Throwback to the last job I shot before quarantine. It feels like a lifetime ago. This project was super fun and had some interesting challenges. It was awesome to be reunited with my great friend and amazing director @zachmerck These commercials feature real Spectrum TV/Phone/Internet customers, not actors, so we were able to recruit a couple of our friends like @ashsaidhi
There are two sets. One is a living room with practical floor lamps and the other is an outdoor park with a bench. The commercials take place in these environments, but at the end the camera pulls back to reveal that they are actually sets in a real world environment. One challenge was pulling off the VFX gag, and the other was to give each environment a slightly different look, while maintaining visual consistency throughout the campaign.
For the interior lighting on the set pictured here, I wanted to feel the practical lamps. However, being that it is revealed that these environments are actually outside, we had to keep a base ambience and not make it look too dark and contrasty as if the practicals were the only source of illumination. This would look too fake when we revealed the set in a daytime outdoor location and it would look too different than the outdoor park bench scene which doesn’t have any motivation from practical sources.
An overhead 20x grid cloth with 20 1K nook lights provided our top ambience and a 12x with light grid cloth off to the side of the set gave a general direction to the light. For the closeups we brought lights closer to the subject to give more direction and modeling. In pics 1 and 2 we used a small book light and in pics 3 and 4 we used a muslin JEM ball with white bead board behind it to give a bit more spread.
I will talk about the VFX gag and overhead lighting setup in my next post. Stay tuned!
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