Adding light to a dark room, for video

[Alan]

I have a 5DMk 2, and I was shooting video at a birthday party. The room was full of people, with variegated clothes colors. The room was about 18 x 14, with a vaulted ceiling. A couple of wall sconces (60 watts? maybe?), two table lamps (same wattage?) and a floor lamp (probably the same wattage). Plus, some incident light from another room.


I had the 24-105 L on the body, set at f/4. Cranked the ISO to 3200, AWB (probably should have set it to a custom WB....too late for that, unfortunately).


Needless to say, it was a crappy quality movie. Too dark, too grainy, too "warm" (I'm going to fix that, next time). There simply wasn't enough light in that room.


What would you suggest for additional lighting in a situation like that? Perhaps, a couple of 500 construction floods in opposing corners? Or, behind the camera, in the corners?

[Sean Setters]

Actually, I have a previous version of this 1000 watt continuous light from Steve Kaesar. As I use strobes for my photography (much better than continuous light in my opinion), the continuous light only gets used when I'm doing video. It works well in relatively small rooms, however, I'm sure it would help in a large room if you use an umbrella instead of the softbox (I recommend the softbox kit, though, so that you have a good, close-quarters light modifier for video). Keep in mind that the continuous lights can be very bright and can get very hot, so you don't want them terribly close to your audience.

[Alan]

Sean, thanks. That's what I'm looking for. Would it be better to put the light up quite high and point it down on the audience, or shoot it more toward the ceiling? The ceiling where I was shooting was not white, so this might cast a color cast, perhaps?