Re: 3 rooms full

These fireside chats, are they one take, well-rehearsed type of thing? I love windows. I live in Tahoe and am always having to expose INT. DAY for EXT. DAY because the view of Lake Tahoe, of course, is central to the shot.

My very simple technique (or is it a trick?) is to expose for "the view," and frame accordingly. I light the talking head with two 650 open face Arris with 1/4 CTB ('cause that's what I have) -- placed to the far right of my camera, trying to get a bit of shadow on the far side of the face because in my opinion chiaroscuro looks cool. Just to make the picture a little more interesting, I clip a foam core to a C-stand and bounce as much daylight back into the subject. I experiment with placing the bounce card until I get the rim light I'm after.

A couple other things: the whole light, scrimmed and shapped to taste, is placed, I don't know, 10 to 15 feet away from the subject, and I keep my camera 10 to 15 feet from the talking head.

For a mic, I use a shotgun mic or lavalier, plugged into the camera. I wear headphones while shooting, which, by the way, makes it easy by mistake to yell at the talent. (So there's a little cautionary tale.)

The reason this works in editing is because it's one take. It would be pretty hard to edit if the background light didn't match from cut to cut, like in winter when a snow storm moves in over a few hours.

(This set up also entail that you pick the correct time of day to shoot, morning/evening look the nicest, but you can always gel the window with ND gels if you have to shoot at other times.)

The room without the windows: nifty trick here is practical lamps. These won't actually add much luminance but they'll "trick the eye." A floor lamp and or a table lamp shown on camera and set in convenient 3-point lighting pattern will mean you can light the talking head in a very typical standard beauty lighting. There's tons of places to learn that. Be sure to put 15-watt bulbs in the practicals and expose so they are your brightest point in the shot. On the other hand, if you have to shoot a whole board room with folks sitting all around: use China balls above the actors, center of the table (maybe a couple of them), and a few between the back of the chairs and the walls to remove nasty shadows. Frame the china lanterns out of the shot, but keep the 15-watt practicals in the shot. If the room has built in fluorescent lights in the ceiling, take those out, but turn the light switch on ;)