Thoughts on Lighting this Scene

[Mike Benton II]

Hey Everyone!

Just looking for some initial thoughts on lighting a scene. The goal is to film a local 30 second spot that is set in medieval times. The best location we could find was a local church that is currently used as an event space. My idea is to film at night, spread some candles around the location and let our lighting play off of that. That and some creative angles, should help hide some of the hardwood floors and other things we don't like about the location. (Please see attached photos.)

There are a couple of wide shot and then most of it goes into OTS shots back and forth between a couple of people taking, it relatively simple in terms of the shots. I was thinking of shooting daylight balanced fixtures through the windows, tungsten inside and shoot at 3200K. I'll bring in some soft source, like a couple of kinos through a 4x4 for the closeups. It will be fairly minimal with little to no fill or back light but the candles may play into that some. We have a mixture of arri tungsten and a lot of daylight fixtures, also a fairly standard 1 ton grip package.

Any tips or ideas? Anything I'm wrong about or should try different? I'm trying to find some samples to emulate so if you know of a similar scene please let me know.

Thanks!

 

[Vladimir Cazacu]

Star Trek Discovery did something quite similar to what you are describing last week (Season 2, Episode 2). If the production design/costumes look the part, it should end up looking quite nice.

Haze, fast primes (+ pro mist if you want to get the oldschool period film glow around the candles) or anamorphics would also help.

I've added some shots from the show: https://imgur.com/a/aTffnod

 

[Sterling Williams]

If you are wanting to motivate everything from the candles, then I would go for a warm look overall. So I wouldn't shoot at 3200, as that will make all of your tungsten light appear neutral.

If you balance at 5600k, it will make your window light more neutral and your candle/tungsten light super warm looking.


If it were me, I would try to get lights that are super warm for the interior (like 2000 kelvin, i think sky panels do this, or quasars) or throw CTO on everything. Then I would probably CTB the exterior lights (if you are going for a night look). Then white balance somewhere in the middle and have a nice mix of colors.