XXL Commercial: Lighting Breakdown

This is a TV-commerical for a norwegian sporting retailer, XXL, opening in Austria now. And it happens to be my 1st time gaffing a commercial! Note that I was not the rigging gaffer.

The location & general Lighting plan

Location during setup the evening before

The 12k is bounced into the roof, providing a nice even fill light that can be dimmed up or down. The key was usually soft tungsten from the right, while we had a slightly harder blue kicker or backlight from the left. It might look the opposite in some shots, because we flipped it to get the greenscreen behind in some shots. Used a bounced 2.5k HMI (I think?) and two skypanels for the blue light.

We built this sci-fi store, then extended it with VFX in post. In fact the 3D store was already made, so we tried to match the lighting. We aren't using a real studio because the city of Trondheim doesn't have one that is big enough. Note that I wasn't there to rig the kino-flos and main greenscreen.

These 3 lights lit the greenscreen. Cleverly hidden, but would have been nice to have more fixtures available for a more even screen. 

I have no idea if this is the correct way to do it, but I managed to make the tacked on greenscreens pretty smooth by clamping them together in the way seen to the left.

How it was lit

One skypanel low on each side to simulate lights from the city. I think it was set to candlelight mode. Ambient from dimmed down 12k hitting the roof of our location.

Wrapped the skypanel in blackwrap to keep it from creating an outline on the "concrete"

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Skypanels in candlelight-mode bounced into two large bounceboards, while flagging the direct light off her face.

There is also some tungsten bounce from the right out of frame

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My favorite shot is this one. I love the blue overexposure on her camera left cheek. Really gives me old-school sci-fi vibes.  One skypanel on each side behind her. Chimera lantern in front. When I saw it I thought of the image below.

Rachel from Blade Runner (1982)

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No VFX shot

Okay so we had this side-shot, but no more greenscreen to spare. So what do you do? REALLY shallow dept of field and patchwork job of the year!

Why is there a random bounceboard there? Well to make the bulge from the C-stand leg less obvious of course! Next time I'll probably just add some sandbags and tilt the arm a bit forward.

Those black solids are extending our background

Conclusions

I would probably encourage people to keep their cables more organised than seen above. If I remember correctly we didn't have enough so could only have the shortest path. I love the output and customizability the skypanels give, although I miss the lightweight of the Kino-Flo select. Hope you enjoyed! For comments, criticism or questions, reach me on twitter/instagram @tonivuc, or leave a comment here!

The line outside the new store in Vienna. We must have done something right ;-)