Lighting for seamless white background

[Todd Terry]

Well, firstly I think my goal would be to do something that looks a lot better than the sample video… I thought the lighting in that was pretty bad. It is very flat and uninteresting, and the key lights are too low giving everytone that sort of unnatural Boris Karlof look. They also didn’t appear to have any backlighting at all, which I personally think is sorely needed even with a white limbo background. I can’t be completely positive, but I’m pretty sure that was not a practical white backgroung… I’m pretty sure it was greenscreened. It’s just so white and perfect and a little bit around a couple of the talents’ hair it looked a bit keyed.

You have a little bit of a dilemma in that you don’t want something “cheap” yet you have a budget on the low end of $1000. You’ll need several instruments for this, and if you wanted to go higher-end you could easily spend a lot more than that on a single instrument.

I’d really suggest going a bit of the cheap and DIY route, if that’s your budget. Instruments like that can still be durable, if you do things right and take care of them.

For wallwashing I’d suggest hitting Home Depot and picking up some shop lights for about $15 each. At my place we’ve got plenty of toys including some pretty darn expensive lighting instruments, but I still use cheap shop lights for wallwashing and greenscreening. Why?… because even though they are cheap they still work fine and are a tiny fraction of the price of “real” instruments. I save the Kinos for applications where they are really needed.

I did modify the shop lights a bit to make them more usable… in fact I recently wrote about that in a post here…

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/47/860132

For talent, I’d light with a medium size softbox (somewhere in the 650-1000w range), and for fill I would use a white 4×4 (foamcore) in a Quacker (duckbill) clamp.

I’d backlight with a small fresnel, maybe a 100-300w Pepper fresnel, or an equivalent from Arri.

That backdrop stand is ok, and relatively cheap. I don’t know if you have any equipment already or are starting from scratch, but if you already have a couple of C-stands or other tall light stands you can buy a piece of 1/2″ electrical conduit from the hardware store for about $4 and use that as the crosspiece with your stands (held by a couple of grip heads) to rig a support for your seamless paper roll.

T2

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

[Dan Shaw]

Todd – Thank you! That was some great information. I agree that the video I gave an example of is not that great, I was more talking about the fact that it was white and also the cropping they were using. But yes, I hope mine will be better then that.

Also do you have any thoughts on muslin vs seamless paper?

Thanks Todd!

[Todd Terry]

[Dan Shaw] “…any thoughts on muslin vs seamless paper?”

Depends on the look you are going for… assuming you’re wanting that totally-flawless-solid-white limbo background, then that’s a job for a roll of white seamless paper.

Muslin will have a texture to it, would have to be stretched (both side to side and top to bottom) in a big Hollywood frame in order to get it perfectly flat, and you rarely see it in pure white.

T2

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

[John Sharaf]

Dan,

Two things; if this is just a one-off shoot, there’s no need to buy the gear, just rent it. Second, if this is a continuing project buy the proper gear and amortize it over time. Furthermore, if the project has a life of 6 months or a year, use it and then sell it, this is the cheapest scenario of all.

Paper vs. Muslin. Muslin is available in sizes larger than a seamless paper, which is really intended for head shots or full body shot of one person at most. It is reusable but sometimes you’ll need a steamer to eradicate wrinkles. Seamless is cheap and easy to rig.

Lighting kit is twofold; even lighting (left and right) for white backing. Not too much is necessary, but it must be a straight line across the waveform monitor at preferably 80 ire. I’d suggest 4’TwoBank Kino Flos

Second is your favorite portraiture lighting for the foreground, without polluting the white background. I’d recommend 2’FourBank KF for key and 2’TwoBank KF’s for fill and backlight.

These five lights plus stands and sand bags might cost $4000 or rent for $300-400/ day. Pick your poison!

Cheers,

JS

[Dan Shaw]

Thanks for the feedback John. This project of mine is going to be ongoing and a consistant part of my business so renting is out of the question. I don’t have the cashflow to put down thousands of dollars right now so I am going to take a tip from Todd and try to make a DIY system work. Once I am on my feet and have some “swagger” then I can upgrade to the big boys. 🙂 But thank you for laying out the lights that would be needed. This will help a lot.

I also have a very basic question that I am embarrassed to ask. Is there a good way to calculate the overall wattage that is output by multiple fluorescent lights? The reason I ask is that the math is just not adding up for me. For example on the web I see this:

“2000 Watt Photography and Digital Video Continuous Lighting Kit”

-Includes Ten (10) 45 Watt 5000k Compact Fluorescent Daylight Balanced Photo Bulbs

But then I do the math and I don’t understand how they got 2000 Watt’s? 45 x 10 = 450.

Is there a conversion process I am missing?

[Todd Terry]

The challenge comes from comparing apples and oranges…

Different types of instruments vary greatly in the amount of light they output per wattage.

A 1000w tungsten bulb puts out a certain amount of light. If you use an LED instrument that puts out the same amount of light (measured in lumens or footcandles), the wattage of that instrument is going to be a tiny fraction of that.

Another case is HMIs. I use a lot of 1200w HMIs, they are sort of my “go to” daylight instrument. But a 1200w HMI puts out about five times the amount of light as a 1200w tungsten instrument.

So what those manufacturers often do, is put a rough equivalent of output, expressed as if it were tungsten. That 2000w flo kit is not 2000 actual watts… you’re right, it’s 450 watts. But the seller is saying it’s equivalent in light output to 2000 tungsten watts. Yes, it can be confusing.

Sellers also fudge those numbers a lot. Someone claiming to have a 2000 or 3000 or whatever flo or LED kit or instrument might actually have a real output that is quite a bit less than that.

As I said, they are comparing apples to oranges.

T2

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

[Bill Davis]

Let me just pop in and note that while the lighting gear is certainly a factor, if you really want to push for quality – the location issue is probably as important as the gear.

In order to pull a very clean key – you need to light in zones. The background key material is one zone.

The talent is another zone.

You can also think of the camera itself as a third zone since the distance availble from camera to talent – talent to background are ALL relevant when it comes to keying.

If you don’t have enough space – particularly depth – keying is harder to do well.

A camera to background depth of 15 feet or more will help you. Less than 10 feet will make things MUCH harder. If you can get 20 feet plus, then you’re really cooking.

Just FYI

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Todd Terry]

Very true, Bill… although I think Dan is wanting to do it practically, with a real white seamless BG.

It was only me that brought up greenscreening, as I think that’s what was done in his sample.

Still, plenty of room is always a good thing. If I recall without watching it again, I belive the sample shots were all head-n-shoulders, nothing too wide. While a living room setting isn’t ideal by a long shot, it’s certainly doable there.

T2

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

[Dan Shaw]

Bill, Todd – You are right. My situation is a little tight as I am doing it in a spare room. But with my need to only light the upp half of me I should be ok. Thanks for all the great feedback and ill hopefully post an update with positive results! 🙂

[Jason Jenkins]

Dan, I recently did a shoot and achieved the ‘white limbo’ or ‘white infinity’ look with a white muslin background. I did stretch the cloth but there were still lots of wrinkles and it was not perfectly lit. All I did was overexpose the background a bit and all those flaws disappeared. I had to dim the keylight way down to avoid overexposing the doctor. I used four lights in total. The background was lit with a CDM Fresnel and a Kino Diva. The keylight was a Kino Diva running on 2 banks, dimmed down. The backlight was a little Switronix TorchLED.

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Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

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