Hi this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on The Slanted Lens we're at this great mannequin factory called The Mannequin Gallery.
We're gonna show you how to light an interview in mixed lighting situations using your Vector
lights.
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Hi this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on The Slanted Lens we're at a great place called The Mannequin Gallery.
Shelly's been nice enough to allow us to come here and to do an interview of her and talk
about what she does here.
Her and her husband own this place.
They make fabulous mannequins; they sell them all over the world.
But we're gonna show you the process.
Kind of my process.
What I do when I come into a place and I need to do an interview.
First off I come prepared.
In this Think Tank case I've got everything I need to do an interview.
I've got four Rosco Vector lights.
I've got grids.
I've got gels.
I've got three of those short stands.
Everything I need.
I can fly with this case.
It's just fabulous.
I roll in and I'm ready to go.
One of the things I love about the Vector lights is I've flown with them, I've banged
them around, I've-- they're indestructible.
They truly are indestructible.
Also I can't stand trying to find power.
So I'm not gonna use an LED that doesn't have the battery capability.
Even though there's power all around here I just don't want to deal with it.
I can throw my lights up, I can put my power on and I'm ready to go.
So when I walk in to do an interview I know I've got everything I need right here to be
able to make it happen.
So there's a lot of aspects to setting up an interview.
But today we're gonna concentrate on picking a spot and lighting it.
So let's get started and see what we can do.
First off we've got to pick an angle.
It's important we choose the right lens.
In this case I've got a 35mm on here because I want to see a lot of what's going on here.
It's mannequins.
I want to see this whole place.
I don't want to be in a long lens and make them all fuzzy and go away.
I want to see what's going on here so I'm gonna choose a little wider lens.
My settings are 5.6 at a 50th of a second.
I've got enough depth of field that I can see the mannequins in the back.
So we don't want to waste the time of our actual talent, the lady who works here has
got a lot to do.
So I've got Judy here as my stand in.
I'm gonna walk around with her and find the angle we like.
Make our decisions about lighting.
I'll shoot back in there.
[CLICK OF CAMERA]
I'm not in love with the, uh, the overhead stuff there.
Let's look right down this alley here.
So we've got the leading lines of the mannequins coming in if we turn out.
See something in there.
That's interesting.
Let me see if the kind of -- the lines kind of push out away from you.
Walk away from the dude who's pointing at you there.
[CLICK OF CAMERA]
No, I think--.
Let's come back in here look down this line.
Hey there's a box right here.
That's amazing!
[LAUGHS]
So this is where we ended up.
This is definitely where we ended up.
Just love the leading lines.
Got kind of a pool of gold and flesh colored, uh, mannequins back there.
Got a nice pool of white on the left side.
And we're getting the fluorescent from overhead.
So it looks really nice.
So looking right here for me.
[CLICK OF CAMERA]
Yeah.
That looks good.
We've got saws going next door.
We got airplanes going outside.
But we're gonna just keep rolling ahead here.
'Cause it's such a great place to shoot.
So the first thing we have to decide once we've
chosen our angle is what are we going to do with the ambient light.
Is the ambient light going to become a keylight?
Is it going to become a fill light?
Is it going to become a backlight?
What are we going to do with it?
We've got a mixture here.
We've got fluorescents in the background.
We've got sunlight coming through the garage doors behind me.
Generally speaking we're not gonna have enough power with our vector lights to just overpower
the ambient light in the room.
So what we're gonna do is we're going to use it as just a fill.
An overall fill.
We've got a hotspot in the background where that light's gonna really give us a nice light
on the mannequins.
And it kind of bring them up in the background which'll look great right behind our talent's
head.
And then we're gonna start to add our Vector lights to it.
The CCT Vector lights are perfect in this situation because it gives you the ability
to change the color balance.
And I can balance my Vectors towards the ambient light in the room and not have it stand out
so much.
We're gonna play with that.
Just see if we want to get it right on and spot on match it to the fluorescents in the
background.
Or do we want to make the fluorescents go green and let our light be a little more daylight
up front.
But we have that option with the Vectors.
We have the ability to change that color balance.
So let's get our first light up.
It's gonna be a keylight on Judy's face.
The nice thing about the Vector light is when I set it up I don't have to have a softbox
on it.
It's a LED that's lined around it.
Bounces into the light and out and gives me a very soft light.
So it's easy to work in tight spaces like this.
We can slide it right in here, give us a nice look on her face.
We can also dial it up and down with the dimmer which looks pretty nice about right there.
It's a nice soft light.
I may pan it away from her just a little bit.
So it doesn't show so much into the people, or --. The people.
The mannequins behind her.
We set our light on forty-three hundred degrees and we did bring a fill card in just to soften
up the shadows just a little bit.
You could have shot it with the light and just the mannequins as a fill card.
But we brought in that fill card.
It's a little closer, it's a little softer, and it pushes the light in.
Fills in the shadow.
Looks very nice.
So there's a one light setup.
Basically I'm done.
I can be done right here.
Now there's more we can do with it.
But if this was all you had this is a beautiful shot.
It's not a bad place to go.
So let's go on to our next light.
We're gonna put a rim light on her from behind.
It's gonna give us a nice rim on her hair.
Gonna help make this look a little nicer.
So there's our lighting build up.
We're at forty-three hundred degrees.
It's nicely balanced in the background.
You can see the blue in the foreground on the mannequins.
'Cause it's getting a little bit of that sunlight coming from the garage door.
But not so bad.
We're gonna add our keylight on her face.
It's got a fill on the right hand side that bounces back in her face.
Then we're gonna add just a bit of light on her hair.
So we added a rim light on the camera right side.
At first I just put the light up and let it light everything.
But it just way too much.
Got light on the mannequins on the left side of the frame.
Got light on the mannequins on the right.
Just made everything look too flat.
So we put a grid on it so it just gave us a nice highlight on her hair.
It looked very nice and balanced out to the rest of the scene.
Our last light is a background light.
We're just going to rim some of the mannequins way deep in the background back
there.
Makes 'em look very nice.
We also set up our second camera with a 70-200mm lens on it.
Gonna run that at about 70mm lens so it gives a nice tight look at her face but I see the
mannequins in the background.
It's time to bring Shelly in.
She's the owner here at Mannequin Gallery.
We're gonna do an interview.
A two camera interview of her.
Gonna put that together and let's take a look at some of the footage we got.
Shelly: The Mannequin Gallery rents, sells, customizes and repairs mannequins for the
Hollywood industry, fashion industry, museum industry and anyone else that needs that product.
We also have sculptures in house that can create anyone's vision.
My husband is a sculpture.
Walt Wilkey, he's the president, is the sculptor.
He's the lead sculptor here.
We have other sculptors we work with.
Jay P: It's been fabulous to be here with Shelly at The Mannequin Gallery.
She's fabulous to work with.
What a great place this is.
We learned how to light in this mixed lighting situation which was a great experience for
us.
If you've got interviews you've done, if you have images you've done where you're
working that mixed lighting situation, post 'em on our Facebook group.
Join our Facebook group.
Uh, let us hear from you and see the things that you're doing.
So it's been a lot of fun to be here so thank you very much.
Shelly: Thank you.
Jay P.: Keep those cameras rollin' and keep on clickin'.
Give me the opportunity to mentor you in your business.
Go to theslantedlens.com and sign up for our free business coaching call.
We're gonna teach you the daily routine for success.
So get over to theslantedlens.com and sign up today.
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