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.
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.
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.
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!