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Lighting a Wall

M

MTwisted

Hey guys!

I'm currently in the pre-production stage of a stop motion short film using post it notes, inspired by 'Deadline' on youtube. Up until this point, all films I've done have been in a group with other students from my media production course, and I haven't had much hands on experience with lighting, so I was wondering if someone would be able to help me out with some tips on how to light the film.

I'm planning to construct a plywood fake wall that can hang in my garage to use as the background on which the post it notes are stuck. The garage itself has four fluorescent lights on the roof, but the positioning of those lights is a bit back from where the fake wall will be hung, and I'm also worried about the effect that fluorescent lights will have on the colour (if anyone could point me to a good blog/website that talks about the effects that different light types have on colour/films that would be awesome!)

I've watched the Making Of video for 'Deadline', but am unsure if I will be able to get ahold of proper professional lights for the duration of the filming, as they have used. The fake wall will also be hung against a brick wall, so I can't focus the light off the top of the wall as they seem to have done.

Does anyone have any tips on cheap lighting sources or lighting tricks that can be used to create even lighting?

Thanks in advance!
 
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buy some CFL's for instance, theyre cheap, take little energy and a great price. Or you could buy
some work-lights, they also come in cheap and usually at around 2700 Kelvins, softbox aswell is a must for soft light. I mean, all what im saying is maybe even useless, I dont even know what your budget is my friend :)
 
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I'd definitely keep the flourescent lights off. They are the work of the Devil. I've got a short scene in my film in which I made the mistake of using a flourescent to accent the 1000W of incandescent I had, and I want to throw up every time I see it.

This isn't extremely artistic, but if you want to just get it well-lit, you can just saturate the hell out of it with construction lights. They're inexpensive and can be found at any hardware store. They're a really hard light, and they produce weird shadows, so I would only use them with either diffusion or bouncing. Since you don't have anything to bounce off, you can of course use bounce cards, but personally, in your situation, I would just pop a white bed sheet in front of it (probably folded-over for double thickness) to use diffusion.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a cinematographer. This is a quick, easy solution, not necessarilly the most beautiful.
 
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Make sure you keep the sheet/shower curtain far enough away from the light so it doesn't catch fire (fire bad!).

Have you considered putting the wall on the floor and turning the camera to point at it? It'll make your stop motion work much easier and allow the lights on the ceiling to be used more easily.

The flourescents have a green spike in their spectrum, and can be corrected by adding a magenta gel to them (minus green). We have a thread on the forum called "Lighting by Example" that may help you see some actual setups... and I have this link on my site for you: (image heavy) http://www.yafiunderground.com/node/14 "Lighting Diffusion Tests"
 
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Thanks. I'll look into the options you have all given me and see what I like best.

knightly, I had thought about having the 'wall' on the floor, but I've got my heart set on having a person walk into the frame first and have the whole animation as sort of an imagination sequence from them. But I'm sure I can find something suitable from the options you've all provided.

And thanks for the link, I'll give your site a look at.
 
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I've been wondering about posting this myself (lighting a couch against a wall, getting rid of shadows, because I can't have the 3rd "point" behind the couch really). Thanks for bringing up this thread! :)
 
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First cheapest option may be to use your garage's fluorescent lights and just slap a FL-D fluorescent light correction filter onto your camera.
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=FL...+filter&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

Next, try to not mix different lighting together:
> Incandescent (orange) + fluorescent lights (green)
> Daylight (orange) + fluorescent light (green)
> LED (blue) + Incandescent (orange)

Those combos will overcome your camera's white balance programming.

Daylight, incandescent and halogen may work together alright. All three cast kind of an orange light.
Haven't worked with a FL + LED combo. Green & blue "might" work together. Might not.

Halogen bulbs get VERY hot. Keep flammable things far away, including the bulb away from paint on the wall.
 
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rayw said:
First cheapest option may be to use your garage's fluorescent lights and just slap a FL-D fluorescent light correction filter onto your camera.
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=FL...+filter&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

Next, try to not mix different lighting together:
> Incandescent (orange) + fluorescent lights (green)
> Daylight (orange) + fluorescent light (green)
> LED (blue) + Incandescent (orange)

Those combos will overcome your camera's white balance programming.

