Determining
the Lighting Requirement on Location
When first entering a room that is going to be the stage for the
next set up you have to assess the situation in a number of ways.
Let us take the situation illustrated bellow:
Fig.12
Location set-up
- The walls are panelled in dark wood
- There are two medium-sized windows emitting
daylight into the room.
- The scenery outside is not worthwhile including.
- The ceiling is white suspended tiles with
embodied fluorescent down lighters.
- The desk is dark wood with green leather
inset and a white blotter.
- There is a desk top light with an incandescent
bulb and green shade.
- The floor has a fitted dark red carpet.
- There are plenty of power points.
The first thing to decide is the type of
lighting required, and part of that decision depends not only on
the personality and features of the person (or talent) in front
of the camera, but also on the subject matter of the interview.
To create a friendly, appealing atmosphere you should model and
fill with soft light. On the other hand, for a hard factual or sales
subject you should model with a little harder light and just infill
with soft. This technique has the effect of bringing out the facial
features that add power and authority to the character. You must
decide if the view through the window should be featured and if
the light coming in is useful. Here is a further choice: if the
light coming in is not too bright you can 'blue-up' your photographic
lights as well as the desk top light, if necessary. On the other
hand, if it is too bright, you should filter the window using a
Full-CT-Orange with a +ND content. Photographic lights can then
be used unfiltered, effectively increasing their output.
The fluorescent lights in the ceiling should be filtered, but in
this situation it might be preferable to turn them off and then,
if required, bounce the camera top light off the white ceiling.
The furniture, carpet and wood panelled walls do not reflect light
and therefore do not contribute to the reflected lighting effect.
However, they do help when recording sound, as you get better quality
without the liveliness of an otherwise empty room.
You will note in Fig. 12 that the desk has been set at an angle
to the corner of the room. This has not been moved for the shoot;
most offices have offset desks to take advantage of the natural
daylight, and since we are also taking advantage of the incoming
light the desk position is good. With the camera set up as in Fig.
12, the window light will be our key light, around which all others
are secondary. Its function is to rim light the shoulders and head
of the subject as well as lighting the background wall panelling.
There may also be enough light from this window to use a reflector
board, if required.
The next step is to set up the modelling light. Its position should
be above the head height of the subject, then moved around in this
area to achieve the desired modelling effect. Now it is time to
soft light the shadows created by the modelling light either with
your reflector board or your second stand light, complete with soft-light
filter set of course. If the background looks too plain add a planter
or a picture. It is quite acceptable to show only part of these
so long as their position looks natural in the framed shot.
Fig. 13 The finished shot. It
is possible to zoom-in on the subject if a shot has been well composed.
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The Kit Bag and Useful
Accessories
The very nature of location work will have caused you to become
a master of improvisation and adaptation. Many bits and pieces
of your kit will have been assembled as the result of experiences
on previous jobs. The kit bag invariably becomes a topic of conversation
on any shoot; it also represents its owner's experiences and ability
to adapt, find, devise, or even invent. In some cases these gadgets
and adaptations have gone on to become manufactured and marketed
as standard production items, while others were intended to be
used for a totally different purpose. I have seen a wallpaper
scraper as part of one kit; this was said to be ideal for pushing
behind architraves in order to attach small fill-lights, or just
to hold cable runs above the doorframe, off the floor and out
of harms way.
Going on location with a few carefully chosen
yet seemingly non-required bits and pieces will prove invaluable,
and may ultimately save the day on one shoot or another. Such
things include lighting spigot adaptors, gaff clamps, French flags
and magic arms.
Down at the bottom of the bag you will have a collection of chalk,
string, wire, gaff tape, camera tape, marker pens, bulldog clips,
knives, side cutters, pliers; even an old wire coat hanger, which
is a very useful source of strong wire.
One of the most useful accessories is the reflector
board used for fill light situations. This can be as simple as
a piece of white card or silver foil which has been crumpled,
and then flattened and glued to a piece of card or hardboard.
For most purposes the size only needs to be about 450mm x 600mm.
There are, of course, a number of proprietary makes of reflector
boards or materials on the market. There is one such device that
has proved to be quite popular because it twist-folds down into
a very small space.
To open it, you simply pull it from its pouch and shake it. A
spring wire loop, seamed into its radius, unfolds with a whoop!
Like magic, you have a soft silver fabric material stretched across
a hoop, two feet in diameter. The advantage of the reflector material
being rigidly suspended or mounted on a flat surface is that you
can easily tip it, in order to aim the light exactly where you
want it.
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