How to light a room with a beautiful ocean view

[Todd Terry]

[Darin Miyashiro] “I don’t want to spend a lot of money”

That’s going to be the tricky part, as the usual best solution is not cheap.

The usual way would be to do two things… cut the amount of light coming in through the window and increase the illumination inside. Bumping up your interior light is going to be the expensive part. For such a drastic difference in light levels, HMI lighting inside would be best… daylight balanced and many many times brighter than any kind of Home Depot work lights. But they come with a cost… to buy, they are many many thousands of dollars. To rent, a single 1200w HMI (which I’d say is the bare minimum you’d need) will probably come in at around $300-$400. That’s about the biggest HMI instrument that you can easily and safely run off of ordinary household outlets (with 15amp breakers).

Cutting the lighting output through the windows is easier and cheaper. You can try stretching a layer of black screen door mesh across the opening. With proper focusing it can appear invisible and cut the exterior light by a stop or maybe even two.

Another option would be to light the interior as best you can, and shoot at daybreak or dusk when light levels are better. Keep in mind though that to look natural you still want the exterior levels quite a bit higher than interior.

Or…

If the shot is locked down and no moving talent is violating the window, shoot it twice and expose once for the interior and once for the exterior. In editing, use the exterior exposure as a background plate and on top of that overlay the interior exposure, matting out the shape of the window.

T2

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

[Mark Suszko]

Todd has covered it all. HMI’s can solve this problem, but just a spare bulb for a Joker-Bug is around $300 in the B&H catalog, yikes.

We have faced similar problems when the Big Boss we’re interviewing needs to be seen behind his aircraft carier sized desk with the huge picture window behind it. Lacking funds for the HMI, we just blasted the room with hot quartz lights, but we also had very wide rolls of combination Neutral density and daylight to tungsten correction gel, made by Rosco, and since his window was one huge pane of glass without mullions, it was relatively easy to squeegee the gel onto the window edge-to-edge invisibly (to the camera). To the human eye it looks horrible, which is why you always show the client a monitor shot to assuage their trepidation that you don’t know what you’re doing. The gel or mesh scrim that Todd referred to can also be stapled to a wooden frame that is hung on the outside of the window, if you can reach that spot. Be careful though because under certain conditions the scrim can develop a moire’ pattern on camera. I prefer actual gels, but those need to be very taut on the frame or the wind will rattle and wrinkle them.

I’ve also done the double-exposure trick Todd mentions, and when I did that, it was back before compositing, so I had to “composite” by A/B rolling the tapes live and setting up a soft edged wipe in the switcher, praying nobody bumped the tripods and the talent didn’t move anythign in front of the window…

These days some punk kid can fix this in three seconds in post setting up a power window in Apple Color, harrumph:-)

[John Sharaf]

I just received delivdedry of a pair of the new “biggest lights you can plug into the wall”, namely the Arri 1800W. It can be configured as an “Arrimax” with facetted reflector for 20-60 degree open face use of as a parlight with lenses. either way it’s a massive amount of light from a household plug.

Another trick up my sleeve is to mount up to four 800watt Jokers on a special Chimera Speedring inside a Medium Quartz bank. This amounts to 3200 watts of daylight and I’ve used it with bright backgrounds successfully.

Obviously both these solutions, or really anything else that would work will cost money (rental or gels purchase) and as unpleasent as that may be, you have to be honest about that reality with your client.

JS

[Darin Miyashiro]

Here’s the video I did. It was a cloudy overcast day.
The last shot towards the end is blown out. But not sure how it would look if it was a sunny day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwKM4pPmdq4

[Richard Herd]

How big is the room?
And how much is in the shot?

[Richard Herd]

Looks good.

Felt like a “horror movie point of view” style, and the music is a bit creepy.

$0.02

[Darin Miyashiro]

The house is haunted! hahaha
Just kidding….it was a really quick rush job video.
Thanks for your input! I just slapped together the sound track
from soundbooth. Didn’t know what else to put, didn’t want to use
copyrighted music.

Thanks for the input though!

Aloha

[Matt Stoltz]

Hey Darin

I watched your Hawaii Beach Front video and it looks great -I am curious -Im guessing you shot this with a 5D mark II? I have one as well and a 7D –

Can I ask what steady cam unit you used?-Did you use a Glide Cam unit by chance?

thanks

Matt

[Matt Stoltz]

Hey Darin

I watched your Hawaii Beach Front video and it looks great -I am curious -Im guessing you shot this with a 5D mark II? I have one as well and a 7D –

Can I ask what steady cam unit you used?-Did you use a Glide Cam unit by chance?

thanks

Matt

[Darin Miyashiro]

Thanks, I used a Canon 5D MK2.
I used just a tripod dolly to shoot this.
I wish I had a glidecam or some sort of high end
dolly system. Probably make me a home made dolly.

Wow, you have a 5D mk2 and a 7D? wow! which shoots better video?
What about your post production? Do you use a mac pro and final cut?
I’m thinking of buying a MAC PRO, but not sure which one I should get. I just read that the new IMAC 27″ is faster than the 2.66 quad mac pro and also the 8 core 2.26 mac pro.

I’m just worried about the rendering. Maybe i should wait for the I9 mac pros 6 core.

Thanks!