This was the toughest brief we had ever received. Shoot an interview show, in a sauna.
It was a project we were incredibly excited about as we would get to collaborate again with the one and only Beno Obano (with whom we'd previously created two Amazon Prime productions) and also have England Football and Rugby stars Tyrone Mings and Anthony Watson as our talent. However everything else about the production was going to be a serious challenge.
If there's two things that pose a serious impediment to camera operation it's moisture and extreme temperature and saunas have both of these in abundance. We also faced the additional challenge of getting great audio and lighting this scene without causing any reflections on the glass door of the sauna as we would have no choice but to film through it.
Here's a breakdown of our process of how we tackled 5 of the main obstacles in this incredibly unconventional filmmaking scenario, how to film in a sauna:-
Temperature
Moisture
Audio
Lighting
Reflections
(1.) TEMPERATURE
The whole premise of the show 'Rising Heat' is to see which of the two contestants can last the longest in the sauna. As the heat rises, so does the intensity of the questions. You win by either staying in the longest or if both contestants lasted 30 minutes (the imposed time limit for safety) the winner would be determined by the heart rate monitors both players would wear, seeing who had kept the lowest heart rate.
The sauna temperature could get anywhere up to 102°C and with most cameras overheating in temperatures anywhere above 25°C taking our main cameras inside the sauna wouldn't be an option. However we were determined to get cameras inside the sauna up close to the contestants to capture the intensity of the challenge that they were facing. Realistically GoPro's would be the only cameras for the job and ahead of the shoot we did multiple test runs to see how long the GoPro's would run before overheating. On average they would give us 15 minutes of runtime before shutting off, we made sure to turn them to silent mode ensuring beeps were off and decided to let them run out and take whatever length of clip they gave us.
Outside of the sauna it was far cooler and we were able to run a 6-camera multi-cam setup, which included two master wide angles, single shots on each of the three participants and also a old-school camcorder to add in for the mixed-media effect.
(2.) MOISTURE
The GoPro cameras in the sauna are completely waterproof so we didn't have to worry about them getting wet, however the moisture would be a challenge for the wider set as a whole. There's all the health and safety challenges of mixing electrical equipment with water so we wanted a minimal setup that wasn't trailing cables and wires everywhere and would be a trip hazard and also didn't want to put our equipment in jeopardy of getting wet and cutting out mid-shoot, as we only had one go at the shoot as it would be a 30 minute one take we couldn't go back and re-start.
The sauna environment itself is dry however it is the sweat that causes the issues and that would be the biggest challenge in solving the next issue, audio.
(3.) AUDIO
In a setup like this, you want to have individual lav mics on each of your talent for optimum results and there are ways and means of hiding these on pretty much every style of shirt/top or jacket you could imagine. However our talent wouldn't be wearing anything on their top half which presented us with a major dilemma.
We extensively researched microphone options to use for this production and settled on the increasingly popular Rode Wireless Go 2's. We gave them multiple test runs and they were able to survive the heat for both of our 45 minute tests and they recorded both internally as well as sending a signal back to our main audio field recorder allowing us to have multiple options and monitor them throughout. Investing in two sets also meant we had a backup mic ready to swap in should there be any issues and this is something we had to do mid-take as one mic became very muffled due to sweat seeping in.
To mount these mics we went for the classic 'Love Island' necklace option, a thin rope hanging around the neck meaning the mics were attached to our subjects and were in a great position to capture the best possible sound. This mounting style also meant the mics hung at a slightly tilted angle away from our subjects so that the sweat would hit the back of the mic pack, rather than fall into the microphone hole at the top. We also got some custom printed stickers with the 'Rising Heat' brand to cover up the Rode Logos on the mic.
We were really pleased on how this audio setup worked and it definitely got the job done, however we did have a few learnings to take into our next sauna shoot. We had to be weary of the metal clips on the necklace overheating and causing pain on our subject's skin too and next time would look for alternative materials for the clasp. Our initial plan was to measure the contestants heart rates through their smart watches, however as a last minute call on the day we switched to chest band options instead and on reflection clipping mic packs to these may well have been the better option for sound. Lastly we would add the fluffy dead-cat covers that come with the Rode Go's as this would help be a barrier to sweat falling in and distorting the audio we capture.
(4.) LIGHTING
We used the incredible 'Move Method' in Fulham as our location. Their sauna is incredibly photogenic and didn't require anything in terms of set dressing, however we wanted to enhance the look of this piece and make it look as premium as possible with the lighting.
We were only able to light directly throught the front of the sauna which limited the amount we were able to shape and control the light and therefore decided to go for more of a traditional TV studio flood style lightning, ensuring our subjects were evenly lit on both sides of their face and lighting coming from above to create more of a Paramount/Butterfly lighting style where there is just a small shadow underneath the subject's nose and drop shadow underneath the chin.
After several test runs in the studio we built a lighting rig that we could quickly and easily bring into the sauna area and place one of our large Quasar tube lights overhead out of shot, providing a nice even lighting on our subjects and keeping this light and frame out of shot, meaning we could still capture all the angles we wanted.
After several test runs in the studio we built a lighting rig that we could quickly and easily bring into the sauna area and place one of our large Quasar tube lights overhead out of shot, providing a nice even lighting on our subjects and keeping this light and frame out of shot, meaning we could still capture all the angles we wanted.
(5.) REFLECTIONS
Although the lighting setup did the job, we wanted some extra level and so introduced our Nanlite Forza 720B to boost the light in the scene. This fresnel style light was perfect as we could mount it high out of shot and being a single source of light this made it very easy for us to avoid reflections as we only had one light source to work around.
Going into the shoot we had anticipated having major issues with reflections as glass is notoriously difficult to shoot through and avoid seeing any of your lights bouncing off the glass and ruining the shoot. We added polariser filters all our cameras to help cut out these reflections and initially tried bouncing the Forza off the ceiling, however this created more reflection than just simply pointing the light down onto the scene from the top left corner of the sauna.
Keeping lighting simple helped us not only to work quickly but left us options to move around and get a variety of handheld single coverage on each of our subjects so that the piece had energy and didn't have the stale, static feel as if we had set up all our close up coverage on tripods.
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We were very fortunate to have a great crew on this one, Beno leading the project as Director, Ben Marlow as DOP, Oliver Engele and Lawrence as camera operators and a fantastic team at Sky Sports helping support the production.
A huge thank you everybody involved in this production and you can see the first episode of 'Rising Heat' with Tyrone Mings, Anthony Watson and Beno Obano below...
"Rising Heat" Episode 1 with Tyrone Mings, Anthony Watson
and host and creator Beno Obano.
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