Lighting Advice for Meeting room

[Mark Suszko]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Cc

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[Casey Wilson]

Thank you Todd and Mark.

1. Cannot move the talent.

2. Cannot turn overhead house lights off. They will need to be on for the filming.

3. Large instruments in re front by the talent would be an issue.

I know I am being selfish and not very flexible with the room situation.
For some the video is the priority and for most the room is the priority. makes it difficult.
This is not a one and done shoot, but something that would be semi permanent.

I appreciate all the help.

Question…
When you look at the original picture, what are your opinions of the shot?
What do you like, dislike about the lighting and color??

Thanks!!

[Todd Terry]

[Casey Wilson] “When you look at the original picture, what are your opinions of the shot? “

Well, it’s pretty bad from simply a camera perspective. It might look perfectly fine from a live audience view, and it seems like that is the priority. The frame is just extraordinarily busy, with a guy with either flat (or just available) lighting, he’s in front of a very busy fireplace, there’s a mantle growing out of his head, all kinds of flora and tchotchkes around that give the frame a very busy look. That visually makes your job of lighting him in an interesting and “popping” way so much harder because you are not only physically constrained by the space, but visually your talent is fighting all of these other elements in the frame. Sounds like there’s not much you can do about that.

[Casey Wilson] “What do you like, dislike about the lighting and color?? “

Well the color is a bit unnaturally warm, but at least it looks uniform… you don’t seem to be having any color issues because of mixed lighting types, which is good. Fixing that could be as simple as lowering the color temperature on your camera…

…which still isn’t great, but at least isn’t unnaturally warm. If you can’t do that in camera (although you should be able to), it’s easy to do in post.

[Casey Wilson] “I know I am being selfish and not very flexible with the room situation. “

No, you are not… we are all often constrained by things on location we can’t change. The only inflexibility doesn’t seem to be your fault, and it’s a little bit of a no-win or non-solution kind of situation. It’s a bit akin to going to a doctor with a broken leg and asking “Which of these band-aids do I need.” You’re told “No, you need a cast,” but insist “No, I can only use band-aids.” Sometimes in the face of absolutely-immovable situations things just can’t be done exactly as you like, and often just doing “the best I can do” or even just not doing something is the best (or only) option.

Hope it works out well for you…

T2

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

[Mark Suszko]

Unscrew the bulbs immediately above the fireplace. Leave them out, or replace them with bulbs of half as much wattage. Close off or draw curtains on the big windows behind the camera. Put up one 150-watt light on a stand behind the camera, and focus it very tightly.

You can try to “fix” this in post, instead, but it will prove to be very time-consuming to motion-track a vignette mask around the speaker. On your side is the fact they are bound to the podium area, means less tracking problems for the rotoscoping.

On your NLE timeline, make two video tracks. On the topmost track, you use the drawn mask plug-in in final cut pro ten to mask out everything around the speaker, using a softened edge. On the bottom layer, apply Gaussian Blur, and drop the overall brightness a bit.

If nothing else, this will give you something to show the folks in charge so they can visualize the changes you propose. Beyond that, advice can’t help people that won’t take it. I sympathize: this is not something that you face alone, believe me.

[Mark Suszko]

Slightly less-hurried version of the “look” achieved in FCP7 using Gaussian blur and darker color correction levels on the bottom layer, vignette effect on top layer, with an oval mask in-between containing feathered edges. Once built, this effect could be saved off and applied to new footage pretty quickly using the “paste attributes” function.