Yes, she's horribly pale and we are trying to get her to spend more time outside. But with our Seattle overcast it's a losing battle.

The softboxes are interesting. Once you get the hang of it they are easy to assemble but we don't anticipate breaking them down for transport. They're the cheap (and I mean really cheap.... 4 for about $300) Chinese imports from eBay, and I'd fear punching a rib right through the fabric if we go through too many fold/unfold cycles.

But they put out a lot of bright, even light and each CFL is individually switchable, so we really can adjust. They weigh nothing at all so the grid we built (and the ones on the wall are actually pot racks) are probably overkill. We anticipate just leaving them up forever... as they're quite out of the way and when the cams are gone it's just a normal kitchen with some really big light fixtures.

Very nice, Adam... if only more clients would let us mount light trusses in their facilities... thanks for posting pics!

If you are using lighting instruments with a 5/8" stud receiver, Manfrotto makes the Super Clamp which is an easy to use, versatile clamp that can be used to mount "pro" instruments to anything "clampable"...

Lloyd,
What's the color temperature of your lights? If you're using daylight, flourescents, or HMI's, then all the above suggestions would apply. If you're using tungsten halogen 3200K, however, it might be easier to put some Roscosun 3411 (amber color) over the windows which would convert 5500K to 3200K. That way, you won't end up with blue windows or orange indoor lights...everything would match colorwise.

All my lights are 5600k except for the existing house lighting (tungsten). So I'm now leaning toward the scrim material.

Something tells me the food in that kitchen will be cooking a little faster than normal. :-)

Andrew

Trial run
 

A PRODUCTION UPDATE:

Well I got the ND gels up. Ugh. Very frustrating process. Very bad results also, in my opinion. Here's what we have done so far:

We built some frames as others have suggested here. We stretched out Rosco ND .6 gel (2-stops) on each frame. We made two for each window so they could be removed or added to as the outside conditions dictated.

Of course when we started shotting the trial runs it was super sunny. Then when the real production was happening, a big storm came in and dropped the light probably 3-4 stops, so during recording the outside got pretty dark as you can see in the video snip below.

At first we tried to stick the film to the windows, but no luck. We tried adding some sugar to the water to make it stickier as I read somewhere else that that works. It didn't work for us and we ended up scratching and scuffing up one of the gels pretty bad. :( Surely bad installation technique on our part.

So then we tried taping the film on the window. Too wavy and inconsistent.

Then we went for frame idea and it seemed to work the best, but still too much distortion in the film.... The weird thing is the first day the plastic seemed very tight and glasslike, but as time went on, it got a little play in it and wasn't so tight on day 2 or 3.

So we had to put the project on hold until our Rosco scrim material shows up (on backorder). Hopefully that will be the ticket.

Here's a small unedited clip from the show. Notice the wavy/wrinkles on the bay window: YouTube - Lenny tortillas.mp4

I'll keep you all posted.

Hey Lloyd,
Sorry to hear you are having trouble with the ND and the location. I had a similar problem years ago designing Host wrap sequences with a windowed location. Sunny days we needed 5 stops of ND and cloudy days maybe 1 or 2.
The Rosco scrim is much easier to use than ND if you are happy with just 2 stops. It is less reflective than the ND so I always try and make it the top layer If you need more than 2 stops you can layer ND and Rosco scrim for various combinations. Rosco scrim doesn't work well in layers as the dot pattern can moire and look strange when it is stacked.
Unless the weather is consistent you should plan on a layer system being necessary so getting up to speed on how you do that will be useful.