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prison interior night for day


venix

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Hi all!

 

I am about to shoot my first short film and one of the scenes takes place inside a prison corridor at night time. We are going to place a 2.5K HMI outside shining in through the barred door and windows in the corridor and probabaly add a bit of atmospheric haze to get those nice light bars.

 

Basically i want it to look like its daytime outdoors but very dark and murky indoors. The character in the scene is supposed to be standing just kind of outside of the light, almost avoiding it but i still want you to be able to make out some of his facial features. I figure il just have him standing just in the light shining onto him through the door. Since its not so important for the character at this point that you see his eyes or anything i figure best to just light the scene and place him within that, most the shots here are relatively wide as well.

 

Also another location we are shooting are these cages (these we will be shooting at daytime and outdors) The problem is there are many many shadows and stuff from the bars and cage like confines around us. Most of the scenes out here are very tight shots but there are a few wider shots to. But most are tight shots.

 

Im not sure exactly what im asking here but i would appreciate any expertise on how to avoid problems with these two scenarios.

 

Id put up pictures of both location but i dont know how. Whomever posts il just send you some pics :)

 

Thanks!

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If you want a location to look like daytime all you have to do is provide source light through a logical opening (door or window), and make sure that any windows/doorways in frame have bright backgrounds. The "source light" can be hard shafts of light to emulate the sun as you suggest, or it can be soft to represent ambient daylight. If you have multiple windows, try to make sure that the light matches in level and angle with each window.

 

Regarding the cages outside, what exactly is the problem with the shadows? Do you not like the way they look because they're too distracting or don't fit the scene? To me it seems appropriate to have these shadows creating a sense of claustrophobia. But if the contrast on faces is too harsh in the closeups, you can take the appropriate measures to lower the contrast. Try netting off the hard sunlight with a single or double net to keep the crisp shadow edge and cut better with the wide shots. Or if you want to soften the edges of the shadows a little you can fly some light diffusion overhead, like Highlight, 1/4 silk, or even clear visquine.

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What Michael said :D

 

Is there a reason why you're using the HMI, at night? Why not use a tungsten instrument, since you're shooting tungsten film.

 

I shot a similar scenario recently; all I did was blast a 2Ks through a window...man, it looked like it was a bright ass morning. Beautiful stuff.

 

 

Good luck!

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Thanks for the replies so far!

 

I guess the only problem with the cages might be lighting continuity as we arent shooting in chronological order. But i think i may be able to avoid to much error because the first half of the scenes in this area are all tight shots so as to hide the fact that the character is a prisoner.

 

As for the corridor its basically just one long corridor with one big bared door on its left side. There are cell doors but they will be closed, so pretty much all the light will be coming through the door. Would just a 2K Blonde or maybe a 5 K do the job? I just always thought a HMI gave a better looking kind of daytime looking light, or doesnt it really matter unelss im shooting daytime stock?

 

Thanks for all your help so far!

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Well...think about this for a second. You're going to have to put an 85 on the camera if you shoot an HMI with tungsten film...so essentially you'll be getting what you could have gotten with a tungsten instrument, directly. Otherwise it's going to look like uncorrected blue-which may or may not be what you want. Personally I think that deep blue light, indoors, might look more like moonlight than daylight.

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Last week I watched North By Northwest and I noticed a (I thought) huge lighting error.

It's the field scene in the middle of nowhere after the gas truck blows up. A bunch of people get out of their cars and walk (l to r) towards the wreck. The lighting is such that it casts a shadow on the far edge of the ditch. This indicates that the light is to the left of the actors as they walk down the road. The very next cut it shows those same people walking toward the wreck from the rear. The light has now somehow shifted from casting a shadow on their right to casting a shadow on their left.

What all this means is that lighting continuity CAN be ignored, especially in a prison sequence where it's just a big maze of cells. UNLESS you're only using once cell where it would be painfully obvious which shots matched and which did not.

