Lighting in a Tent

[M Joel W]

Hi,

 

I'm shooting something inside a tent and just have a few questions:

 

1) How to shoot in such a small space. Is it worth chopping off the front half of the tent so I can place lights and get more telephoto?

 

2) How to create silhouettes (in a shot from outside the tent). I don't have an ellipsoidal (just small tungsten and HMI units) but I imagine it involves keeping the light close and flooded to get the crispest shadows and then just using a moderately powerful unit.

 

Any other advice? It's a horror movie so scary is the key.

 

Thanks as always,

 

-Matt

[John Sprung]

A tungsten bare bulb works great for silhouettes. In a pinch, just pull the lens from a fresnel and crank it to full flood. The nice thing about a tent is you can just blast the outside of it to make soft fill -- but you need to get as neutral a tent material as possible. Is this film or tape?

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[M Joel W]

I haven't seen the tent; neither has the director. We're shooting tonight. I hope they don't cheap out and buy the smallest one they can find... Heh...

 

Anyhow, it's HD (hvx). I don't think our Arris have removable lenses. Maybe we'll use a lowel DP light but that might get too hot and I don't want to run the risk of the bulb exploding since we don't have a protective filter. Maybe just a 500w photoflood, although those are a bit soft. Hmm... That makes sense about removing the fresnel, though and I'll try it with a 650 if I can.

 

As for shooting IN the tent...should I remove the front half of it so I can back up the camera a bit? Or maybe just open it up? Then maybe cut holes in the other side for edge lights? (Or I could just put compact fluos directly behind the characters in the tent?)

[Kieran Scannell]

Matt,

 

I would think about what realistic lighting would look like in a tent at night, i shot something like this a few years ago and lit the inside with 2 camping gas lights one suspended from above as a practical and the other just off to one side for a little rim light. You can actually dim these little

lights so i dimmed the suspended light (key) so the rim would be a little hotter. Looked pretty good! I also used high beam flashlights for that silhouette you mentioned and one small HMI suspended in a tree heavily diffused for moonlight.

 

Good luck with the shoot!

 

Kieran.