How to Film Interrogation Scenes | 3 Quick Lighting Setups

What's up guys, welcome to 4 Minute Film School, I'm Nairs with the A-Team. Today I'm here with Eric Lombard. Eric Lombard is a super talented director of photography who has shot for a ton of YouTube stars like Anna Akana, Shane Dawson, his videos have been seen by over 100 million people worldwide, and today we're going to take you through three famous interrogation scenes and how we can recreate them. So Eric, what was the first scene that we recreated? First scene was from Basic Instinct, the famous leg crossing scene, very scandalous. It kind of looked to me like an underground layer. The ceiling had this grating on it that created a really cool effect when the lights were shining through. In order to do that, we took a 120D with a reflector on it, shot that through a little grid to simulate the grating, so that kind of gave her that nice effect. And then as a backlight, she had a nice glamorous edge to her, so we put a 120D on the back wall and put that through a fresnel, created a really nice, hot backlight for her. To get that really cool glow coming from under, against the wall, we put six M9s. So the M9s were laying on the ground flat, pointed up, to give us a glow against the wall. It's a very unconventional lighting setup for an interrogation scene. No police station actually looks like that scene from Basic Instinct, but it is very dramatic and cool. And the bluish tint kind of gives you a more ominous feel, I think. Awesome, so what was the second setup? Second setup was from Batman, the Dark Knight, the interrogation scene between the Joker and Batman. Our primary light was a 120D with a light dome on it as a topper, directly above. And what I liked about the 120D with the light dome is that it kind of gave us a spread all the way across to the walls, and we didn't have to add a bunch of lights around the perimeter to help fill it in. Which created a little bit of raccoon eyes on the actor, so we ended up putting a Mini-20 with diffusion and one CTO filter, just right next to the camera that gave a little highlight and filled in the eyes. So all we needed was two lights to recreate that. That was it. So what was the last scene that we did? The last scene was from Usual Suspects. So I noticed in the Usual Suspects, the main key light from above is very, very hot on the main actor. So in order to do that, I took a 120D and put on a Fresnel on full spot, so it was basically as bright as it could get at 100%. With half CTO, my camera was balanced at 4400, made that light white. What were your back two lights? The back two lights was a 120D with a Fresnel, pointing straight down at the wall to give us a nice little shape on the back wall, but I put full CTO on it, so that it would be a lot warmer than the foreground light. I think it just helped give it a little more color separation, so that he really popped out. How did you make that light bulb effect? The light bulb, I just put an actual 72 watt bulb in there. Why 72 watts? I picked 72 watts just so it wasn't too overwhelming and distracting, because if it was too bright, then it would just draw your eye back to that practical, but I wanted just a nice little something in the background to give it that pop. Why did you mix all those different color temperatures instead of keeping them perfectly consistent? Yeah, I wanted to have a little color separation between the foreground and the background. It helps separate them a little bit more, so that the foreground pops out. So there's your episode of 4 Minute Film School with Eric Lombart. I'm Nerys from The A-Team. Leave a comment below with your favorite interrogation scene, and the best comment will win an Aputure M9. Follow Eric Lombart at Eric Lombart. Follow Aputure on Facebook, Instagram, The Works. Subscribe to us on YouTube and hit that notification bell. I'm Nerys from The A-Team. We'll catch you guys next time.