Lighting the inside of a stationary car placed outside. (Rain, grey skies, morning)

Oskar Arnarson · January 18, 2009

Hi everyone, I'm new on here and just recently started film school. Lighting isn't my strong side yet so I was wondering if you could give me any tips on how to light a car.

- It's the inside of a stationary car

- This will be shot far away from any houses (electricity)

- I want to have it raining. Would a water can work? :) If I'm not far from a lake?

- The weather here in Iceland is something like this nowadays: http://www.noaura.com/nz/images/09/ttoa02.jpg - so probably gray skies.

- There might be snow, I don't know because it's constantly changing.

- Will be shot in the morning / daytime

- It's a horror scene

- one driver and one backseat passanger (a little girl)

- the windows will be steamy (any tip to get them to constantly blur from steam, even a few seconds after you wipe the moist off?)

- Will be shooting on a sony PMW-EX1 plus I hope to be using a DIY DOF adapter. I know this will effect the light that the camera picks up but I figured that would be okay for this rather creepy scene. I really want to achieve a shallow focus for this scene.

Just wanted to know what would be good for this. With minimal cost. I could borrow lights from school but the electricity is a problem.

For now I figure I could maybe shine a little blue light from the gauges in the car. Maybe a little green from the CD player. Kind of hard to see in daylight maybe. I wonder what I could put in the ceiling to emulate the car's top light. Somewhere I saw someone suggest fairy lights. Would it work in daylight?

I intend to use a small, bright white light behind the actors heads for backlighting. But please tell me if I'm talking out of my ass. I don't have a lot of experience with lighting, that's why I'm hoping to get tips.

Thanks a lot.

Edited January 18, 2009 by Oskar Arnarson

Jens Langen · January 18, 2009

Hi,

I come from a still photography background, but there are some powerful rechargeable flashlights

available now at most hardware stores. You can clamp them, snoot them, put gels on, and bounce them into

cards attached to the car interior. Don't know how long they last, but they're not that expensive. They might

even run and charge at the same time off the car's battery.

Good luck!

Jens

Jamie Metzger · January 18, 2009

Im thinking that if you are shooting in the morning, with overcast/cloudy skies and you need the windows to be steamed up; you are going to have a very low contrast image. Is that what you are going for? Do you want more/less contrast?

Also, don't think that you have to use lights. If the scene works with available light, then go for it!

Dean Werner · January 18, 2009

A water can could work for rain on the window being shown, might be hard to make it look like it's raining off in the distance. Steam, figure out which temperature controls in the car ( AC or Heat) make the windows fog up based on the outside weather. For lighting the push button, stick on lights they sell could work. If you're going to use the light from the gauges inside the car in the day time, get some glow sticks. Place them inside the dash or close to the actor to look like it's from the dash. Find orange ones for the top light. But shooting in the day light might be harder to light for this than just shooting at night.

Good Luck

Chris Newman · January 19, 2009

Affordable (<$100) AC power inverters that will give you 120 VAC power are available rated up to 400 Watts, although my cheap 400 Watt one can only drive 150 Watts reliably. Still, this should be enough to provide a little directional light. Put diffusion and Color Temperature Blue gels on the light. You could also try covering one or two windows on one side of behind the camera to see if it helps give some depth to the actors' faces. If you have access to enough Neutral Density gel, you might want to line the outside of the windows behind the actors so the windows won't blow out as harshly vs. the actors.

Both the car's heater and A/C will reduce the fogging on the windows, so don't use those. Just spread a bunch of wet towels around inside. Also, if you have an AC inverter, a humidifier that sprays a cool mist might help, and you can aim it at the window you care about.