Lighting car interior at night

[Ryan K]

Could anyone advise me of any effective techniques for lighting actors in a stationary car at night? The car in question will be parked by a pavement so exterior light is an option. I'm toying with the idea of using little kinoflo 9'' tubes to light the actors themselves, perhaps in combination with some hidden bounce material.

 

I've recently seen some promo shots of Collateral, in which Cruise and the Taxi driver seem to be lit with little kinoflos. Anybody got any ideas? All suggestions are most welcome!

[Guest fstop]

Ha! I've got the same situation coming up myself! My shots are all faked filmed stationary, and it all has to look as though it's during a storm. I am a reactive lighting guy myself, so I am having reflectors on spinners built to simulate the passing ambient light- most people do dashboard light, as if the lights coming from those glowing speedometers (which is where you could get your kinos in) but that's not my thing.

 

I bet you don't have to intercut it all with day for night long shots of the car driving, do you? ;)

[Carlos M. Icaza]

I have lit car interiors with small kino's and some flo's from Home Depot that I picked up for about $12.00. if it is a driving scene, you will need to get an inverter so that the kino's plug into. The Home Depot versions were batterie powered.

 

Shot on Xl-1 not film. The Kino's invariably gives you more power and more light fill. But the flo's from HomeDepot does serve is purpuse as well with little less light output.

 

C.-

[Michael Nash]

Well, Collateral went through great technical hoops to light some of the moving interiors, including the use of specially made Electro-luminescent panels placed throughot the car, and selective color correction to balance the interiros with the exterior. It was a unique approach for a unique film -- not the easiest way to go about it.

 

A parked car is a lot easier to light than a moving one. It's easy to push light through the windows to shape the faces the way you want. Is the car supposed to be running, or not? Lighting from the dashboard with car-kinos would suggest that the car is turned on, which may not look appropriate if the car should be off for the scene. But you could still use kinos for fill if you like.

 

Kino makes what they call a "car kit" which has either 9" or 15" tubes, and can be powered off the car battery. The challenges to dash-lighting with these things is keeping them from looking too sourcey; keeping the hands and steering wheel from burning up relative to the exposure on the face, and making sure the steering wheel doesn't cast a big shadow across the face. Sometimes people also want to "key" too much with these -- in my opinion it's better to let the dashboard light act as fill in conjunction with all the other sources (streetlights, headlights, and so on).

 

The fact that the actors are inside a parked car shouldn't really make any difference as to the lighting, at least beyond any other night shot. I mean, where is the light coming from? Other than the possible dashboard light, it's probably motivated from exterior lighting. So I would star with that -- maybe 3/4 backlighting through the windows, and some soft fill from the side or front 3/4 for the faces. If you've got dark pockets and shadows from the window pillars and head rests and feel you really need to fill from inside the car, then try to keep your fill sources as low and soft as possible. Beyond that, you might spend a little extra time flagging and scrimming little kicks and highlights off the metal and shiny plastic.

[Matthew McDermott]

I just went through this. The 9" kino's work well to simulate the interior car light. We ended up dimming them slightly and flagging off the corners of them as at only a foot or so away from the actors they are a bit too bright to be believable as actual car lighting. One in front like there's a reading light and one 3/4 behind to provide a bit of back lighting and separation. We were in a parking lot so we could stage the scene under a street lamp to provide exterior fill. Shot with the Varicam we were at maybe a 2.8 (can't remember exactly) with 0db gain and it looks great. Try to get the kit with the dual ballast, we had separate ballasts and though not difficult to do, was an extra thing to worry about--triggering both lights in time as the car door opened.

 

After reading how they lit the car interiors in Collateral, all I can see is slightly blue-green cell phone panels everywhere. Thought it looked great--and a really creative solution to car interiors--but now that I know I wish I wasn't behind the curtain so to speak.

[Ryan K]

Marvellous - thanks for that. I'll most likely go with a hard 3/4 back light with a bit of soft fill as suggested, and use the kinos low down to give the actresses a nice Madonna-ish glow. Realistically, the only shot which will pose a problem from a hiding-the-light point of view will be a head-on shot from outside the car with two people in the front and one in the back, but that's another headache altogether....

 

Cheers.

[Michael Nash]

Realistically, the only shot which will pose a problem from a hiding-the-light point of view will be a head-on shot from outside the car with two people in the front and one in the back, but that's another headache altogether....

Yeah, that's usually the sitaution where you need to sneak in a little "unmotivated" fill light. You can't really justify dashboard light coming from the seat back, yet that's often where it has to be. Usually down low and softened as much as possible. Try bouncing a brighter kino into some showcard taped to the seatback, and flag the direct kino light off the person. You usually also end up hitting the people in the rear with some dedicated sidelight through the windows. Try to go from one side only, to preserve contrast.

[mrbill762]

Here is my solution for lighting inside a car/truck/suv.

I made pneumatic auto-poles.

On them I hang PAR16s with 12 volt MR16 lamps using O-Clamps.

They can be powered from the vehicles electrical system or from an external battery/power source.

 

The auto-poles are telescoping PCV pipe 1 1/4" and 1".

To the 1" pipe I fitted a piston with an o-ring.

The piston is made ten thousands under, the o-ring grove was cut so the o-ring OD was ten thousands over the ID of the 1 1/4" pipe.

To the 1 1/4" pipe I added a tire valve from a mag wheel.

 

They can work in two ways.

1.) Put in place and add air. (Just like filling a tire.)

2.) Extend it, then collapse it so it builds pressure, place in the vehicle, let it expand.

 

Close-up View of clamp and light.

http://pennastudio.com/film/closeup.jpg

 

View from driver's side rear seat.

http://pennastudio.com/film/view1.jpg

 

From back of vehicle

http://pennastudio.com/film/view2.jpg

 

Mr. Bill

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

This probably isn't relevant to the actual shoot being discussed here, but it's a useful bit of knowledge anyway - you can get hold of very small cold-cathode lamps from places which sell stuff for festooning around your car and desktop computer case, for what purpose I hardly dare imagine. However it does mean that you can get tubes either four or twelve inches in length by, if you remove them from the plastic shell, barely 3/16" in diameter which run on 12V. Various colours are available; the white has a reasonable spectrum but is heavy in the cyan. Most of them have small Royer convertors to drive them at high frequency; I'm fairly sure they'd be flicker free for off speed film work.

 

Phil