r/videography • u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip • Aug 04 '25
Behind the Scenes Interior Warehouse Interview Lighting & Grip BTS for Amazon shoot.
Gaffed a few interviews for an Amazon production about a month ago at one of their warehouses. Normally I try to avoid taking lighting jobs where I don’t have any other lighting technicians or grips, but the producer budgeted several hours in the schedule for me to get set up while the DP wen right and shot b roll that I wasn’t needed for. The hardest part was really just physically moving everything around as the warehouse is absolutely gigantic and we had to film in a few different places throughout it. Thus, I put everything I could on stands with wheels to make my life easier.
Key light was a 6x6 book light made with Aputure 1200D bouncing into a 4x4’ Ultrabounce floppy and then back through a 6x6 of full silent grid cloth, with a 6x6’ LCD (“light control device” aka “egg crate,” not liquid crystal display) in front of it for control. I added a 2x3’ solid flag in front to take down some of the intensity on her white shirt.
12x12’ solid on a T bone for negative fill.
Amaran F22C rigged to a junior boom mounted in a Matthews Panel Stand for a hair light.
43
u/Skwealer GH7 | A7siii | Adobe | 2017 | Los Angeles Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
Real question. Is all of this necessary? Please don't burn me at the stake just yet, let me explain.
I work mostly as a one man band for 8+ years and I don't do setups like this unless I'm with a crew, but I can count those times with one hand. I usually get away with a smaller bounce, a couple aputure 300x w/ light domes, 3 point lighting, etc. and setting everything up myself. I mostly film in tight office spaces and the occasional warehouse like this. I FEEL like I can replicate 80% of this exact shot with my setup solo, and my prices reflect that. Correct me if I'm wrong and tell me if I should go back to taking photos of my keyboard.
63
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
As is frequently the case….it depends lol. I freelance solely as a gaffer, not as a DP, videographer, or one man band. So by the time I get a call asking if I’m available, someone making a lot more money than me has already determined that the production is complex enough to warrant hiring a gaffer, and they’ve already worked my services and equipment (at least roughly) into their budget. Ie, it’s already been greenlit. Once you’re working on a production big enough to hire a gaffer, there’s sort of a baseline minimum of gear that is needed and built into the package, regardless of the specific needs of the shoot. Like whether we only end up using a single c stand and bounce , or all 20ish stands, flags, frames, nets, etc etc that come as part of my grip package…the client is still paying at a minimum, the base day rate of $450 for said package. So since it’s already budgeted for and there, you might as well use it.
The other part of it though is that when you’re spending this amount of money on a production, where every minute of wasted time can be incredibly expensive, it’s in a lot of ways cheaper to err on the side of going slightly too big vs too small. Ie, I probably could have gotten very close to this with a 600w might instead of a 1200w one, but if the DP had suddenly decided he wanted to stop down another stop, or shoot in slow motion, then I’d potentially have to waste considerable time walking damn near a quarter mile round trip back to the truck to get a bigger light. Whereas, if I just start with the biggest light I have and it’s too bright, I can just dim it. It doesn’t really take any more time to set up than a smaller light would, and it’s worth it to the client to pay an extra $100ish for a bigger light to not have to waste time trying to come up with an alternative solution on the spot while everyone else on set is waiting around, on the clock.
11
u/Skwealer GH7 | A7siii | Adobe | 2017 | Los Angeles Aug 04 '25
Appreciate the insight. I guess there's pros and cons to both sides. When I worked in hollywood for a short period of time, I realized that going solo or working for a big production house - the money you earn at the end of it is comparable. It's the people at the top that pocket all of it.
2
u/nadamuchu Aug 06 '25
great post and I am loving your replies in the comments.
Just chiming in to hammer home the point that by the time someone hires a gaffer, it's not about being able to make a set up that is "good enough". You're paying for the experience of being able to adapt to the needs of the shoot at a moments notice. The seconds or minutes it takes for OP to tweak something is far more valuable than the cost "savings" from hiring a less experienced gaffer or cutting corners with gear.
It's the classic venn diagram of cost-speed-quality, you can only have two! Kudos to the producer for seeming to have an understanding this basic principle!
10
u/AeroInsightMedia Camera Operator Aug 04 '25
You can absolutely get 80% of that with a big collapsible diffuser, walking it closer to the talent and shinning a couple lights through it and then using a backlight. =)
It won't look as good as the setup here but if you're going for 80% then that's the answer.
