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Hello,
I’m currently prepping for a short film where I want practicals to feel bright and the subject to actually be lit by them.
Specifically, I need the subject to be lit by a lamp in a wide shot where I can’t hide lights to the side to augment being lit by a lamp. So how would I light a subject with just the lamp? Would I use a regular high wattage bulb or maybe a quartz bulb? What would work best?
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Too many factors to consider — the type of lamp and lampshade, the desired effect, the ISO of the camera, the f-stop of the lens, and the distance of the actor from the lamp.
Here is a shot I did which was a long Steadicam shot going down a hallway and then turning left into a foyer and ending on a face. Since I saw most of the foyer at the end of the hallway at the start of the move, I couldn’t add much lighting so I asked art department for table lamps. I was probably at ISO 800 at f/2.8. I think the lamps had 75W tungsten household bulbs. The main thing is to carry a range of wattages to try out in the lamp. It also helps to put the lamps on a dimmer line. But if the lighting is only coming from the lamp then the actor can’t be too far away or else the fall-off will be too great.
Thank you so much for the example and screenshots!
Attached is a picture from my phone of the room I’ll be filming in. The subject will be lying on the right side of the bed, next to the lamp on the nightstand. I’m wanting the lamp to feel bright so that the rest of the room feels dark and fades into blackness. This might need to be achieved in post, but I’d like to try to get it in camera, if possible. The lamp will be the only light source in the room. I’ll be shooting on a Red Komodo OG with a contax zeiss 28mm at f/2.8. I’ll be shooting at ISO 400, since in my tests 800 is quite noisy in the shadows.
It’s hard to make a room with light-colored walls look dark even when they are underexposed — faces always go darker first. You may be OK here with this celery color for the walls. Plus you should avoid white bedsheets and bed covers. A lot of the light from a table lamp bounces off of the ceiling and back down again, so you may want to pin some black material on the ceiling as negative fill.
choose practicals that can be clamped easy to a stand that way you can finetune the direction of the light easier for the closeup and of course plan the blocking , use maybe your own lamps and dim them for the shots you need
As David pointed out, the light spill on the walls and ceiling ect is the main problem. You can try to carefully wrap the bulb itself with ND gel or layers of diffusion, or ND gel/diffuse the top and bottom of the shade from inside. Blocking the bottom and especially top will have the most effect on the room. You can experiment with different strengths for both or even limit the horizontal output, leaving only a gap towards the subject.
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