Joshua Kohler Posted February 3 Posted February 3 Hello! I'll be shooting a short film soon and we are trying to recreate a kind of city ambiance coming from below from the side. One of the first examples I had in mind was this shot from "Blade Runner" (see below); 1. for the diffused light 2. for the colour. It's a static Wide Shot on a long opened corridor (see below photo). My first plan was to bounce 2.5K HMI off a 12x12 butterfly (3 times to spread it on all the length of the corridor) from below and try to give it this straight angle (we're also trying to fake the height of the building; we're shooting at the first floor by night so the background won't be visible). So the HMI would be facing down at the butterfly almost ground level, angled at the pillars shown in the picture below. I got a tip from my cinematography mentor to add some aluminium foil on the butterflies to create some random distortion and to make it more organic, what do you think? With this I'd combine some other tungsten fixtures to create some pool of lights here and there if needed and to fake street lamps or any lights coming from a city. (but still unsure about this one as I'm scared it looks to fake) For the colour I did some research and people were talking about this White Flame Green gel, combined with 1/2 CTO on the HMI and the camera set at 3200K to achieve a steel blue, but I don't think it'd give this cyan colour that we're trying to get. Then for the corridor we'd be having tubes attached to the ceiling, plugged onto dimmers and we'll make them flicker. I'm adding some Medium Amber and 1/2 green gel on them to make them look a bit dirtier. So my question(s) would be: Does this plan sound correct or achievable? Does anybody already shot something like that and maybe could give some tips and advices? How to achieve this cyan colour? And does the HMIs off the butterflies is a good approach to achieve this city ambiance as in the example below? Let me know, looking forward for any advices, tips and experiences Thank you so much Best regards Joshua Kohler corridor SCENE 1.heic
Premium Member David Mullen ASC Posted February 3 Premium Member Posted February 3 I think the main thing to remember is that the up-light is really hitting the haze/smoke in the air, creating the silhouette. A soft bounce along the length from below is a good idea but clearly in this frame there are some harder spots on the left and right side simulating some sort of source.
Mark Dunn Posted February 4 Posted February 4 (edited) I recall something my film tutor taught me a long time ago. I suspect we were just pointing lights and expecting something to happen when he said "you can't light air". It's not entirely true in that of course the smoke is scattering the light as David says, but apart from that, what is really being lit are the surfaces. If you're using smoke, fair enough, but if not, just remember light has to land somewhere. Edited February 4 by Mark Dunn
Joshua Kohler Posted February 10 Author Posted February 10 Thank you for the answers! In fact lighting air sounds mad and that's what I realised so I changed my plans for something more humble I would say, where I know more what I'm doing and ensure the result. We're still gonna use some haze and also wet slightly the ground to get some highlights here and there. Thank you a lot! 1
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