Simple Lighting Setup
Written by: Bill Pryor

This shoot is a good example of a very simple but effective lighting setup.

Basically, it's about an 8 minute rant, whose title is unprintable on a family bulletin board. Sort of a Spaulding Gray approach, with a quick nude bedroom scene at the end (but that's not scheduled yet and I won't post those shots because I know nobody around here would be interested in them because the lighting will not be anything special) (note: insert ironically-challenged disclaimer here).

The shot is a guy at a coffee house talking to the camera as if it's a person across the little round table from him. In the background is another table, black wall and a couple of posters on the wall. All the background is soft unless I'm at full wide angle. The subject is keyed with one Lowel Caselight 4. It is on the same plane as the subject, rather than at a 45 degree angle. If only the key is on, the entire left side of his face from the nose over would be dark. Fill is from another Caselight 4 with only 2 of the lamps on and moved back about 12-15 feet. The key is about 6' away. The background has only some touches of light from a Caselight 2 with only one lamp and the barn doors folded pretty far in. The whole thing is pretty low key. Even with low illumination lighting like that, I was still at an f5.6 at a -3db with the DSR500. Damn thing sees in the dark. So I put on an ND.6 which got it down to about a 2.5. Then I tried out a Black Promist No. 2, which brought it to an f1.8, wide open the way I wanted. I liked the look of the heavy Promist, so I'm shooting that way. By shooting wide open, the background, which is about 8 feet or so away stays just a little bit soft, but you can still read the writing on one of the big posters when I'm fully wide or on a fairly long medium shot. On CUs and tighter, everything in the background goes soft and pops the subject more, which is the effect I want when cutting to a CU.

Camera settings are cranked up fairly soft, with a softening skin tone file on, plus some increased saturaton and warmth. I'll tweak it some more in post. All shots are static. A couple of wide shots, then mostly MS, CU and ECU. The stuff we shot today has good modeling but is fairly flat, in terms of light on the subject. Tomorrow the mood changes, so the lighting will be much more contrasty. I'll post a pic of each different setup.

You may have noticed no mention of a backlight. I didn't want it to look like a portrait. And, the subject is wearing a black t-shirt, which I wanted to blend into the black wall, so I turned off the backlight. Sometimes you can violate the rules.

Tomorrow will be a bit more difficult because everything will be on the chaircam...ie., hand held by me sitting in a chair. I'm going to try out the Marzpak for that, because it's about a 6 hour shoot, but it may make things too steady, and I'll probably have to do it strictly by hand.

Audio is with an MKH60, about 18" from the subject, through a Shure FP33 mixer, and Y XLR adapter to each channel in the camera. It's a bit boomy because the studio isn't totally finished yet, and the actor has a voice that resonates more than normal. However, I decided that sort of fit for the weirdness of the shoot. And tomorrow I probably will move the mic back a couple of feet to increase the boominess. Again, you can violate the rules for an effect.

This isn't a real film--it's a simple rant, done for therapeutic purposes. Makes me feel good. A couple of people who have read the script say that if it does get into any of the underground festivals, I will probably end up on the right wing web site hit lists, and that makes me feel even better. So, if you have a camera, I can highly recommend that you do your own rant film. Some things just feel good.

In order to do the thing myself when the talent was available, I simplified the shooting. I initially wanted to do forward, backward and sideways dolly shots and keep the camera in motion most of the time. However that would take two more people (1 for the dolly and one to follow focus), and you can't always get 2 more people together for no money during the week. Anyway, meaningless dolly shots that move in and out and sideways while a person is talking are very trite these days, so I think I'm better off without 'em.

The following links have some frame grabs.

Photo 1: Three Lowel Caselights were used for this scene. The key is a Caselight 4 on the right, full power. It is on a plane with the talent, ie. to the right, even with his shoulder, so his left side is not touched by it. Fill is from a Caselight 4 with only 2 lamps on, at about a 45 degree angle between the talent and camera. The key is about 6 feet away, fill is double that distance or more. At a -3db gain, the key was reading at an f5.6. By adding the No. 2 Black Promist and an ND.6 I was able to open up to an f1.8. In this wide shot the background is only slightly soft so the posters are readible, but the subject pops nicely with the contrast and slightly soft background. The background is illuminated by a Caselight 2 with both lamps on but barn doored way down and backed off quite a bit from the wall. The background light also put just a little backlight on the subject. I chose to use no other backlight because I didn't want a portrait look and wanted his left side to go down into the background.

Photo 2: A closeup of the talent under the same lighting setup as Photo 1 throws the background most all the way out of focus.

Photo 3: After the introductory monologue, the subject matter gets pretty grim, so I deleted the fill entirely and cut the background light down to a single lamp from the Caselight 2. I also pulled all the props so there's nothing but black around the talent. At the end of the introduction, we pan off to black and then pan back to this scene. Normally you would have to use just a bit of a fill light to keep the left side from being a total black hole, but there was enough bounce off the ceiling and wall to the far left to get the needed effect, which may or may not look like the real video, depending on your monitor. Notice in this shot how the talent's left ear (camera right) is sharper than his eye. That's because of the very shallow depth of field, and when he leans forward sometimes, his face can go a bit soft, which is OK too for the scene. When I moved in for an ECU of his eye, the depth of field was even shallower. All of this dark stuff was shot hand held, and I still have a stiff neck after two 3 hour sessions of that.