available fluorescent light

[Florin_Serban]

Hi,

I'm a film student, directing. I'm about to start preproduction on a medium feature that I wrote and I'm investigating possibilities of shooting at night, interior with available fluorescent light (different color temperatures). This might sound extreme, but there are no money for renting lights, except some small ones for few close-ups and the building where we are shooting is HUGE. Which stock do you reccomend for this? Would 35mm ETERNA500 be a good choice? What would be other options? Any tip or advice will be highly apreciated. The budget is... loooow.

 

Thank you

Florin :huh:

[Jon Kukla]

Hi,

I'm a film student, directing. I'm about to start preproduction on a medium feature that I wrote and I'm investigating possibilities of shooting at night, interior with available fluorescent light (different color temperatures). This might sound extreme, but there are no money for renting lights, except some small ones for few close-ups and the building where we are shooting is HUGE. Which stock do you reccomend for this? Would 35mm ETERNA500 be a good choice? What would be other options? Any tip or advice will be highly apreciated. The budget is... loooow.

 

Thank you

Florin :huh:

 

You probably can't go wrong shooting with 500T, but why bother shooting 35mm if you can't afford to light it properly? If your budget is that tight, it would seem better to shoot Super 16 and reinvest a little bit of the money saved to at least get a basic kit.

 

Otherwise, the question is how varied are the color temps of the flos and do you want to keep that in or remove it in post? If you want the color "as is", then shoot your grayscale in normal tungsten light (somewhere else) and then film under the flos. But if you want it out, then try to find a place that has the "average" color temperature for the lights and film your grayscale there, so that the colorist can remove the green/cyan cast you're likely to encounter.

 

The other thing is that if you're shooting where there are mainly top-mounted flos, then you might have too much top light to see into people's eyes or faces. At least consider getting some bounce board, if you can't afford much else.

[Florin_Serban]

Jon,

thank you.

I'm thinking on 35mm because we have the equipment for free from school and some film.

You're right about the overhead light, we counted in reflecting boards.

I can't replace the available lights and this building is huge, with corridors, ramps, lounges. Almost every space has a different colour temperature and the camera will go in the same shot from one space to another.

How about the flickering of the fluorescent light? Is there anyway to avoid or to control it?

Thank you

Florin

[David Mullen ASC]

One advantage to using 35mm instead of Super-16 is that you can get away with push-processing it more for available light night exterior work. Sometimes you don't want to light city stuff at night if you don't have to, or only use minimal lighting so as to not overpower the natural ambience.

 

I don't mind the mixed colors at night. Any of the 500 ASA stocks would be fine. You'll want good, fast lenses too.

 

I could imagine a scenario of using Super-16 with lighting and 200T stock and then switching to 35mm 500T pushed one stop for night exterior work in very low light.

[K Borowski]

Well, besides the fact that fluorescent light is aesthetically ugly, and chromatically deficient in certain areas of the spectrum, it is possible to gel for it and shoot under those conditions. IMHO, it's best to shoot with tungsten lights and correct for that. If you're shooting action scenes, or a horror movie, this type of lighting is fine, but for glamour shots, ick... You are making the right choice going with Fuji under these conditions, as they have a cyan color interlayer which does particularly well at registering flourescent light in a way more akin to the way that the human eye sees them. IIRC, only the 500 speed Fuji cine stock has this feature right now. You have to use something like a 30 CC magenta filter (test this pack to start and tweak from there) and you loose some light, but you should get a good exposure with a fast enough lens and that cyan interlayer. Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski

[Alessandro Machi]

One advantage to using 35mm instead of Super-16 is that you can get away with push-processing it more for available light night exterior work. Sometimes you don't want to light city stuff at night if you don't have to, or only use minimal lighting so as to not overpower the natural ambience.

 

I don't mind the mixed colors at night. Any of the 500 ASA stocks would be fine. You'll want good, fast lenses too.

 

I could imagine a scenario of using Super-16 with lighting and 200T stock and then switching to 35mm 500T pushed one stop for night exterior work in very low light.

 

One fly in the ointment issue that I see is if one is going to push 35mm to the extreme, I would want to know that the camera itself had been prepped by a professional rental house because the tolerances on the type of shooting you are doing probably requires that the camera be in perfect working condition. Your camera may look perfectly fine in outdoor shooting with plenty of light yet look out of focus and fuzzy in low light if it's not professionally serviced, maintained and collimated.

 

I'd definitely have the lens checked for ideal collimation with the camera you will be using even if you have to pay a rental house to do it, and you may discover that the school lens works better in outdoor scenarios than low light interiors which might mean you end up renting a lens for your shoot, which of course would be collimated to your camera. If you go this route, try and do all your shooting before you return the rented lens to avoid a reprep everytime you rerent the lens.

[Jon Kukla]

Well, besides the fact that fluorescent light is aesthetically ugly, and chromatically deficient in certain areas of the spectrum, it is possible to gel for it and shoot under those conditions. IMHO, it's best to shoot with tungsten lights and correct for that. If you're shooting action scenes, or a horror movie, this type of lighting is fine, but for glamour shots, ick... You are making the right choice going with Fuji under these conditions, as they have a cyan color interlayer which does particularly well at registering flourescent light in a way more akin to the way that the human eye sees them. IIRC, only the 500 speed Fuji cine stock has this feature right now. You have to use something like a 30 CC magenta filter (test this pack to start and tweak from there) and you loose some light, but you should get a good exposure with a fast enough lens and that cyan interlayer. Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the cyan interlayer feature only available on the Reala 500D?

[John Pytlak RIP]

If you know the type of fluorescent light, you can correct most of the color difference with filtration. The latitude of color negative films also allows fine-tuning color balance during timing/grading, especially if you have a "rich" exposure (i.e., avoid underexposure):

 

Here is the filter information for 5218:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...;lc=en#colorbal

 

And 5205:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...;lc=en#colorbal

 

Each Kodak camera film has this data on the Kodak website:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...4.4.4&lc=en

[K Borowski]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the cyan interlayer feature only available on the Reala 500D?

 

I wrote: "IIRC, only the 500 speed Fuji cine stock has this feature right now."