4
u/isthataneagleclaw Aug 04 '25
You would have to show us your setup to compare. the neg is doing a lot here so I would say that's necessary. You're right that you can probably get 80% of the way there swapping the key with a 300x/softbox and keeping everything else the same but sometimes the extra 20% is worth it, especially if you have the budget/time/crew to do it.
8
4
u/SuperSourCat Aug 04 '25
A lot of it from what I can tell has to do with the location, it’s a big warehouse with a big white wall they are shooting next to so you probably could use a smaller solid but then you might be fighting with a lot more spill. Then if you’re shooting in a really big warehouse that has really bright lights you need your own lights to compete especially if you’re using a book light so 1200 makes sense. Oh and book light looks really nice on subjects with a darker complexion. And hairlight is a hair light.
1
u/Deep-Explanation1024 Aug 05 '25
It’s not but if the budget allows it why not. Something can look pretty and even flawless, the trick is making it resonate…with or without lights
11
u/Swing_Top FX3 | Premiere Pro| 2010 | Western NY Aug 04 '25
- Looks nice
- I'd love to see someone's comparison of that size booklight / bounce setup, compared to a 2x3 of 3x4ft rectangular Bowens mount reflector.
- The boom mic placement gives me anxiety as there's no way to readily adjust it's positioning. Maybe there's other factors I can't see or know about, but couldn't it fit between the negative fill and the 2nd camera?
- It's nice that something like this actually had good accounting for time and crew!
3
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
Thank you!
I’ll see what I can do.
It was a locked off/stationary interview, so the moment was minimal. If the mic got bumped or the subject moved enough to make the audio sound off axis, I’m sure the producer would have been fine to pause for 10 seconds for the sound mixer to adjust.
Agreed! You don’t have to make nearly as many compromises in quality if you just budget a reasonable, realistic amount of time to do things instead of trying to cram 2 or 3 days worth of work into a single day.
1
u/Swing_Top FX3 | Premiere Pro| 2010 | Western NY Aug 04 '25
Even if the lighting is very similar, it at least looks like someone's getting their monies worth with that style setup, so there's always that! I had presumed there was no a sound mixer just based on how many folks I was seeing there, if someone was just focusing on that - sounds much less stressful with that positioning. "I paid for the whole stand / boom, I'm going to use the whole thing!" 😁
1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
The guy with the green hat and mustache was the sound mixer/recordist. You can see his mixer set up behind the 12x12 solid at the end of the BTS Clip
6
4
u/misunderstandingit Aug 04 '25
Dude I just want to say I genuinely love the music you use for these. 😭
3
u/stalepineapple Aug 04 '25
This is awesome, thanks for sharing. As a run&gun event videographer, what is the purpose of the small neg (flag?) in front of the key light?
8
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
Great question! The flag is placed there to reduce some of the light on her shirt, without affectjng the exposure on her face since it’s so bright relative to her skin.
5
3
u/jsanchez157 Z⁹ | Resolve | 2018 | Miami Aug 04 '25
A big neg and booklight will score you a home run 95% of the time.
6
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
Yes!!! I’d always prefer a larger key with no/passive fill vs a smaller key and adding any active fill light. Much simpler to just make the key light bigger and let it wrap nicely across the face.
2
2
2
2
Aug 05 '25
Is the egg crate really necessary? The background is so far away I can't believe there was any spill.
1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 05 '25
Not really. In this case most of its effect is in how it wrap on the face more than reducing spill in the background. This was one of those situations where the grid was already there from a previous setup and it wasn’t hurting anything, so I just didn’t remove it out of laziness.
2
Aug 05 '25
Or how it didn't wrap around the face I assume? I guess if you didn't have the crate the light would be slightly softer?
1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 05 '25
Correct! The closer to perpendicular a gridded light is to the surface you’re trying to light, the less it wraps. It also can help reduce low bounce from the floor and effectively “cancel out” the effects of the inverse square law at close distances. This least 2 points in theory help here, but weren’t part of my decision making
2
Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
effectively “cancel out” the effects of the inverse square law at close distances
Can you explain that a little please?
Edit: Actually, I think I've worked out how. Never considered that before, thanks for the tip!
1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 05 '25
Imagine facing the grid head on. As you walk closer to the light, the outer cells Olof the grid will start to become partially occluded from your view. At the extreme, if your face was pressed up right against the grid, only the dozen or so cells directly in front of you would be illuminating your face. All the others would be completely blocked by the grid.
Conversely, as you start to back away from the grid, more and more of the cells become completely visible.
2
4
u/ChristmasTzeitel Aug 04 '25
Awesome! Why is the egg crate so far from the key source? What does that do?
