Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Lighting Setup Question

Scott Lamoreaux

Scott Lamoreaux

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 14, 2014
Messages
316
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
San Diego/NYC
I've been commissioned to do a for trade marketing video for an upscale barber/shave shop inside a collab space warehouse. I have an idea of what I want to do for the bulk of the video however I need some help on lighting design for the beginning.

My idea is to have my talent ride in on a motorcycle park outside and walk into the warehouse. I want to film the pulling up scene and track him via Ronin with one camera angle head-on with him walking towards me and another following from behind. If he's walking into a warehouse how would I light this type of scenario when I have a subject walking 20-30 feet into a poorly lit warehouse space?

I know I should probably sketch a floor plan out to show the layout but any ideas until I can put that up?

Thank you!!
 
A floor plan with a sketch of the path would help, along with a 360 of the place for rigging, what part of the world you don't see, etc. What type of budget and crew size do you got to work with? How do you want warehouse to look?
 
Jon Carr said:
A floor plan with a sketch of the path would help, along with a 360 of the place for rigging, what part of the world you don't see, etc. What type of budget and crew size do you got to work with? How do you want warehouse to look?
Click to expand...

I'll sketch something up and get it posted for a visual and take a few scout photos of the spot. There are operating business leasing the space so I will have to account for those variables as well. Budget is $0 as I plan to use all my own equipment. I have a Arri Fresnel 3 light kit (1 650, 2 300s), own my ronin etc. San Diego lacks a film industry so I don't happen to know anyone to assist so It'll be a one man show more or less.

For the warehouse, I want it to maintain more or less the natural look it has to the eye. (i'll share photos shortly) I just want to give that professional "pop" to it instead of a flat/low contrast video look.

Thanks for the help.
 
Jon Carr said:
A floor plan with a sketch of the path would help, along with a 360 of the place for rigging, what part of the world you don't see, etc. What type of budget and crew size do you got to work with? How do you want warehouse to look?
Click to expand...

Ok so here is a very rough quick sketch of the plan view of the space and some photos.

Floor Plan:
IMG_2877.jpg


Panorama looking out towards street:
IMG_2869.jpg


Outside looking in:
IMG_2870.jpg


Inside entry looking in:
IMG_2857.jpg


-------------------------

Any help on lighting suggestions given the tracking of the talent from time he gets off the bike to walking into the shop per the sketch path of travel. I want it to be lit but semi-moody.

Thank you,

Scott
 
I would do an iris pull. There's a lovely example in Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO. You'll know it when you see it.

On a Ronin, I would set a hyperfocal distance and move my wireless focus motor over to the iris.
 
Since its almost like 1 shot commercial, basically 1 follow and 1 lead shot intercut. For the follow/leading shots I would probably shoot it during sunset when the light matches the inside a little better. Then since your following/leading I would make use of the practicals in the barber shop and the defiantly the other tenants. Hiding some tungsten units in other tenants spaces to push some of the practicals while letting your subject go dark and then lit, then dark, then lit etc. Also Gage your cutting points of the walk when your inside to work with the units you have. Does it have to be 1 take from the bike to the barber or can you break it into 2 since you don't have much lights? But you would need to scout this during sunset and get some readings from your light meter and see whats livable and whats not. Defiantly try to get some more units, or china balls.
 
Bob's ND pull sounds pretty cool. A wireless FF driving your geared iris might be easier still. While it's certainly possible to give you a lighting set-up & iris or ND set up that might let you work with a bright exterior, why not embrace your lack of lighting budget and shoot this piece at dusk when the light will be more consistent inside to outside? Then you can make do with your limited lighting resources. You can overcome some color temp mismatches in resolve and dissolve between looks for interior and exterior. Your lighting kit won't do much other than put an edge on things inside, but that's okay. Make do with what you have and make it the best you can. Good luck!
 
A magic hour thing could certainly work, if that's the look that the script calls for. But remember, magic hour is about 15 minutes.
 
