Shaping Light in a Small Bathroom

The Project

We have been calling this a documentary project but really I feel it’s more of a hybrid doc / scripted piece. The shots and story are all inspired by our talent (who is an actor) but it is scripted and we are taking the time to light to a very specific look. The bulk of our reference images were actually from the film, Bridge Of Spies. This project is shot over a total of four days.

The Look

The DP wanted to incorporate muslin diffusion as much as possible and we’re going for a very wrappy mix of hard and soft light for our key with a crisp hard back light. We also played with colors in the background and we landed on a blue background color that will be used throughout the entire project

The Tools

For this scene, we only used very simple tools to craft the look. It was actually pretty fun to think that we hit our objective with such basic fixtures.

First I established with the DP that we would be seeing the house lights in the shot. I used my socket dimmers to dim the bulbs down to a workable level so they don’t blow out on camera.

Then, we needed to bring a little light back so a 2ft Quasar Science Crossfade did the trick.

The last bit that we needed was some extra wrap so a little bit of unbleached muslin was taped up into the far corner of the bathroom. I then took a source four Leko and shot it right up into the muslin to give us that warm, far side key light that we needed.

Also (not pictured) we had an Aputure 300D ii with a half CTB as our back light to give the extra blue look that matches the rest of our footage.