Yes, another advice posting. Football Field setups?

Daniel Ainsworth · March 2, 2008

Hello all,

I am DP'ing a short on S16mm film and I had a few questions, or hoping for some tips, tips for shooting on a football field at night. The general mood is similar to that of a Gatorade commercial.

Story: A players psyches himself up for an upcoming game. So On the field, we are trying to simulate a dream like, or a visual experience, scene where the player tries multiple times to make a play, thwarted but in the end finally succeeds.

My lighting package-ish:

500 amp generator

10K Big Eye

2x 5k's fresnels

2x Mightys

limited hmi's (1.2 or Jokers)

and so on with smaller tungs...

12 / 8 / 6 by frames of grid / muslin / solids.

We do have Field lighting, 4 corner typical stadium style lighting. But the lights can only be active for a few hours, due to city regulations.

questions:

-Should I try to mix my Tungsten package with say wides or masters in the Stadium lighting, or try all together use my lights?

-Any tips on basic setups?

-What would you do in this situation?

(a player running making various plays progressing down the field)

-possibly an idea for a unique look?

Any tips/ideas would be greatly appreciated. This type of shooting is unfamiliar to me at this point. Thanks a bunch, enjoy your day.

-Daniel

Xavier Plaza · March 4, 2008

Hi Daniel i don't know what is your reference (gatorade spot) but how about using just back light, 3/4 backlight and kickers adding some smoke to "see" the players silhouettes ... I saw several years ago any given sunday (salvatore tonino) i remember saw some night football scenes and i think at the ASC magazine perhaps you can find this article on line...

Michael Nash · March 4, 2008

It's likely that the stadium lighting is some kind of HID lighting, which is likely to be around 5000 deg. K with a bit of a green spike, so you'd have to gel your tungsten lights to match if you want to use both at the same time. You can check it with a CT meter or digital still camera.

Your lighting package sounds pretty modest for wide shots, so you might want to consider doing the widest shots with the stadium lighting, picking up the closer shots with your tungsten later in the evening if need be. With stadium lighting I usually like to try to dim the foreground/frontal light to maintain some core shadow/modeling and contrast ratio, but stadium lights are usually switched all together so you can't selectively turn off one "pole" (and it's impractical to flag an entire pole for wider shots). The workaround is to supplement your rim lighting to create contrast ratio.