How would you approach this scene?

[Jeven Dovey]

I have a challenging situation to work with. I'm doing a series of videos for a baseball company and I am shooting 4 minute videos in the location shown on the pictures attached. I have a choice, either shoot with the field in the background or the reverse which is a boring grey wall. I prefer the field, however, the sun is blazing behind. I have an Epic and a Scarlet Dragon.

Which way would you choose to shoot?

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Here are some ideas for you:

Shoot with green screen, then composite the field in post

Shoot at the right time, when the field isn't blazing from the sun, which means early morning or late afternoon, that way you won't have to bring in as much lighting

Or shoot anytime, and bring some HMI's. You can always roll HDRX in tandem with HMI's, so you could get away with less light. If you need to do a lot of HFR stuff, I believe the max is 60fps in HDRX mode, so you'd be losing extra FPS options that you have when not shooting HDRX.

I would definitely at least record a few plates of the field, just in case you need to rotoscope in post. I know a pain, but if for whatever reason during you get back into the edit and it just doesn't look right, you'll have a backup.

 

[Robert Hart]

If you are doing a cutaway which is a ball getting struck by the bat, don't forget a bit of backlight and some fuller's earth on the bat or some talcum powder on the ball for some floating dust after the smack and bat and ball leave the frame. A bit cliche I know but maybe --- ??.

My personal preference would be for the field in the background but an issue could be your weather and changing light levels in the background.

 

[Jeven Dovey]

Thanks for the tips. Basically greenscreen is out of the question. The camera will be moving too much and the composting is just not realistic in this budget. Also rotoscoping is not an option. These videos need to be turned out quick and there is a ton of content. So basically I'm limited to doing everything in camera along with some color correcting in post.

I have 2x M18s available and a 1200 HMI. Was thinking of shooting the m18's through some diffusion so it's not such a hard source then add a 575 from behind to give a nice hair light. With this setup I will be shooting 2 - 3 cameras and rolling continuously for 4ish minutes. (wide and 2 close ups). So the goal will be to bring the overall luminance up on the talents face but not looking over lit and still getting a nice exposure in the background.

I wish I had some time to do some tests with this but I'm very limited on budget and time.

Plan A will be to light as I said above and Plan B is to flip the set and shoot the grey wall. Hopefully get some set dressing from the client to spruce it up a bit.

The fullers earth is a great idea. Will have to get some for the shoot.

Thoughts?

 

[Elsie N]

Can you shoot both Plan A and plan B? 4 minutes each shouldn't be too time consuming for the interviewee.

 

[Jeven Dovey]

Probably not. There is more content to shoot throughout the day and we're limited with talent. However, that is a good idea. Maybe do the safe shot first get through all the content then roll back to do plan A as the sun gets lower in the sky.

 

[Will Turner]

You can also take a large double net and hang it behind the subject. Set it far enough back that it's out of your depth of field. That will buy you another stop of light.

You can also experiment with shooting at 1600 ISO to really control those highlights. You'll bump up the noise but with two 1.8 HMI's you should be fine for a 2K/1080 output.

 

[Mike McMillin]

Hey I don't know if you shot this yet but I feel like I get put into these rough situations all the time on tight budgets. Realistically I would put both m18's next to each other shooting through diffusion for your key and use your 1200 and 575 diffused next to each other to pump as much as you can for fill and bounce your backlight in from the field if possible and that should get you pretty close. A large net would be ideal though. Personally I wouldn't risk going above 800 on something for a corporate client. You can pull this off with what you have. Post after you have made an edit!