As you can see for yourself from your location stills, you have a big contrast problem. Without substantially boosting the light level inside, when you open the iris for the interior levelse the exterior will blow out big time. If you expose for the exterior to hold detail, your talent will be underexposed and become a near silhouette. So unless shooting your talent in silhouette after he enters the building can be part of your production design, you are going to have to do some gripping and lighting to reduce the contrast range of the scene.

If the entry weren’t so large and there were not so many windows you could cover the windows with a combination of 85/ND9 gel. The gel would both convert the exterior daylight from 5500K to 3200K and knock down the level outside by three stops, so that your tungsten lights would be effective. But, where a roll of 85/ND9 gel will set you back $140.00, it will be expensive and very time consuming to gel that many windows and then you have the problem of the entry. I would instead break the shot down into two shots. One shot outside of the biker pulling up and entering the building. As soon as he enters the building, cut to a second shot from the inside. You will have no problem with the exterior shot and for the interior you can hang double nets over the outside of the windows. Hanging double nets will be a lot quicker and cheaper than gelling the window. For the entry I would get an oversized net (like a 20x20) and angle it relative to the entry to make it fatter to camera, which will cut the contrast by more than a stop. If you angle the net, your biker can walk in the open side so that by the time he enters the garage the camera is looking at a background that is cut-down by the net.

Without gelling the windows to 3200K, using your tungsten light kit doesn’t make a lot of sense. Balancing tungsten to 5000K is not very efficient because full color temperature blue correction gel (Full CTB) cuts the output of the light by 70% in converting it to 5000K. A 1000W 3200K light becomes a 300W 5000K light when you put Full CTB on it. The output you get after correction is not nearly enough to address the contrast problem you will still have even after putting up the double nets.

Since you can’t reduce the contrast range by three stops by gelling the windows with 85/ND9 you probably need at least a 4k HMI par to pick up the interior levels. You can probably rent an older 4k Par or Fresnel with a magnetic ballast fairly cheaply, but then the problem is finding a large enough 120V circuit to power it since it will draw roughly 40Amps. The only way I know of to power a 4kw HMI magnetic ballast off the wall is to use a 240v-to-120v step down transformer on 240V wall receptacle. There is a company by the name of ScreenLight & Grip that manufactures them for Honda EU6500is generators that they modify. Like it does with the enhanced 240V output of their Honda EU6500s, a step down transformer will convert the output of a 240V receptacle to 120 volts in a single circuit that is the sum of the two single phase legs. If there is a restaurant or coffee shop in the warehouse with either a 30A or 50A 240V receptacle, a 7.5kVA step-down transformer will give you a 60A/120v circuit, which is more than enough to power a 4kw HMIs with magnetic ballast.

Between the double net outside and a 4k HMI inside you should be able to reduce the contrast range to what the camera can handle.

Paul Dean
 
If you like the look of your first picture, then you don't need to do anything other than iris pull, one take.
 
Jon Carr said:
Since its almost like 1 shot commercial, basically 1 follow and 1 lead shot intercut. For the follow/leading shots I would probably shoot it during sunset when the light matches the inside a little better. Then since your following/leading I would make use of the practicals in the barber shop and the defiantly the other tenants. Hiding some tungsten units in other tenants spaces to push some of the practicals while letting your subject go dark and then lit, then dark, then lit etc. Also Gage your cutting points of the walk when your inside to work with the units you have. Does it have to be 1 take from the bike to the barber or can you break it into 2 since you don't have much lights? But you would need to scout this during sunset and get some readings from your light meter and see whats livable and whats not. Defiantly try to get some more units, or china balls.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't have to be one take at all. I thought about doing 3 separate takes to begin with (1 follow -- start at shoes and tilt up to back of the upper torso), one leading camera facing front of talent and walking in with him, then a side angle shot walking in and out of frame.

As you and some of the other people have posted, I think doing it at sunset would be perfect so I'm not way off on my exposures inside/outside otherwise I'll be blown out. I'm thinking this:

Shoot talent riding up on bike, parking, pulling off helmet, walking outside towards entrance
Cut to a follow shot once he's inside, side angle from waist down showing walking in and out of frame, then cut to the head-on leading shot, then back to follow as he walks into the barber. All while placing the lights hidden in the tenant spaces up high and angled down into the path of travel?

