Background and lighting advice?

[Dennis Size]

Now THAT’s funny ….. but it’s so typical.

Speaking of blue, and eyes rolling around in one’s head, last month I did a redesign of the O’REILLY FACTOR for FOX NEWS. The background scenic elements were a woodgrained wall, a gray backed etched plexiglass full of FOX logos, that framed an LED wall, and an RP Screen.
Bill O’Reilly’s head was centered in the LED wall for his close-ups. When guests were on set the RP screen was the center background element. I suggested we use a warm blue in the LED wall to make Bill’s head/body “pop out”, and to flatter his eyes. Bill loved it but didn’t like the amber woodgrained walls, so the Producers asked me to make them blue — but with colored light. Paint’s so damn expensive you know! 🙂
(It’s tough enough to make warm amber wood blue; but I did … with LOTS of light).
That was a big hit, so — since nothing succeeds like excess — they then asked for all the elements to be blue.
Now Bill is swimming in a sea of “tone-on-tone” blues, with absolutely no delineation between all the expensively crafted elements in the background. (The etched plexi wall of logos was only about $10,000.00 ….. and you can barely distinguish it!)

Is this a crazy business or what?
DS

[Todd Terry]

[Dennis Size] “Bill loved it”

Ok, now you’re forcing me to tell a Bill O’reilly story…

In a previous life many years ago, I did promotions for an NBC television station. Every year there was a convention of promotions types from all over the country… and usually the stars from many the shows (both syndicated and network) would come and schmooze.

Most of the celebs realized that we were there to help them and controlled their on-air promotion (or lack thereof), and most would fall over themselves to be nice to us.

Oprah gave us lavish gifts. Merv let me cut in line at lunch when I was late. Sally Jesse bummed a light in the hall. I sang karoke at a party with Kelsey Grammer. Vanna gave me a ride in her car. Montel let me rub his head.

Lots of butt kissing.

Except from Mr. O’Reilly.

A bigger jerk I have yet to meet. He wouldn’t even talk to anyone, just hid in the hall smoking and being bothered and holier-than-thou. I just wanted to yell at him and say “You’re on a frikkin’ tabloid show, for cripesake” (Inside Edition, at the time).

Anyway, that’s my Bill O’Reilly story.

And now we’re waaay off topic….

T2

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

[Dennis Size]

Your assessment is 100% correct!

…but isn’t this REALLY the topic!

DS

[Mark Suszko]

“Blank it, we’ll just do it live!”

Back to the lighting thing; signer-interpreters are special cases, I’ve worked with them in the past. What seemingly works best for them and their audiences is kind of dull for the rest of us, but they really need the face, hands and upper body as clear as possible, with no distractions behind them or edging them, so featureless gradients are better IMO than any patterns or patterned drops.

I wound up using a dove gray photog’s paper roll on stands, and a simple round open-faced spot, softened with tough spun and flooded out to give a bit of gradient to it, flagged off to just hit the paper, and I controlled the contrast ratio to favor the foreground significantly. I gel these (If at all) with a blue or green generally, as the warmer shades start to compete in contrast ratio. The nice thing about the gray paper is you can gel or light it to look like any color and any brightness from black up to bright white.

Signers tend to wear solid black or at least dark, patternless clothes (kind of goth) to keep the “canvas” as neutral as possible and keep the hands easy to see. Some side-lighting that helps define the arms from the front of the body may be helpful, but don’t overdo rim lighting anything.

Keeping the background to a simple grad means you can help define sections of the narrative by alternating colored gels if you like. But discuss that in advance with the clients, obviously.

[Dennis Size]

This same issue was discussed a year ago in the Lighting Forum.
For further info check back to the subject below on January 21, 2008.

background muslin color?
by Ty Ford on Jan 21, 2008 at 6:04:17 pm