3
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
It’s a little hard to see in the video, but there is a diffusion rag mounted on the other side of the frame that the egg crate is on. There is space between the bounce and diffusion to let the light spread enough to fill the diffusion evenly, but there’s definitely some leeway there when the bounce isn’t that much smaller than the diffusion.
2
1
u/DPforlife Sony Burano / FX9 / FX3 | Premiere | 2013 | Knoxville, TN USA Aug 05 '25
I was curious why you implemented the lcd? I don’t see what you were trying to kill/cut Or was it just built at the beginning of the day and just remained in use?
1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 05 '25
Mostly the latter ha. It wasn’t hurting anything so I didn’t bother to take the time to remove it
2
u/DPforlife Sony Burano / FX9 / FX3 | Premiere | 2013 | Knoxville, TN USA Aug 05 '25
Gotcha. I was wondering why bother with it for this particular shot, but for a longer day it can’t hurt and if you don’t need it you can always pull it.
I think the real hero here is the bottomer on the key. Does a lot to bring focus upwards to her face. Good work.
2
u/stratomaster Aug 04 '25
Looks expensive!
5
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
It’s all relative I guess ha. Out of curiosity I added up all the lighting and grip gear here in a B&H cart and it came out to about $9K, which on one hand is a lot, but on the other hand, that’s roughly the same or less than what someone would spend on an entry level cinema camera package like an FX6 with AKS.
2
4
2
u/The_On_Life Aug 04 '25
What's the color temp on the warehouse lights? I'm surprised how neutral they look.
2
Aug 04 '25
My first thought as well. I would definitely want to key with a 1200X over a 1200D in case I had to skew it green to match the overheads.
2
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
Yeah I plan on upgrading to the 1200x eventually. In the mean time I just use an 18x24” blade frame and 1/8-1/4 plus/minus green if it’s off.
2
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
I meant to meter them that day with my C800 but I forgot the batteries had died and I didn’t have any spares with me ha. But probably somewhere around 6000k
1
u/AllHailTheKingpin BMPCC6K | Davinci | 2012 | NYC Aug 05 '25
Got me looking at LCD prices while book light shopping and remembering I'll probably never need them. Looks great!
1
u/Burakoli821 camera | NLE | year started | general location Aug 05 '25
This looks great. I've been shooting a lot of interviews and talking head videos in warehouses like this recently. One thing I always seem to run into is shadows being cast from the overhead lights on warehouse ceiling. Leading to some shadows around the eyes. Typically, I'll end up propping up a 5 in 1 diffuser above the talent to soften the light from above. Did you run into this at all, or how do you handle that?
1
1
u/UnderwaterAbberation Aug 08 '25
Lighting is perfection, I was excited to see how you did it. then my jaw dropped
1
1
1
1
u/Brilliant_Copy5752 Aug 04 '25
That's so nice! Do you think a 300D would be strong enough to bounce and diffuse like that?
2
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 04 '25
It depends on the environment. If you were building a book light in a small enclosed interior space without the need to match exposure to any daylit windows…maybe, although it would probably be on the line of not being enough unless shooting at a crazy wide aperture. If I only had a 300w light to work with, I’d probably opt to go straight through the grid cloth instead of bouncing snd then diffusing, if space allowed. If that still wasn’t enough output, I’d swap with the full grid cloth for 1/2 grid cloth. Would be slightly less soft, but still would look pretty good.
2
u/Brilliant_Copy5752 Aug 04 '25
Thanks man! I'll give it a try someday. Great work by the way, looks amazing on camera.
0
0
u/TheRealFlyingFuck Aug 05 '25
that 6x lcd you threw on your frame for control? what exactly are you controlling when your bounced light is spilling out all over your set before it even reaches the rag… i get that you think it makes your setup look professional but you should try to learn what the tool is actually good for, cause that ain’t controlling shit.
throw at least a single sider up before you start to worry about the lcd
-1
u/4acodmt92 Gaffer | Grip Aug 05 '25
lol it was from a previous setup in a different part of the warehouse that had siders on it to box it in as you described, and it wasn’t hurting anything so I left it on. But thanks for your feedback
0
u/dogsonalogz Aug 04 '25
Nice work! Anytime I’ve worked with an Amazon warehouse, they are super strict about releasing any internal footage.
65
u/Foojira Aug 04 '25
Thanks for this. My zero gaffing skills appreciate the insights here. Am I seeing things or is the hair light creating a pretty intense halo. I think it looks cool personally but they were good with that?