Group Shot. Ugly Background Color. Advice?

Okay so I've been ask to photograph a team of a dozen or so in a dance studio. I have access to 3 strobes and lighting shouldn't be a problem (borrowed from friend). However, the room I'm shooting in is a bright orange-peachy color which isn't too nice for a bunch of young male teens. Any advice? Anyway to change the color of the wall with a gel strobe? I don't have a backdrop and even if I did it wouldn't be big enough for that many people. The ceiling is white, 3 of the walls are orange and the other side has a bunch of mirrors. Not exactly the best room to photography in.

I was thinking of using grids to really concentrate light on the people and avoid lighting the background to try to black out the wall but not sure if that works. Any help or advice is appreciated :] Thanks in Advance!

So you point out that the location they have chosen has an orange wall and you can't change that and see what they say. If they say so what, you shoot it anyway. I point out problems to clients, but I don't try to save them from their choices. No one would expect you to have a backdrop that long and it's not a color you could chroma key out. You could light it with a bright back light or two which would make it more white.

yeah I'll probably do that, I've been trying to figure out how to get around it. Thanks Richard!

Can you rent some background or get some seemless paper.

Frugal wrote in post #11682059
So you point out that the location they have chosen has an orange wall and you can't change that and see what they say. If they say so what, you shoot it anyway. I point out problems to clients, but I don't try to save them from their choices. No one would expect you to have a backdrop that long and it's not a color you could chroma key out. You could light it with a bright back light or two which would make it more white.

Totally agree. If that's what the clients want, I guess there's no choice unless they're fine with changing locations to achieve better effects.

I dont think is such a short time and for a group that large.

I could move to outdoors but haven't done it before. They have these interesting looking garage rail doors. The kinds you see at warehouses and stuff. But it'll be in the mid afternoon.

is there a lighting set up, perhaps grids that I could to perhaps underexpose the background completely black by shooting at a very high aperture and lighting them with a strong flash?

You'd need a lot of soft boxes for 12 people to avoid getting a shadow from one person on another. Someone on the forum always suggests feathering SBs in from the sides, but that seems to have a major potential for shadows.

feathering softboxes?

You could use a tripod, shoot them in groups of 3-4 so you could get the lights closer to them and have less light hit the background, then composite them back together as a group in Photoshop.

12 people is like 6 per row if two rows or 4 per wor if 3 rows. Rent some 10x20 bg, hang it sideways. You don't need more than 20' wide, isn't it? Stick one or better yet two 60" umbrellas on each side of the camera and high up pointing tsraight (not down on the subjects) and you done.

Who says you need lot softboxes to shoot 12 people?

Do they specifically want to keep the real colour? You could try to send it white, it's a shame it's not something like blue. You could probably just use hue/saturation in photoshop to change it which would be a 2 second job. I guess you could make a selection and do the same thing. Otherwise you could gel the strobes lighting the group (use a grey card which is optional) and then change it to what ever colour you like. Lighting the group with bluey green would send it purple I think, blue would send it more balanced, ect.

I'd change the orange to a more flattering golden yellow in Photoshop.
But that's just me