Background and lighting advice?

[Dennis Size]

This should work nicely…..only a little bit lighter and more blue than this picture depicts..
DS

[Rick Wise]

The drop pictured is often called a “scumble drop.” It can be stretched flat, or, as it is more often, draped “artistically”. I would imagine you would use 3-point lighting for your talent, and your 4th light for the background, which can be lit from above, the side, or from below. The further away from the talent you set the drop, the more you can make it soft-focus, which always helps. (Try to shoot close to wide open by scrimming down your lights to just above the bare minimum. On the other hand, your lens may not be as sharp on the talent as you’d like in the wide open position.)

Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com

[Stan Welks]

Hi Dennis,

Just curious your reasons for suggesting this?

Thanks!

[Stan Welks]

Hi Rick,

1. Would it be good to use two lights to light the background instead of one?

2. What do you mean by “drop?”

3. How do you scrim Kinos?

Thanks!

[Rick Wise]

1. Two lights or one? All depends on the look you want. Light and shape to please your eye and your clients’ eyes.

2. A “drop” (and a scumble drop)is a cloth (usually) sheet of any size that can be hung as background. Painters use them to protect the floors and furniture of houses they are painting. Painter drops are usually white, except that over time they take on the many color splashes of the various house paints used over them. A really well used painter’s drop can make an interesting scumble drop. You could find a local painter and offer to exchange one of his or her well-used drops for a fresh one. You want something big enough to drape in folds, say 12′ x 12′. Do not get plastic ones. Only cloth. (The plastic will not drape well and will have a very shiny, ugly surface.)

3. You scrim kinos either with grip scrims you hold in place with c-stands, or else with neutral density gels (ND3 = 1 stop, ND6 = 2 stops, etc.)

Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com

[Todd Terry]

If you need an “in action” look at what Rick and Dennis are talking about… as luck would have it early last week I directed a series of four commercials for an insurance company using that same exact backdrop.

We just wrapped post on them… they look like this:

https://fantasticplastic.com/bakerwoodward/FCSSyvonne.wmv

The setup was actually super easy. I usually kinda wad up my drops, but in this case it was stretched tight on a 6×6 Hollywood frame about six feet behind the talent. Talent was lit with one 650w open-face tungsten instrument in a white umbrella, white 4×4 bounce card held by a duckbill clamp on a C-stand for fill, and a 300w fresnel up in the grid for a back/hairlight. A little 200w Pepper fresnel was immediately behind the talent on a short stand lighting the backdrop, with a bit of 1/2 CTB just clipped on it with a couple of C47s to give it some color. Camera was about seven feet away from talent, shot 35mm format with 50mm and 80mm lenses both wide open at f/1.3. I would have probably personally perfered a softer more blurry background, but this was the look that the client wanted.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Stan Welks]

Thanks for sharing that link. I like it, though I am not sure if it might be better to use a solid soft color background instead. The interpreters will be using their arms and hands the whole time while interpreting and am just wondering if the darks and lights in the background might make it more difficult to view.

[Dennis Size]

You’ll find that blue will service you well as a background behind just about any flesh tone. You could just go with just a soft blue drape but texture will relieve some of the “boredom” of a boring flat blue color….. hence my suggestion of the scumbled blue backdrop. My only quibble with the drop I suggested is that it might be a little too “busy” — and too dark. You don’t want the background to distract from your foreground subjects.
You could easily create what you need using the drop I suggested as a “concept”.
Just go buy a hunk of blue fabric, some paint, and a few cheap Par cans to “slash” your slightly swagged creation.
Have fun with it. If it’s too overpowering just tone down the amount of light on it.
DS

[Dennis Size]

Very pretty Todd!

I think for Stan’s purposes however he should add a layer of blue gel to the backdrop light …just to “wash down” the texture a bit while making the whole background “richer”…… I’d use a Roscolux #68, or perhaps the gutsier #80. Of course, for a more subdued look, one, or even two layers of Full CT Blue could be used.

DS

[Todd Terry]

Thanks, Dennis…

Actually, the background lighting in that instance was not what my original plan was.

I had planned to not light the background at all, because I wanted it quite dark for contrast as I had originally planned to do white letterboxing, not black. That’s why I used an umbrella rather than a softbox so the key would give just a bit of ambient light to the studio. But the client didn’t think the backdrop “looked blue” enough. They said “Can’t you just put some blue gel on it?” I tried in vain to explain that you can’t just “put gel” on something, that you have to have a lighting instrument to PUT it on… they didn’t quite understand that light was needed to enable the gel to work (insert eyeroll here). So finally I grabbed a little Pepper that was sitting unused a few feet away on stage and slapped some CTB on it to show them. They liked it and that’s what we went with.

I actually thought the end result was far too cheesy “Sears Portrait Studio” for my taste… but one doesn’t argue with those who are writing the checks. Well, actually, I do argue, just not too much.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com