Hi!,

I am a first year broadcasting student at Niagara College. We are currently working on TV show pilots, and I am the producer for ours. Up to this point in our schooling all we have done is interview style 3-point lighting. We are now forced to create a number of sets, and various lighting grids, with a whopping $50 dollar budget. That should go far. Our largest set is of an office, and will consist of a long wall, against which will be a water cooler. We hope to use decorative wall mounted lights on both sides of water cooler to give it a more upscale and busy feeling. Most of the action will happen beside the water cooler. We would also like to simulate fluorescent lighting as you would find in most offices. What would be the best way to pull this off? Would we need to adjust for colour temperature variations? We have a solid lighting grid, however our light selection is limited. We have a few scoops that we tend to use as keylights, small broads for fills, and fresnels that tend to be used for backlighting. In addition we have a number of Colortrans at our disposal. We would be able to get our hands on some gels and diffusion paper, but have not used any of these in the past. Any help would be appreciated. I have a few ideas of my own, and would be interested to bounce them off anyone willing to lend an ear.

I may be able to send/post a drawing of the set if that would help.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Perhaps some diffusion (silk) on your lighting above and then color correction later until you get the effect you're looking for is what pops into my head at the moment. Perhaps I'll have another idea later.

Nate, you might find this thread helpful:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=86059

Although this was lit with fluorescents, you don't have to.

I'd consider using your scoops overhead (that's right, pointed straight down) to simulate ceiling-mounted fluors, and fresnels with diffusion as fills (just enough to fill, watch this closely).

If you have any instruments left you can consider backlights, but they aren't neccessarily motivated by the scene. I'd start by making sure that the office wall is lightly colored enough that talent is clearly defined without backlighting... then, if needed, add a kicker to simulate an off-screen window. Some people like to add 1/4 CTB to cool down the kicker in this situation.

Lighting controls are very important for this setup - the main lighting is overhead, everything else is just a suggestion of light, the minimum to get the job done.

Thanks for the replies so far! Here's an example of how we want to make the set look, basically the same colours, and have some photos light up on the wall.