Lighting a talking head

[john01]

For some strange reason the company I work for occasionally makes me be a cameraman, I tried to palm it off onto my assistant who went to film school, but they don't teach people skills at film school so the job ended up coming back to me. This time round I have to shoot a person doing a talking head bit for an opening she can't attend. She'll probably be sitting on a sofa and reciting a script, no big movement.

Because she is such a delightful person I have to light her properly, for this I have three small lights from our casting department, they have those adjustable shades & stands & spare bulbs & are very bright, unlike me. Normally I'd have an assistant to help me here but everyone is busy & they don't have the money to hire someone. I don't have a sound guy either so I have to keep an eye on the audio levels too.

Does anyone have any advice on lighting up a person, particularly a young lady who is known for her looks, recommendations for angles, distance, height, what to watch for during shooting and any pitfalls. Obviously I'll have someone sit in while I set up to get things roughly right, but the person herself is a busy individual so the job has to be done quickly and without fuss.

I'll be shooting her SD with a Sony DSR-PDX-10, one of the things I have noticed with this camera is the monitor on the camera shows the image much brighter than it looks on a regular TV, so I use the zebra stripes. The Japanese tend to prefer lighting without dramatic shadows, but done poorly this can make people featureless.

Any tips welcome.

[deepvisual]

try here
just ignore the background bit - although you may want to light your background as well..

or search for 'three point lighting'

[john01]

Thanks, this isn't so much the information age as the terminology age, 'three point lighting' is the term in needed.

As ever this forum provides.

[sleepytom]

Take a decent monitor with you - it's hard work making things look nice if your relying on the LCD on the camera.

also make sure you have some defusers with the lights so you can get a nice even light.

[john01]

Originally Posted by sleepytom

Take a decent monitor with you - it's hard work making things look nice if your relying on the LCD on the camera.

also make sure you have some defusers with the lights so you can get a nice even light.

this I have noticed, LCD = Lying Crystal Display

will have to check in the cupboard and see if we have diffusers

[asterix]

Use warm lights - not cool. Cool lights show up skin imperfections - women hate them!!

Aside from that, to do a top lighting job you really need a lacky to hold one of those reflector wands. That way you can get nice highlights in the hair or even light across the face. Only know this from dabbling around in small film productions though...

[john01]

need a lacky ? I am the lacky

I will be surprised if the lady I am shooting has any imprefections, however I have been caught out by this before. I had to do a test shoot for a model once who was quite popular at the time. We had a load of footage of her already but we needed some clsoe ups to try and convince the client she was the person they needed for their product (foundation no less) .

Turned out she had obviously spent too long in the sun as a kid.

They did go with her, which must have cost them a fortune in post production studio costs, this was when I started hassling people that model agencies should start footing part of the bill for retouching.

[deepvisual]

look up warm white balance too

just pop down tokyu hands and get some blue card..

[john01]

I love Tokyu Hands.

The manual white balance on the camera I'll be using is not particularly good, not a great deal of finesse in the settings, cold blue or reddish tinge.

We will be getting a new camera soon they tell me, not the XDCAM PMW-EX1 unfortunately, but hopefully good enough to show every imperfection.

[deepvisual]

you need to point it at the balance card, then hold the wheel in until it stops flashing..