Rick Wise
1
COW Coin
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You still have some green you don’t need. The black doesn’t completely cover the ceiling. Also, the green coming down the sides to the area that cuts out from the wall looks unnecessary. Yes, the indent will cause shadows. I’d black all that.
Clearly the room is very narrow. Fortunately it looks like you can pull people forward away from the green back wall. The further you are from the green, the less green spill you will be fighting.
If you can, go for the draw-curtains I mentioned earlier.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
You’d see the ceiling if the camera is low and you are shooting up to something or someone. Of course, to light correctly you’d want a cyc where the wall meets the ceiling as well as where the wall meets the floor.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Your hunch is correct: you do NOT want the ceiling painted green unless you plan to shoot up at it. One of the ways to reduce unwanted green bouncing onto the subject(s) is to block off all green except the area behind the subject. If the subject sits in a chair, then you can block off right up to the edge of his/her body even though you see the black in the frame. In post you fill in the unwanted black with green that matches the background. That’s called using a “garbage mat.”
If at all possible, I’d have the painters repaint the ceiling black. If you later want to bouncing light off the ceiling, you can fly a piece of white foamcore or some white muslin, etc. and bounce off that.
If you do not anticipate seeing the subject(s) from head to toe, paint black most of the floor, though not all the way to the cyc as you may end up seeing some of the floor there, depending on your angles.
To block off any of the un-needed green, you can either use black foamcore in 4’x8′ sheets, or else rig up duvetyne curtains you can pull into the scene as needed. The latter is a better long-term solution.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Fly a flag over the subject with a C-stand. If you want to simply reduce the amount of overhead but not cut it entirely, fly a single or double net. That solution, of course, does nothing for the background. Turning off the overheads is the simplest solution but is frequently not possible. It also means you have to light all the background visible in the shot.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Yes, plain white paper works fine. Just make sure it’s being hit by the lights in the room/space.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Also called a duckbill, also called a quacker or a Quaker. It’s a vice-grip with two 6’x6′ plates welded on to hold foamcore, beadboard, etc. Mathews makes them (probably some others do too.) https://fwd4.me/9Df. (The picture is a bit hard to read as the white surface of the top plate blends into the white background. tsk, tsk….
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
John, fabulous “stamp-collecting” analogy! I’m going to steal that for my students! Thank you.
As for the 1K Arrilight itself: that’s raw lighting, an open-faced unit. So long as you use relatively thick diffusion set off from the light at a good distance, or else bounce it into a piece of foam core, it will work as your key.
Be sure you get: the barn doors, a single and a double scrim, a stand, and 2 bulbs (one as spare), a couple of sheets of the following: 1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTB, 1/2 CTB, 1/4 plus-green, 1/4 minus-green. I’d also get a couple of sheets of 1/2 grid cloth and also full opal. I’d buy the light and accessories from BHPhotovideo myself. (No need to get Arri stands, but don’t get the cheapest ones either.)
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
What Alan is referring to is the way you can use one light as the key and a piece of foamcore as the fill, bouncing some of the spilled key light into the shadow side of the face. In fact, this is my preferred talking-head lighting method. I never use a fill light, just bounce the key. The third light in the 3-point lighting system is a back light. That can usually be very low wattage — you want just enough to separate the speaker from the background. Back lights can be tricky. As with all lighting, you have to really look at how the light plays on this person. In the case of a back light, if the person is bald or balding, it’s tough to not get a ugly sheen. See the posts on “Dulling Spray” below. You will want to look at: intensity on the head/hair, intensity on the shoulders, and color. People with some brown or red in their hair usually benefit from a bit of CTO (1/4 or maybe even 1/2) on the back light. Silver haired subjects often benefit from a little bit of blue on the back light. etc.
For now, I like a lot the suggestion you use just one light. At the most get a 4×4 piece of foamcore, a pony clamp, and a cheap light stand to hold the foamcore where you want. (A c-stand is a better gripping option, along with a platypus, but but those cost much more money.) Concentrate first on the look and the color of your key in relation to other lights in the room, whether windows, overheads, or practicals. Play with the 45º rule (place the key 45º from the direction of the speaker’s gaze, away from the camera, and 45º above. Look carefully; with some people with deep-set eyes, 45º is too much; for others with relatively flat faces and eyes that are not deep-set, you need to go further than 45º.)
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Robert, are you shooting stills? This is a strobe kit.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
To add a couple of points to John’s reply: As written on many posts, there are two color axes you need to pay attention to: the blue-orange (or blue-red) and the magenta-green. A preset balance corrects for only one. A manual white balance corrects for both. For instance if you are shooting in a supermarket lit by cool whites, the manual white balance should take care of balancing both the blue-orange (daylight-tungsten) aspect of this light, and also the magenta-green. Since all fluroescents other than a few of those made for filming have a green spike, those overhead lights will certainly have that same green cast. The eye doesn’t see it (except with a lot of practice) but the camera sure does. In such a situation, you could set the camera to “daylight” and that would roughly make the blue-green of those cool-white fluorescents look good. But that preset would do nothing for the green cast. Hence the utility of using a manual white balance off a white or gray surface illuminated by those overheads.
In addition, when you manually white balance, you sometimes find that the scene now looks too cool. An easy way to fix that is to re-white balance, but this time place 1/8 blue in front of the lens as you do the balance. The camera will “correct” out the very light blue. When you now look at the scene, you will see it looks warmer.
When you are shooting outdoors in natural sunlight, usually the preset “Daylight” works just fine.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com