Cinematography Breakdown - Bar Interior - 2nd Interview

Here we go again. Honestly I was blown away by the response my first post got on Reddit. I think at the time of posting this ~1700 unique visitors came and checked out my first lighting/cinematography breakdown. Hopefully I can keep providing what little I’ve learned over the past few years back to a community I rely upon heavily at times myself.

Long story short: thank you for taking the time to read this. As long as people get something out of this I plan on keeping it up.

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In the previous post I detailed how we set up for interview 1 of 2. A couple points I kept in mind moving into number 2:

• The first interview was at the bar — meaning that we’d want a separate location for interview 2. We didn’t want to reuse the same interview location if we could help it: at least with this particular shoot which aimed to be a full 11 minutes of a 22 minute episode. We wanted each setup to be unique-ish. (Of course some rules like that one exist to be broken).

• The first interview was framed with the interviewee left-of-frame. Moving forward we’d want the other person featured in this piece to be right-of-frame facing left. It’s a small thing to keep in mind but can help make a huge difference when it comes to edits and keeping footage interesting. Don’t just randomly decide how you want to frame someone, make it a conscious decision.
  
  Since this piece featured just two people it was easy to have one facing each direction — when you have more than two people it’s up to you to approach each interview creatively. Do you frame every supporting interviewee the same direction, and leave the other framing for the main subject? Center frame some? etc. etc.

• Lastly: A link to Part 1 so you can see the equipment at our disposal too.

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Interview Setup #2

When we arrived in the morning at 10am and walked the space, the producer had mentioned the bar for the first setup and then suggested a couple of different places they were hoping the next setup could work at.

Before I get to which one we landed on I’ll mention the bar’s layout:

• One pool table/playing area.

• A couple of dart boards/standing area.

• The bar.

• A narrow, lounge-type area with a very small “stage” for performances against the back wall.

So those were the general areas I had to work with. I’ll save my full notes for the performance setup for the next post (If I actually make that one. At that point in the day we were running very behind schedule so I don’t have any BTS photos, if that matters) — I’ll mention now that I was hoping to not use the stage area for the singing/performing though. I wasn’t a fan of the space nor using a stage for a performance.

It felt like taking the easy way out, among other complaints.

The producer disagreed and when I had finished making my case they still felt a push for that space to be used for the performance. So in short — the stage/lounge area was out for the interview and would be used for the song.

A Quick Note:

I have a belief that as a DP it is your job to be the vocal advocate for the best visuals to represent the story you’re telling — but also to realize at the end of the day what hill it is you’re willing to die on.

Know this: you won’t get many hills (if any), and if you constantly are argumentative and aggressive about getting what you want without compromising, you’ll not be remembered kindly and likely not brought back (until you’re at a point in your career where you’ve earned that right — which most never do).

Be willing to make your case for something and then live with the fact that you may not get your way. Once you decide this is my hill then fight for it. However, for this particular shoot and that particular disagreement, I was nowhere near feeling like it was worth discussing further. I would light that area to the best of my ability when the time came.

That wasn’t a hill for me.

We decided to use the pool table area for the second interview (the space I’d hoped to make use of for the performance). The biggest hurdle for this area was that we’d be fighting a lot of daylight from the entrance. The pool table was immediately inside the bar.

Exterior of the bar. The pool table area was directly behind the large orange sign you see to the left of the door upon entering.

I was hoping to incorporate interior lighting in my setup, visible in the frame. When I balanced the camera for daylight (if we didn’t flag it off, it’d be the primary key/motivation/source of light for the subject), the interior looked pretty bad to me. In the future I’ll try to have more examples when it comes to deciding between white balances. I wasn’t planning on sharing all of this so I don’t have a ton of references to provide to back up the claim at the moment!

I made the decision to flag off the daylight in the end as I felt the colors when we embraced it were too off for me. I didn’t like the mixture of the daylight with the tungsten interior for this particular setup. Sometimes it can work really well.

