Lighting sets in a basement
Lighting in a basement
Working with pets and limitations of a low ceiling
The Bathroom scene
Bathrooms can be one of the most challenging locations to light due to the mirrors which bounce light everywhere and the often cramped spaces. On top of that, we needed to be able to shoot full body and there was a dog on set as well. When I found out that production was building a bathroom set it was a relief!
There were two lighting setups for this ad; The bathroom and the dining room. Let’s first look at the bathroom. I started building the scene with our key light. I took the 300D and set it camera left and shot it through an 8x silk. This gave us our base exposure on the talent and I could also light our background with this since the actor was standing close enough to the back wall. This was a good first stroke but the key was a bit more of a split light than we wanted. I wrapped the key light around the talents face more with a 120D and a 4x bounce board.
Now on to the other side of the face- We had some weird colored walls in the basement we were in so I ran negative fill all along the right side of the frame to eliminate the color. We were just a little too contrasty so a 120D bounced into the ceiling was enough to bring up the fill level just slightly.
For the hair light we had an Aputure Mini20 clipped on to the set wall with a tungsten gel.
The Dining Room scene
For the Dining Room scene we wanted to have a different look. We wanted that top lit look as if there were an overhead or skylight above the table. That is the brightest light in our set but we needed to supplement. On camera right we have our 300D again- This time going through a double break in diffusion to give a very soft ambiance to the room. The last light was our ceiling bounce again to fill in just a tad from the front. You can see the bright yellow wall on camera left that was bouncing back in to our set. We eliminated that color cast again, by running black solids along the side of the frame.
Remembering Ryan Harter
The Director for this project, Ryan Harter (pictured above), has since passed on since these photos were taken. You can tell from this piece what a creative and talented Director Ryan was. He was one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever met and I’m lucky that over the two years we worked together I was able to get to know him and call him a friend. Thanks for all of the laughs on set, Ryan!