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Hello friends Please Help

I have to shoot inside a room in the night where there is no light source.

 

Try and make up a source then. Is there a good story reason why it has to be a sealed pitch-black room with no light? And if so, then how are the characters supposed to see anything?

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You say there is no light. Is there a window? A crack in the door? Also much of lighting is symbolic. A person in a completely dark room feels a sense of self so that subtle glow that is four stops under could be their spirit. Worse comes to worse when the director says ?Where?s the light coming from?? respond by saying ?The same place the music is coming from.?

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thank you Mullen for your responce.Yes you are right I have to create pitch dark,so that Viewers can

feel the presence and body movement of the charecters.

 

thank you Mullen for your response.Yes you are right I have to create pitch dark,so that Viewers can

feel the presence and body movement of the charecters.

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You can create a "very dark" situation where there's something to see on the screen, yet with enough black in the frame to justify that the characters can't see very well.

 

Look around your house in the middle of the night: it may be so dark you can't see any of the furniture in front of you, but the windows may still be visible as squares of dim light, and you may be able to make out faint outlines of objects either by silhouette or edgelight. This is what you need to attempt to recreate with your lighting and exposure.

 

Remember that a black background loses its depth on film. Instead of looking like a deep black hole, it just looks like a flat black wall. You have to provide some detail to create the illusion of depth.

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Yes, but when you can see into the dark with your eyes, it means that there is some light coming from somewhere. In a completely sealed room, your eyes never adjust to see something, hence why I asked if it is a story point that there is absolutely no light source in the scene (like someone sealed in a coffin.) If it is possible for some ambience to be coming from somewhere, then you can justify some underexposed light somewhere in the frame. But even then, I think you have to ask yourself how long in a movie you want to look at murky severely underexposed shots, hence why I think it's a good idea to make up a source, even if dark.

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You say there is no light. Is there a window? A crack in the door? Also much of lighting is symbolic. A person in a completely dark room feels a sense of self so that subtle glow that is four stops under could be their spirit. Worse comes to worse when the director says ?Where?s the light coming from?? respond by saying ?The same place the music is coming from.?

 

 

That was Ron Garcia, saying to Lynch on Twin Peaks, right...?!

after all he had a 1.2K Par bounced off into the pine trees...

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Yes, but when you can see into the dark with your eyes, it means that there is some light coming from somewhere. ... But even then, I think you have to ask yourself how long in a movie you want to look at murky severely underexposed shots, hence why I think it's a good idea to make up a source, even if dark.

 

Yes, I was proposing an alternative to complete darkness ("very dark," not "pitch black").

 

You're absolutely right about "murky" images; I opted not to get into the whole range-of-contrast thing for simplicity. You can of course provide bright enough highlights to keep the image from looking murky, while still maintaining a lot of black area and silhouettes for that sensation of darkness. It's a fine line though, and takes some skill to pull off successfully.

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