Usually when figuring out what angle I want to work with, I’ll find the general direction I want to shoot toward and then start looking through the wide to find the right frame. That was the case for this shot especially. I wanted to reveal more of the bar with this interview and yet make it clear we were still in the same space.

Once we had the wide-angle up and running, I began adjustments to what was seen. I knew she’d be right-of-frame and I also wanted the dartboards to still make it into the shot. We turned on a lamp that was sitting on a space in the background as well. I’m a huge fan of lit practicals being in-frame. I wanted the pool table to be visible for the color/texture it offered too. I made sure to actually have someone get the balls out and onto the table for additional color/set decoration: the table looked too empty without them.

I also really wanted to find a way to get that chandelier above the table into the shot. At first that didn’t seem possible — the chandelier was a good 3-5 inches above the frame, hanging from a hook, the cord was stapled into the ceiling, and ran about 15 feet away to an outlet.

I’m a better to ask forgiveness than permission sort of person so I waited for my opportunity. With the help of a couple of other folks I slowly fed all of the slack in the cord through each staple, toward the chandelier, and lowered it by about 4-5 chain links. I don’t endorse pulling stunts like that without permission to be honest — but sometimes I do it anyways and it pays off.

The DS1 on the disco ball would stay as well, but I repositioned it from below the ball this time.

Getting more things into place.

From this angle you can see our main key to the left, the Arri Skypanel s60 with a full diffusion chimera and eggcrate on it to help control the light’s spill and soften it. This was almost certainly set to 3200K.

For a nice toplight I used our 2L Litemat, set to 3200 as well (or close). I hoped with our Promist filters, and the fact the talent had vibrant red hair that a light from above would make her glow. Thankfully it did.

To be honest I hadn’t done that many times before and wanted to start experimenting with using diffused, soft, overhead lighting having seen it so often in BTS for films. If it didn’t look good I was prepared to scrap it and use just the Skypanel.

After the results I definitely have incorporated it more often though. The benefits, to list a few, are that it helps give a soft separation to the subject from the background, and also since the light is straight down there’s no spill to worry about on your background; It helps to add slightly more fill to the face — or could honestly work as a key light depending on how you set up the shot/scene.

View facing toward the cameras.

The Producer would be on the stool where my second shooter was seated at the time. You can see the flag directly behind the cameras, trying to kill as much daylight from hitting the talent as possible.

It’s hard to see from this view but our other flag was horizontally positioned over the windows, from outside, behind the second shooter and the AP in this shot. It’s the black bar that starts halfway up the window. I had them lay it out horizontally. I also took both of our 4x4 silks and leaned them against windows to at least soften some of the light coming in as well. I’m not sure how much the silks helped but I tried to kill/soften the daylight as much as possible with what was on hand.

Canon Cine Prime. 85mm. F 1.6, 2 Stops ND, ISO 500, WB 3700.

Turns out when I looked back through some of my BTS that I did have a shot revealing a little more information: I went with 3700K.

I can’t honestly recall 100% now but I feel like I bumped the temperature up from 3200 to 3700 in order to compensate for a bit of the daylight still coming through in spite of the flags/silks. I’d wager that the lights were both still set to full tungsten, but I may have bumped them up a hair as well from full tungsten to a similar temperature.

BTS with the talent in the frame, the producer asking questions to the left.

Final Frame, Wide. Graded. 35mm. Canon Cine Prime. 1/4 Promist filter, 3700K.

Final Frame, CU. Graded. 85mm Canon Cine Prime. 1/4 Promist filter, 3700K.

You can see the effect of the light hitting her from above (note the hair and shoulders) as well as providing a bit of additional fill to the face — while allowing the main key of the Skypanel to still provide the majority of light.

I was really, really pleased with the final look of this particular setup.

View fullsize

Finished, sloppy chart.

If you’ve made it this far I just wanted to say thanks one last time.

The reception to the first breakdown blew me away and really helped motivate me to push this one out asap for readers as well. I’ve enabled comments so you’re more than welcome to leave one.