The whole FF seems awesome but no budget for it nor the crew to man it while I'm runnin + gunnin on the Ronin.
 
Don't fear the blow out. It can be quite beautiful.
 

Attachments

  • Cruise Blown Out 1.jpg
    Cruise Blown Out 1.jpg
    30 KB · Views: 0
Paul Dean said:
As you can see for yourself from your location stills, you have a big contrast problem. Without substantially boosting the light level inside, when you open the iris for the interior levelse the exterior will blow out big time. If you expose for the exterior to hold detail, your talent will be underexposed and become a near silhouette. So unless shooting your talent in silhouette after he enters the building can be part of your production design, you are going to have to do some gripping and lighting to reduce the contrast range of the scene.

If the entry weren’t so large and there were not so many windows you could cover the windows with a combination of 85/ND9 gel. The gel would both convert the exterior daylight from 5500K to 3200K and knock down the level outside by three stops, so that your tungsten lights would be effective. But, where a roll of 85/ND9 gel will set you back $140.00, it will be expensive and very time consuming to gel that many windows and then you have the problem of the entry. I would instead break the shot down into two shots. One shot outside of the biker pulling up and entering the building. As soon as he enters the building, cut to a second shot from the inside. You will have no problem with the exterior shot and for the interior you can hang double nets over the outside of the windows. Hanging double nets will be a lot quicker and cheaper than gelling the window. For the entry I would get an oversized net (like a 20x20) and angle it relative to the entry to make it fatter to camera, which will cut the contrast by more than a stop. If you angle the net, your biker can walk in the open side so that by the time he enters the garage the camera is looking at a background that is cut-down by the net.

Without gelling the windows to 3200K, using your tungsten light kit doesn’t make a lot of sense. Balancing tungsten to 5000K is not very efficient because full color temperature blue correction gel (Full CTB) cuts the output of the light by 70% in converting it to 5000K. A 1000W 3200K light becomes a 300W 5000K light when you put Full CTB on it. The output you get after correction is not nearly enough to address the contrast problem you will still have even after putting up the double nets.

Since you can’t reduce the contrast range by three stops by gelling the windows with 85/ND9 you probably need at least a 4k HMI par to pick up the interior levels. You can probably rent an older 4k Par or Fresnel with a magnetic ballast fairly cheaply, but then the problem is finding a large enough 120V circuit to power it since it will draw roughly 40Amps. The only way I know of to power a 4kw HMI magnetic ballast off the wall is to use a 240v-to-120v step down transformer on 240V wall receptacle. There is a company by the name of ScreenLight & Grip that manufactures them for Honda EU6500is generators that they modify. Like it does with the enhanced 240V output of their Honda EU6500s, a step down transformer will convert the output of a 240V receptacle to 120 volts in a single circuit that is the sum of the two single phase legs. If there is a restaurant or coffee shop in the warehouse with either a 30A or 50A 240V receptacle, a 7.5kVA step-down transformer will give you a 60A/120v circuit, which is more than enough to power a 4kw HMIs with magnetic ballast.

Between the double net outside and a 4k HMI inside you should be able to reduce the contrast range to what the camera can handle.

Paul Dean
Click to expand...

Wow Paul very detailed and wish I had the crew/budget for a setup like this. Since the space is shared with tenants, and open for business while shooting, I'm not being paid etc I have to keep it as simple as possible since I'm a one man operation. I think multiple takes instead of one take and worrying about the inside/outside exposure issues is the best way don't you think?
 
I guess I'm most concerned with what happens once he's past the tenants at the front of the warehouse and is in the open space. Do I keep moving the lighting to accommodate each portion of the shot? I know I'm limited here and will have to probably shoot wide open correct?
 
I was thinking shot 1 is wide, as he pulls up on the bike you are tracking towards him. He gets off the bike and you follow him in the building. Shot 2 picks up as a frontal medium leading him into the front end of the building. Shot three is medium wide following him into the barber shop.

Might be good to have someone with a daylight balanced china ball for the 3rd shot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top