Daylight, incandescent and halogen may work together alright. All three cast kind of an orange light.
Haven't worked with a FL + LED combo. Green & blue "might" work together. Might not.

Halogen bulbs get VERY hot. Keep flammable things far away, including the bulb away from paint on the wall.
Click to expand...

Daylight is very blue compared to tungsten light, it's definitely not orange - LEDs and fluorescents can be pretty much any colour you like but a green "spike" is often observable in the latter if you buy cheap bulbs and cheap LEDs usually have a fairly low CRI rating.
 
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chilipie said:
Daylight is very blue compared to tungsten light, it's definitely not orange
Click to expand...
We're both right.
I was thinking of mid-day direct sunlight exposure which does cast an orange hue, so you wouldn't want to fill light with fluorescent.
However, north light does cast blue.

I'll experiment this week! :)
In fact, I think I'll run a white balance test series.
(Nerd fun! Nerd fun!)
 
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rayw said:
We're both right.
I was thinking of mid-day direct sunlight exposure which does cast an orange hue, so you wouldn't want to fill light with fluorescent.
However, north light does cast blue.

I'll experiment this week! :)
In fact, I think I'll run a white balance test series.
(Nerd fun! Nerd fun!)
Click to expand...

Halogen light is 3200°K or so, noon sunlight is around 5600°K (with maybe 8000°K in the shade) and skylight can reach 12000°K - I don't think most DoPs would consider daylight to be orange at all, but would be interesting to see your white balance tests nonetheless! :)
 
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Speaking practically, and without chili or knightly's level of expertise, would it work to bounce the light of the ceiling? It would prevent it from being too hard and would distribute it in roughly the right sort of way for an actual room that is top lit.

Other than that, on a budget, I'd consider using, as Cracker says, work lights which are really cheap but probably use some sort of bounce board/reflector- especially as I get the impression that space is tight.

Oh, and chili- I went outside. The sun is orange. Deal with it ;)
 
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The sun is orange, but the filtered light we get through the atmosphere turns it blue.... turn your camera to a preset interior lighting white balance and notice that when incandescent lights look white, everything the sun touches is blue.

To filter lights to match sunlight, you use a CTB (Color Temperature Blue) gel. You can't fight physics - the matrix lied.

While generally better to keep lighting consistent, I like to add a little blue to my backlights to suggest daytime lighting coming through a window (although not as strongly blue as actual sunlight would be - see what I did there?)... Playing with the color of lights with gels is part of the fun of being a cinematographer. Just make sure you have some consistency from shot to shot or it'll be difficult to cut together.

Bouncing off the ceiling works, but only provides top light, you may need to add in bounce from the floor to counter by putting a light pointed at a piece of foam core or large white fabric. I think you could, however, get a stronger look by pointing your light at a large white sheet on the wall to the side of your set to side light your actor and get better "light modeling" to show depth and texture.

Play with the options - ultimately, the one that is "Right" is the one that works with the tools and vision you have.
 
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So, following this thread. I found the local hardware store offering two halogen lights on a stand-they're small, but I'm assuming they would work well for lighting? Like 2 lamps and stand for 50 dollars-I assume that would be an affordable lighting alternative?
 
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Tinalera said:
So, following this thread. I found the local hardware store offering two halogen lights on a stand-they're small, but I'm assuming they would work well for lighting? Like 2 lamps and stand for 50 dollars-I assume that would be an affordable lighting alternative?
Click to expand...

I've got half a dozen of them, these were my higher output lights used for outdoor and larger indoor scenes. They work really well, but are quite warm (burning type, not color type) in smaller settings.
 
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knightly said:
I've got half a dozen of them, these were my higher output lights used for outdoor and larger indoor scenes. They work really well, but are quite warm (burning type, not color type) in smaller settings.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I think what caught my attention was the adjustable stand they come with-just what I've been looking for-that plus some good lights in general. It would be an interesting step up as currently I use daylight bulbs in regular lamps, which work well-it would be nice to have the extra option.
 
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