Feel free to leave any feedback!

Cinematography Breakdown - Bar Interior - Interview

Hopefully this can become a semi-regular thing I do on here. Maybe, somewhere down the line, it’ll help someone that’s looking for inspiration or guides on how to set up shots of their own. If so that’ll be enough for me.

If there’s one thing that I crave when I’m looking for posts about cinematography online it’s lighting setups with pictures. Knowing the how and why behind choices that different cinematographers make helps me personally feel a stronger connection and understanding to the craft.

A little background for this particular shoot:

I had not been to this location before, so I was going in very blind (A note to producers: please don’t assume cinematographers don’t want to go on scouts and that pictures will suffice! ). This meant that I ran the risk of over-packing our available gear. While I believe in hindsight we used most, if not all, of the things I had us load into the van — I could’ve been even better prepared having been able to scout this location beforehand.

This was going to be a very busy day. Due to the availability of the artist, we were looking at arriving on location at 10am, and being done with two interviews, a musical performance, and b-roll by 3pm. That’s a very fast turnaround per scene. I prefer having an hour to light any given setup as well, which definitely wasn’t going to be possible this time around. We’d have to light fast, and accept that some things may not be perfect. In the end I’m still happy with the results.

I believe this is what all we loaded into the van:

• 2x c300 mkii

  • The cameras that are the workhorses for all of the content I shoot currently.

• Canon CinE Primes

  • 24, 35, 50, 85

  • I believe this was a rare case where every lens wound up being used on a shoot as well. For most shoots I find us leaving the 50 in the case, and often the 24 as well. Usually one shooter lives on the 35 and the other on the 85.

• Skypanel s60 with Chimera, Full Diffusion, & Honeycomb.

  • https://www.arri.com/en/lighting/led/skypanel/s60-c

  • The Skypanel is a heavy, annoying, amazing light. It’s a workhorse with a ton of output. It looks beautiful when diffused and even though I hate loading/moving/lifting it — it’s always worth the effort.

• Our two Litemats (a 2L and a 3)

  • http://store.litegear.com/category_s/2010.htm

  • These lights are literal godsends. Lightweight and bi-color, and each comes with its own set of 1/4, 1/2 and full diffusions with frames and grids. These are lifesavers and honestly when I can get away with needing less output I find myself using these over the skypanel for shoots. For how often we were moving around that day, I found myself throwing these all over the place and only using the skypanel for major setups.

• DS1

  • https://digitalsputnik.com/collections/ds1-products/products/ds1-basic-system-us

  • A great light that’s controllable via an app on your phone. I love having this for a little hair-light or splashing color onto a wall/object in the background. Sometimes I use the full RGB ability of it to balance out a room’s color if I’m not happy with the wall’s color, etc. The fact it can be powered off v-mount is definitely a plus as well.

• 2 each: 4x4 Flag, 4x4 Silk

  • I need to order more of these for our kit. We needed many more flags for this day (to black out the front windows of the bar). I’m hoping to find a set of flags that expand to 4x4 but collapse and are heavy duty. The one issue with these 4x4’s is they don’t fit into anyone’s trunk so we have to use the van to carry them around if we want them on set. It’s more of a headache than it sounds like, believe me. Our production van isn’t a great one, and that’s being kind.

• 4 c-stands, 1 combo stand, 1 matthews stand.

  • c-stands for flags, diffusion, litemats. Combo for the skypanel. Matthews stand for ds1.

• Dana Dolly Kit, rails, stands.

  • Knowing there’d be a musical performance, I wanted our wide angle on a dolly.

• 2 Tripods

  • For interviews. We tend to go for 20+ minutes on each interview and I didn’t see a reason for them to be handheld or on an easy-rig. We would also need one tripod’s head for the Dolly later on.

• 2 EZ-Rigs

  • For all B-roll and the close-up shot during the musical performance.

• 2 Matte Boxes

  • I knew I wanted filters for this shoot. We have two Wooden Camera Matteboxes, and two 1/4 pro-mist filters which I’ve fallen in love with when it comes to getting certain looks.

