Motivating practical light

[4knewave]

When using practicals do you usually add another source to accent it? I'm shooting on the 7219 stock in a few weeks and have come up with my lighting plans. One scene in particular is lit with a 150 watt bulb accented with a 650 bounce. For the bg I was just going to use a 75 watt practical with no accented light. Though my gaffer suggested Adding something so it doesn't fall off drastics. Though I don't want to end up overligting.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It just depends, both on the look you want and how close the actor is to the real practical. If an actor's face is close to a lampshade, you can expose for the face and not have the shade be too overexposed. But if the actor is farther from the shade, they can either be too dark or the shade has to be too bright, hence why sometimes you either need to sneak in an extra light to simulate the light from the practical, or you need to darken the camera-side of the practical so that it looks less hot.

I don't mind hot lampshades and would rather have the real practical do most of the lighting, but there are limits. Plus when shooting on video, a practical will overexpose and clip faster.

But I can't tell you whether in this case, you need the extra light or not.