Lighting for a instructional martial arts DVD?

The martial arts school is very well lit with florecent bulbs. (I've never counted them but there are alot for such a small room) Plus they have big windows to the left (2 4'x8' windows I think.) and the right wall is covered with mirrors (which don't make light but they do reflect) They have light colored carpet and the "actor" doing the martial arts will have a white uniform.

My question is will we need extra lighting?

How big of a difference will extra lighting make?

What type of lighting should I get if any?

Where will the lighting go?

Any further information, comments or question wil be appreciated!

Scott

Depends on how good you want it to look.
Taking out the fluorescent bulbs and replacing them with a daylight balanced replacement will help with some consistency. I would then get a couple of accent lights to help "pop" the scenes. Try to avoid flat lighting. For martial arts, I'd want something a little edgier.The Lowel Pro lights are pretty nice for around $160 with barn doors. You would then need some CTB (color temperature blue) gels to make these 3200K tungsten lights balance to 5400K.

http://lowel.com/images/systems/vip/pro_light.jpg


Also consider shooting at night if you can to avoid the ambient daylight coming in through the windows.
A guy who does pretty decent martial arts videos is Demi Barbito.
Check out his site at http://demibarbito.com/
You can tell his older stuff was not lit very well, but he's learning all the time and each of his training videos are getting better with every release.
Those stills/vids on his site may give you a few ideas.


Hope this helps,