Lighting Help – Big Open Windows

[trevorpendleton]

1. Hello I’m working on a small low budget short film, I’m hoping someone can point me to a solution or some guidance.

There are 3 scenes in this living room it’s the main space, 2 of them should have a daylight soft beauty feel, almost dream like. Big soft lighting.

The last scene ideally feels darker, late day, maybe practicals are showing more, more contrast 1:4 ratios. There’s a lot of shots and we have to shoot in there all day.

The windows in this space are everywhere and there’s a giant porch glass door that has no curtains on it, and the rest of the panes have some sheer curtains.

 

I honestly am struggling to how to light both ways because the key challenge is one couch is against a wall which isn’t ideal, one couch has the giant porch doors behind it (is north facing), which will be nuking on the trees in the background a sunny day. And initially we wouldve been lighting from the south/ east windows.. Shooting against a wall for the couch is not ideal (theres a lot of shots of main actor on a couch) shooting with the couch that has the giant doors are a nightmare for continuity especially for the final scene.

 

One option is angling the door couch towards the kitchen to get the doors not in shot but makes awkward spacing for blocking etc.

 

Another option is just moving the couch backlighting the actors from the south windows, but I imagine that might have its own problems.

 

To compete with daylight we’d have to bring in big sources (we have 2 apurture 1200x and a vortex) if we want to soft light doing a book light will lose us valuable light as well as take up a bunch of space from blocking..

 

The idea was to just motivate the light coming from the south.. and play into the north side of the house.

 

I’ll attach photos of location and diagrams of the plans.

 

Please let me know if you have any thoughts about this and any ideas. For additional information it’s  small relatively green g and e crew.

Some things like tenting the porch or throwing plastic over the porch doors or duvetyne.. but my g and e head said tent and controlling that space will take too much time.

 

The other option was having someone apply frost to the porch doors.

 

I want to figure out the best way to handle this room as it is the most critical part of our shoot.

 

 

 

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