u/SweatyRedditHard

(reposted because I put a misleading title on the last post!)

I'm a hobby film maker and I'm working on a music video. I want to film myself close up at the sink in the bathroom at the end of this hall (doing general sink things!) for a few seconds then pull the camera back and away down the darkened corridor (ideally closer to the floor than this shot and going further back) then I'll turn and close the door plunging the corridor into darkness.

The problem I have is that at the end of the shot (basically the view above) I want the bathroom to look like a brightly lit room and the corridor shrowded in darkness - giving the feeling of isolation / loneliness (and much more dramatic than the difference in brightness from this phone shot) - however, if the bathroom is brightly lit when I film the close up stuff it looks really boring and there's shadows from the spot above.

I could try lighting the close up without using the ceiling lights and then cut to the pull back with different lighting but I feel it would not have continuity if the lighting was dramatically different? And I was aiming for one continuous shot ideally.

I considered removing some of the spot lights (there are four btw arranged as you'd expect in a small square-ish room) but with the low shot I think the missing lights would actually be seen in the ceiling and look odd - no real reason in the story for the guy to have a bulb out! - and by the end of the shot I want a dramatic difference between the brightness of the room and the corridor so I want the room bright.

Any ideas? How do you make a well lit room feel cinematic?

some more details about the location:

The room is on the second story of a building so I can't practically shine light through the window.

There is a bath to the right inside the bathroom so space to put lighting equipment there which will be out of shot, there is no space to the left (the door opens along the wall)

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How to get cinematic lighting in a brightly lit room?