@Psyco Couldn't disagree more. First off, with low/no budget filmmaking you have limited crew, limited money and limited time or a combination of each. I would never remove stuff from a set I was able to secure. That's time I would rather put to blocking, rehearsing, lighting, etc... And if the room as is, doesn't fit the scene, then you shouldn't have picked it or you need to rewrite the scene to fit. Plus, most "normal living rooms" look much more boring than you think. Most of the time you'd have to ADD stuff to it to make it look more interesting.

AND I just happened to watch Pulp Fiction the other day, again, and the simplicity of the guys room is very deceptive. There's the wall fixture, the shadow behind Jules, the window and the curtain rods next to the window with no curtains because of the twin blinds. How far the blinds go down, the shining chrome of the chair next to Jules, the shadows on the carpet, etc... All that is deliberate and the lighting and shadows are deceptively complex than at first glance.

Even the shot with Marvin is much less simple than it looks. The shadow behind Marvin, the door jam line behind him, the room corner, the shadow at the top of the room corner in a triangle shape, the door trim, the door trim shadow, the door pattern. Looks like nothing, but that shot has lots of deliberate depth and shading done to it that most people don't realize was done. Also the paint has texture and coloring that is most likely deliberately created.

Simple like the bar where Marcellus tells Butch about "Pride". Or simple like Lance's house when they're going to stab Mia in the chest with a foot long needle....nothing distracting in the background at all....

And what I'm saying about lighting is you have to take that into account when your designing the set picking out locations. And if you have a location you can't change, I'd rather spend 5 minutes figuring out a creative script reason for why the location looks like that than spend hours re-arranging stuff. There's nothing you can't explain away with dialogue...talk is cheap.

It doesn't matter how "busy" the background is...I'm looking at backgrounds because the story doesn't keep my attention and I want to see why these vids don't look good. If the story, dialogue, acting kept my attention, I wouldn't notice the background.

Set-design is hard... But here are a few guidelines that I have:

1. Stay away from the walls: As we saw in the Marvin picture, walls can look great, with some nice atmospheric lighting and good planning. But most of us won't have that ability. And walls are usually our greatest enemy, as these are empty and quickly look "boring". So it's a good idea to move out a bit from the walls. For exmple, create some space, usually about 3 feet or more is enough for a person to not "blend into" the wall or, even more.

2. Clean it up: There's an old expression that goes: Keep it simple, stupid. Look around the room and see what the basic components in the furniture are. Usually, most "normal" rooms have all sort of stuff that's just laying around. That is something you DON'T want. All the random stuff should have a reason to be there. Plus a tidy room is a lot easier to work with. But mostly it boils down too an old expression: Keep it simple, stupid.

3. Devil's in the details: This is related to the above point. As moving around big stuff is something that takes time, instead, focus on the little things and draw focus on them. Use props to your advantage and highlight these, as these can tell a lot about your character.

But the last part is what I think is the most important:

4. Try to get an atmosphere: While it sounds silly, most people will accept the more you do if the atmosphere you want to capture is spot on! This is easier than one might think, but usually just adding some light/color, an object or some movement can make it all the more interesting. For example a TV-bumper I was AC'ing they had a pinball machine that when it came into the scene really heightened everything. But it can be even simpler. I was DoPing a film where we just used some different colored lights to really make the scene work all the better. One scene we were in a bar and one character was watching TV. We used a cold CFL softbox with a CTB filter infront (the rest was Tungsten) so we got a very blue light and then just used somebody with some papers occasionally waving back and forth. It created a sense of space and made the scene come alive. Or in another shot we saw the bar, which had these refrigerators where we stuck another CFL light underneath, creating a cold light coming from there, again making the bar itself stand out from the rest of the room.

@LPowell
That all might be true. But a cold white cyc isn't going to be conducive to getting the best performances from your actors. Actors love props, wardrobe, make up and sets. They truly respond emotionally to those things. Of course if you doing local weather broadcasts or even infomercials, then it's fine.

@LPowell I'd thought of "white screen" and I may have done a test in the past and wouldn't the talent's eye balls key out? The white's of their eye's" would literally be the background, no?

@LPowell Cool, BUT....the words low and no budget are in the topic title for a reason and AE CS5 is out of my budget. I'm using Sony Vegas Studio because it's the cheapest editor that offers the most features. The full price of Adobe Premiere and Effects is around $1000. I'd rather spend that money on, lights, sound hardware, and rigs to make my footage look better in cam.

Edited the title to better reflect what I mean.