Urgent: Help lighting 10x13 room for interview

[Mel Williams]

It's a really small room with a 13ft ceiling.

Do you guys have any light suggestions? It has to be flattering on the skin since it's a plastic surgery center.

I thought about getting a couple Kino Flos (Parabeam 200), but it takes up too much room.

Thanks,

Mel

[Glenn Chan]

Ideas:
1- Are you shooting patients on the operating table? Or just talking heads?

2- If the ceiling is white (some paints aren't exactly white so watch out), you could use it as a big bounce card and get lots of soft lighting from above that way. You may lose a lot of light bouncing light off the ceiling that way (and the ceiling is kind of high?).

3- If the room has flourescents, then they can be a problem since they will make skin look a little greenish even if you white balance. In post I believe you can fix this with secondary color correction, or by using (RGB/color) curves and bringing the green curve down, so it looks concave up.

If you can turn them off, great. Otherwise, use green gels or something so the lighting temperature is less mixed (gel the florescents or your lights).

[Mel Williams]

1- talking heads (testimonials), and eye examinations for the most part.

2- The ceiling is white tile.

3- The room has flourescents, but I can turn off the lights in each room.

[Glenn Chan]

I thought you were going to shoot people on the operating table or something (which you probably wouldn't want to shoot anyways because that stuff is graphic).

In that case, you could just light it like normal shots?
Instead of hard lighting you could go with soft light for the key and fill... that will make women look a lot nicer. On men you might want to give their face more form (reduce the softness of the light; possibly move the light towards the side to add more modeling).
To get soft light you need a soft light source (i.e. kinoflo or other florescent would likely be ideal), or get some fresnels and put diffusion material in front of them (or use a chimera), or use bounce cards (I wouldn't use the ceiling in this case). I think any soft lighting source is going to take up "lots" of room.

The Parabeam looks like it's designed for studio use... I don't think you want that. Kinoflo has lights designed for field use which you can put on stands and stuff.

With all soft lighting, the closer you get the better. This increases softness and casts a lot more light on the subject.

Lighting background: Not sure.

If the background is uninteresting (i.e. white wall), then you could jazz it up with lighting. It may be easier to just put lots of stuff in the background. If you want subject/background seperation, you could add gels to a background light so the background is colored. You could use one gel and create a color gradient in the background (have the center of it to the side of the subject perhaps). Or you can do a (totally unmotivated) light slash (use barn doors). Or you can put two different color gels (i.e. CTO, CTB) on the light half/half and create a gradient that way. Or you could put a fake window light by cutting out a pattern in black foam core and pointing the light at it.

You still need to get overall/base light onto the background. One way to do this (possibly) is to use a strong fresnel (1K?) and bounce it off the ceiling. The ceiling should then be like one big soft light source and nice the background evenly with very little shadows on the items there. It may also give a little back light to the subject.


I'll let some other people chime in. I honestly don't have that much experience with lighting.

[Patrick Gault]

Testimonials -

Place subject 6 ft from back wall.

Place camera 5 ft from subject. That gives you a little room behind the camera.

If the room is white you will need to warm it up some. You want the veiwer to sense its warm and comfortable at the office. A warm gel on the background light. Its helpful to put this light on a dimmer or use something with lower wattage that you can bring closer or farther away, dpending on the mood you want to create. A colorful flower arrangement about 2 feet from back wall. The flowers should get a little accent light. Perhaps some colorful medical journals.

Subject should be lit with softlight. This helps to hide wrinkles. The testimonial subject should be about three feet from the side wall, leaving plenty of room on the other side for your main light.

The larger the soft box the softer the light. As big as will fit into the room.
Place a large reflector on the opposite side for fill - again for softness. Unless you have a patient that is overweight, I wouldn't go for much contrast on their face. Just enough to show some dimension.

A smaller wattage light on a boom for a hair light and make sure its on a dimmer.

You may also want a large piece of black foamcore, if the main light is spilling on the background. Otherwise your gel will be pale. You want it warm and "natural", not cold and realistic.

Try to get an f-stop around 4. When you zoom in, hopefully the background will get a little softer.

For the Eye exams, I would look at other plastic surgery resources - magazines, web, videos, to get some ideas. Depends on the mood you want to create.

With the high ceilings I would be a little concerned with audio. Does it echo in the room?

I shoot in rooms all the time with 8 and 9 ft ceilings. Don't let that get in your way.

[Mel Williams]

we ended up getting the chimera 8000kit and the Arri Softbox kit.

Looking forward to trying your techniques.