Which light setup do you suggest for this scene ?

[Bart Wierzbicki]

Hey guys,
Soon I have to record a Music Video and I'm looking for a way to light a specific scene.
It is a bedroom scene.
A guy is sleeping and suddenly he wakes because of a nightmare. He looks at the clock. gets out of his bed and walks to the dressing room door and opens it.

The room needs to have a nice moody tone. Not too dark, not too light.
But I'm afraid that if it's too dark, I'm going to have too much grain because I'm using a 35mm adapter.
I don't have lights myself, so I was looking for renting it or buying something.
I found here a company that are doing light rentals. This is what they have :

ARRI ARRI JUNIOR 2x 150W fixture • 2x tripod small € 25,00
ARRI ARRI 650 3x 650W fixture • 3x tripod medium € 40,00
ARRI ARRI 800 3x 800W fixture • 3x tripod medium € 45,00
DEDOLIGHT DEDO KIT 4x 150W fixture • 4x dimmer • 4x tripod small € 75,00
TRED REDHEAD KIT 3x 800W fixture • 3x tripod small € 35,00
IANIRO REDHEAD KIT 3x 800W fixture • 3x tripod small € 35,00
SACHTLER REPORTER 300 3x 300W fixture • 3x tripod small € 40,00
LOWEL TOTA / OMNI 2x 500W fixture • 1x 1kW fixture • 3 x tripod small € 40,00
KOBOLD 1000 VL 3x 1kW fixture • 3x tripod small € 40,00

What do you suggest to get this scene lit nicely ?

[Stuart Graham]

If you want to avoid grain you shouldn't light the room too dimly. It's safest to film it at normal brightness then darken it in your editor during post-production.

dim light = grain

For a generic setup you probably want two lights in opposite corners of the room pointing toward room centre - this is standard cross lighting and should make everything fairly evenly illuminated. I believe they use this setup in soaps and it's pretty fool proof - but watch for reflections in mirrors etc. And make sure you shut out any exterior daylight as it will wreck your colour balance. Heavy black material can be used to cover the window.

As for the type of lights to hire I don't really know except that the 150W and 300W units are probably not powerful enough. It depends on the size of the room I guess.

[Chris Swanberg]

I'd suggest blue gels too... blue light is generally well acccepted as a night lighting by audiences.

[Stuart Graham]

Oops. I said put the lights in opposite corners of the room, I meant adjacent corners. You want a light in one corner and another light in the adjacent corner.

[Steve Mellor]

I agree with blacking out the windows, that could play merry hell with your colour balancing. I like the adjacent lights idea, it's different from what I've used before but sounds like it would work really well.

You might, if you can afford to, want to focus a light on the subject as well (again, with a blue gel) so you can increase the intensity of light on the subject. It wouldn't need a lot but could act to separate him from his surroundings.

A good trick that I used on stage once was to place a metal frame in front of a light and stick gaffa over the frame to create slats. That made a nice shadow on the back of the set, as if the light was coming through blinds. It was sort of a poor man's gobo.

[Paul R Johnson]

Theatrical night, especially is often suggested by blue light. Feature films in black and white days often shot with blue camera filters to change the colour response, a bit like people shoot with red filers on monochromatic film to generate a pseudo infra-red, but nowadays this can be done better in post.

Using strong colour in the studio does work, but there's not a lot you can do later if it doesn't look quite right, but most importantly, it throws brightness away, and your list of kit has 1K units as the brightest, so gelling these up with saturated colour isn't going to be that bright.

I'd start with paper and draw the layout, a kind of set plan, including all the furniture and props, then plan the lighting from the point of view of direction and quality of light, then add the fill, and then any set or effects lighting. If it has to be mainly shadows and dark, the alternative is to start with the effects, get it looking really good, and then add the key to bring out the features, and forget fill as a standard tool. Plenty of contrast - and don't forget to hire a hazer, so the light beams themselves can be see - this will add amazingly to the moody effect.

Think pop concert and see the beams, should look great with the adapator.

[Yeo Wee Han]

What I would suggest is a strong hard light coming through a window (the window should have grilles so that shadows are cast on the wall and on the talent himself). You can have some diffusion to feather the shadows a little. If you want the shadows of the grille to be harder, move the light closer to the window. Some rain splashing on the window will create some nice shadows as well.

As he wakes up, he is lit by the main light from the window (should be bluish so cheat the white balance on the camera) and he can turn to on a bedside lamp and look at the clock. The bedside lamp can be tungsten (and can be reinforced with a diffused 300w Arri or Dedo) and this becomes his main light as he turns to look at the clock and the window light becomes a nice kicker.

Just my 2 cents.