Need help in lighting up inside a metro driver cabin!

Vidhi Bhardwaj · March 9

Hello everyone, I am shooting inside a metro's driver cabin in 2 days time. I will be shooting at night and there will be two characters inside the cabin. What is the best way to light it up considering it's a very tiny space and I don't have a lot of budget. I am carrying Astra lights both 2 feet and 4 feet plus a full kit of MC Pro lights, I also have couple of aperture 600x and Godox Matt 2x2 lights. Attaching photos in link for reference. Any advice will be very helpful.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OyYGIHkQ_P1fp8a3oeLaSAD49ikl_Otj?usp=share_link

Doyle Smith · March 16

Hi Vidhi,

I don't check in often on this forum so you've probably already finished your shoot. So just as a theoretical exercise, here's how I would approach it. The cabin is very modern almost like a spaceship. There is a large windscreen so your base light level shouldn't overpower the sense of night darkness outside. You would want to have a sense of ambient point source lighting outside the windscreen and side windows. Maybe a bracketed test shoot with a still camera at your intended EI would be instructive. Also it looks like there are many small practical sources that would be used at night in the cab. I'd give these consideration. In an aircraft cockpit we keep the illumination low so as not to restrict our night vision. Perhaps it is the same for Metro drivers?

The 2X2 Matt lights could be utilized as a Gordon Willis top light if you could rig them overhead. It looks like you have a high ceiling. They are likely to spread too much without a duvetyne skirt around them so you may want to consider this to tease them off the side walls.

The MC Pro lights look handy and I would rig them below the windscreen as an uplight as if they were coming from the instrument panel. A light covered gel might be in order. Perhaps a tidy showcard shield could make them look like a part of the set or just frame them out of your shots.

Also I would purchase 2-4 battery operated LED puck lights and VHB or foam tape them strategically to the ceiling of the cab to supplement the practicals if need. (I'm assuming it is fiberglass and not carpet or fabric). Don't worry about color temp or CRI because a mix of color temps is totally appropriate on this set.

As far as the Apurture 600x maybe it could be used as a "poor man's process" kinetic light source such a train passing from the opposite direction on a parallel track.

So you didn't say if your train was static or moving but that would also influence your lighting choices.

Hope this is of some use to you.

DS