Lighting a club scene for a music video

[Bryce Lansing]

I am DPing a hip hop music video coming up soon, and it will take place in a club. Does anyone have any tips and/or advice for lighting a club scene? Has anyone shot a club scene before?

 

[Justin Chin]

Yeah, I've done it. The budget didn't get us a lot of lighting fixtures, and mounting options. I tried to "pre-light" as much as I could using pipe hangers, and the look I was trying to go for was pools of colored light, foreground and back to create density. We where shooting a lot of offspeed and so I had to really tweak lighting more than I wanted to.

Here's the video:
http://www.vimeo.com/3215279

That version is way more blown out than the one I have. I'm not happy with some of the shots that either the director picked/or that I shot. Grading could have been better, but this was on a crazy budget. I didn't even have an AC, or a Gaffer on this shoot. I managed it all with some real inexperienced guys.

As for tips... if you can handle it, shoot only a portion or one side of the club. It's a pain to wrangle hip-hoppers in a club scene, and not having a set area of shooting can be a nightmare, with extras walking in and out of a shot. But most of this depends on how you want it to look. Also, use an ear piece and walkies. I'm glad I had mine set up, it was the only way to talk to my grip and have him tweak lighting with payback and party music roaring. And this was a closed set.

 

[Bryce Lansing]

Thanks for the tips Justin,

Did you shoot that on the Red? At the same time I'm trying to figure out how to light this, I need to try to figure out any possible Red issues. This will be my first time lighting for Red. Would the Red be really bad with partial exposures on strobing club lights?

 

[Florian Stadler]

Backlight backlight backlight! Use a oncamera ringlight for fill from the front and a big soft key if you have control