Again, if your actors are good enough, the lighting shouldn't be noticed ;)

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Thanks for that David. I think you just saved me some money :)

 

Here are some pictures of the actual location il be filming at

 

The corridor with the beaming door

 

Same corridor, different angle

 

The barred door

 

The outdoors cage with the potential shadow problems

 

This is what the top of the whole cage area looks like

 

Another angle of the cage

 

All comments appreciated. This board is the best!

 

Regards,

Venix

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So what im thinking is, for the tight shots, just soften the shadows from the cage with nets and stuff then just remove them when i get to the point in the script when its not a secret(to the audience) that he is a prisoner anymore. Yeah now that you mention it the shadows dont seem like to much a problem anymore. We plan to go to the location for a full day and just take photos of it from every angle we can think of about every hour from about 8 till 5 pm. Then just study them to make sure we know where the shadows will be and when and all that.

 

ONe question about the 2k Blondes instead of the 2.5 K HMI. Will it make much difference visually that thre Blonde is not as powerful as the HMI in just intensity? I would of course test this before hand but i can only budget for hiring the HMI for two days and we will have done all our camera tests before then.

 

Regards,

Venix

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Thanks David!

 

So the way i think wel light the corridor is to put a big white poly at the very back door there and have a 2k blonde bouncing off it. Another 2 k just outside that door shining through and maybe a redhead inside each of those two cells shining through those little slits. With a bit of atmospheric haze to get those nice beams.

 

We just want our character to be walking down this corridor to be in a soft silhouette but with a bit of light hitting his side through the door so you can make out some of his features. He will be smoking a cigarette as well and we want him to leave kind of like a trail of smoke when he walks.

 

Anyways, great help so far

 

Regards,

Venix

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From what I can tell from your pictures of the outdoor cage area, I don't think your going to have any trouble with deep shadows. It looks like natural bounce is coming from everywhere. If the shadows did look a little too deep, I think you could kill them off with a bit of foamcore bounce. I would be tempted to take along a huge black solid to a location like this to use as negative fill. Along with several larger singles and doubles to knock down light on the various background walls.

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I think M. King's advice is good... I also think that since it's close ups you want inside the cage, you can kill the shadows easily, with soft lights or poly reflected sources. If you have daylight coming inside, even though you "negative fill", you'll need daylight sources for this scene. The advice about tungsten is to be considered in the night for days only. Can't you have some of this net taken off for the shooting of these shots (where we don't know yet he's in jail) at all ?

 

If you want to feel the smoke of the actor's cigarette, don't use too much open face projectors (like blondes or reds) because they provide non directional light. You can use a Fresnel instead, it will work much better (for him - I think your idea about blondes and reds is good for the major lighting of the scene). If not enough money for HMI, the idea of having a slightly bluish light for the corridor scene, may be even a bit greenish, could be interesting for such a place, you can use gels on the tungsten light (a half ctb will devide a tungsten light intensity by 2).

 

Comparing power beetwen hmi and tungsten I consider a 575 cinepar is closer to a 2 kw tungsten than a 1 kw, a 1200 w hmi will be about 3 KW tungsten and a 2.5 kw hmi close to 4 or even 5 kw tungsten. I consider it's more than the double.

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Nah that net up top is fixed in place for the cage. So you reckon we should use some lights for the closeups eventhough wel be shooting in daylight?

 

 

In the corridor wideshots if the blondies and redheads are shining through the doors and windows it wont make the smoke from the cigarette turn out?

 

Cheers,

Venix

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So you reckon we should use some lights for the closeups eventhough wel be shooting in daylight?

 

It's a way of controlling the light that could be changing along the day as well as to "kill" the net shades, if they still are a problem.

 

if the blondies and redheads are shining through the doors and windows it wont make the smoke from the cigarette turn out?

 

You actually need light for the smoke to be seen.. everything depends on the background, then. If it's dark, you'll see the smoke, if it's bright, you won't see it.

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Yeah we plan to put a big white poly at back door there in the corridor and bounce a couple of 2k blondes of it and just make it blow out. It should act as a backlight.

 

Thanks for all the advice

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