Best way to achieve dark scenes on DV

[Guest voodoo]

I need to shoot a lot of scenes which are meant to be in an old abadonned hospital, at night (using a Canon XL-1). Given DV's limited handling of contrast, what would be the best way to achieve this. Should I try and achieve the look through low lighting, or is it better to light it fairly brightly, and then use the post production process to achieve the desired look?

 

 

Thanks for your time.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

At the risk of making an assumption, I guess these scenes need to be dark because they are meant to be spooky, creepy, scary etc. If so you have to light them in the appropriate way. You cannot create a mood in post in terms of the lighting style.

 

Modern DV cameras have enough latitude to handle high-con low key night scenes. You have to really knock down practicle lamps to get them to look good on screen. Avoid having only one small area of the screen brightly lit with a single source or practicle.

[Michael Nash]

Light it for the way you want it to look, then expose accordingly. The XL-1 is roughly 320 ASA, so your lighting will need to be brighter than what looks right to your eye for an "unlit" looking night interior.

 

If it's an abandoned hospital, then I'm assuming there wouldn't be any practical lights on (excluding sources like flashlights or fire). That means whatever ambient light there is would be motivated from windows. Basically you'll be lighting from adjoining hallways and rooms, motivating a window even if there isn't one really there. If it's a hallway for instance, try opening the doors to the rooms, and make use of doors with windows in them whenever possible. In general the softer the light is the more it looks like ambience and less like a specific source, especially when underexposed. Use this principle to fill in shadows where you can't justify a window source. Concentrate on giving subjects a 3/4 edge light and side light to reveal shape, while keeping the front side (camera side) dark. This will let you see the room but keep it looking dark.

 

Then for foreground and actors you can add a little soft fill from near camera (or the side) and a soft edge to separate subjects from the background. The trick here is to keep the light dim enough and soft enough that it looks like ambience, and not a specific source. Also make sure the fill doesn't spill onto too much of the background, flattening out the rest of your scene.

 

Keep all of your lights at or below key level (normal exposure or lower) to sell the idea of darkness. The amount of underexposure depends on what looks right to your eye on a properly calibrated monitor. You'll probably end up underexposing about one stop (but don't take my word for it), and maybe balancing the color a little toward blue (this much can be refined in post).

 

Don't let the darkness fool you; this type of "no light" look can require just as many units as a normal daytime scene. The only difference is that you may want to let more areas of the set fall off into blackness.

 

Look at any number of horror movies for lighting cues, or reuns of something like the X-files. "Panic Room" is a feature-length example of an "no light" night interior, using windows and low-level ambience (usually from the top) as motivation for the light (except for the room itself, which had fluorescent lights). In that case it's an overall "dim" look, as opposed to a more contrasty night scene with pools of light and shadow. "Darkness Falls" is another good example of an "no light" night look.