Lighting an Interview in Front of a Window
When you are shooting a video for your client sometimes (or many times) The client will want to show off their view of the city by requesting you shoot their interview in front of windows. This is not an easy task. You either cut down the light coming through the window or you light your interviewee within a stop or a stop and a half of the brightness outside. There is are a few problems with that. One, if you’re crew is going to cut the amount of light from outside they are going to have to use gel on the window. This takes a lot of time to do properly. Second, if you’re not going to diminish the light from outside you have to bring the light level inside way up. This can be very uncomfortable for the interview. They will end up squinting from the brightness of the lights. For either of these solutions a gaffer and grip truck might be required. Your best solution is to convince your client to find a meaningful place for the interview that is not in front of a window.
Here are a couple of things that will help.
- Shoot in a log profile that will give you better dynamic range.
- Gel the windows to cut down the light coming in.
- Put more light on the subject.
- In post you can use masking or rotoscoping but this is more time consuming, especially if your subject moves a lot .
Below is a shot out of the window using a combination of gels, log and lights.
