe you can't just light the background or else the area underneath their feet will be too dark. If they are wearing full black suits that cover their entire body you'll just have specular highlights on the suits to deal with. If you don't see the floor beneath their feet, then you can tabletop a large solid over their heads to block a lot of light reflection. I would use spacelights to light the area as well. Lighting from the floor can be tricky if you're shooting a large area.

 

[Tyler Black]

You might try shooting it on green screen. Then you can shoot the talent full frame and not worry about flagging too much. Use plenty of soft light. Then in post, put in a white background and matte your foreground objects opaque black.

 

[abdull_alhamad]

thank you so much guys
i will do a small test with my canon digital camera ( 450D )
and i will post it here.

Regards

 

[Spike Baumann]

Doing it with a green screen would be much easier. After you key the green then add a drop shadow with 100% opacity in after effects and then make the layer with 0% opacity. The drop shadow will stay but the subject will disappear.

 

[SF Geek]

You guys and your post tricks.

 

[Dominic Jones]

You might want to test, but I think you'd get a cleaner white if you light to just before clipping, then push the rest in color correction later.

Hi Dylan,

Just wanted to follow up on this, for my own sake, really!

My thinking was that if you very slightly clip all of the channels, you get a flat white BG with the ability to control FG contrast and level without worrying about your BG becoming uneven or less than 100% luminance.

I'm assuming (perhaps I'm wrong?) that your thinking is that by clipping you're in danger of getting a slight colour cast if you don't clip all of the channels, hence pushing the image in post circumvents this problem?

Interested to know your thought in a bit more depth, if you've got the time mate?...

Cheers!
Dom.

 

[Leif Thomas]

we will shoot it in a studio with withe background
and the actors will be in black ( silhouette )
the white area to cover is about 15 meters width and 8 meters hight
the shots always will be wide shots.

We did exactly this last week for a soft drink commercial. The studio was a bit smaller (about half the width) and the dp had a hard time to light the feet.

We lit the background to about 90% (no clipping) and it was no problem to key it in Nuke. But the feet were a problem, cause we couldn't light the base too strong (reflexes on shoes).

The Post-Team did a previs on set and managed to merge 2 keys (1 for the background, one for the darker floor) - and that worked out pretty good.