• 2 full apple boxes, and 2 half apple boxes.

• I also packed all of our sound equipment for our freelance sound engineer that would be on set, but honestly I know little about sound equipment — so I can’t really say explicitly what all we had on hand for this. I know we had our soundbag for mixing on-set, a boom, and 2 DI boxes (for the performance instruments) + multiple cables/LAVs.

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Interview Setup 1

The first setup of the day was an interview with someone that worked at the label that had signed the artist. According the shoot schedule I’m looking at, we had 45 minutes after landing at the location to be lit and ready for her. Technically we were supposed to be “set” at 10:45 and she wasn’t slotted to arrive until 11am which gave us a little extra space. What wasn’t calculated was that we’d need to actually unload the whole van, build out the gear, and have cameras set — so we were cutting it a bit close by the time she arrived.

Our producer told me they wanted something at the bar for this setup. I began looking around and decided on a frame similar to the image below. We could get some practicals into the shot and reveal a bit of the overall layout of the space as well. I made a mental note moving forward that since the first interview would be left of frame, facing the right, that we would need to flip the next interview (right of frame facing the left).

Thankfully this was a rare shoot where we had almost too many hands on deck to help out (one of our in-house editors came to watch/help, as well as an intern, myself, a second-shooter, and an associate producer).

Finished Shot - Wide - Graded - 1/4 ProMist Filter (I believe this was the 35mm). You can see the effect of the pro-mist especially on the lights in the top-right of frame.

Finished Shot - CU - Graded - 1/4 ProMist Filter (85mm)

The first setup wasn’t TOO terribly involved. In the wide you can see the ds1 in the background splashing teal onto what is a small disco ball (hard to tell in the image). I left it in the shot as a practical that was visible after the producer mentioned they liked it. Honestly I had thrown it up back there because of the disco ball and I’d wanted to hit it with some color for a later setup. I was going to take it down after seeing what it looked like. They just happened to mention liking the look of it before I took it down: so it stayed.

Sometimes you just luck out.

I remember exposing for the interior of the bar and turning off all of the lights except for the practicals you see in the shot: colored string lights, dartboard lights, and the bar lights. There were other lights available but they honestly took away contrast instead of helping add it.

I really, really wanted to frame at least some of the bar’s lighting into the shot so that’s why the wide has the interviewee farther from the frame than what I’d usually like to achieve. The shot just wasn’t as appealing without those lights giving some more interest to the frame and inspiration for lighting choices. If she had been closer, I would’ve had to frame from below her eye line to still show them — and that’s 9/10 times an unflattering angle for almost anyone. I tried raising the seat via some appleboxes we’d brought, but it looked really awkward. Unfortunately there was no way of lowering the lights closer to the bar.

I wish I could recall the exact color temp I went with for this one. I exposed for the background, and adjusted my white balance to a color where I felt good about what the interior looked like through the camera. I know I flagged off as much daylight as possible, and if I had to bet I was somewhere between 3500-4000K as far as white balance goes.

From the perspective of the talent. I believe I wound up scooting their chair away from the corner even more by the end of it all. We lit this entirely with practicals and the 2L litemat you see on the left with full diffusion, and eggcrate. I usually try to light and shoot into the fill-side (shocking stuff, I know). This setup also allowed for the visible practicals of the lights over the bar to help influence the lighting. The more I’ve lit interviews, the more I lean towards a light above the talent, angled down onto them as opposed to directly parallel to their face. The resulting shadows are more pleasing to my taste (and more resemble “Rembrandt lighting” as well).

The flag was there to kill as much daylight as possible — and help add more contrast, and there is another flag blocking a window directly behind the two cameras. You can see the producer to the left of the wide camera, as well as my second-shooter operating the wide camera in this shot.

In hindsight I do wish I’d added a light directly overhead, slightly behind the talent just for a little more separation, but I can easily live with what we got in the time we had to get it.

Very sloppy representation of the lighting for this setup.