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Lighting a street in a central american country


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Hi everybody. in a few days i'll going to film for my first time. we are going to film in exteriors on a street. the entire scene is going to happend there whit a bride trying to get inside the building, but she will not, so basically everything is going to happend on the street. we also have kind of 30 extras shouting at here, so, in a few words there's going to be from generals to close ups. we have the permision for closing the street all day, but here's come the thing: from 5:50 in the morning, til 10:20 am we have the facade (i dont know is that is the right word) of the building on shadow, the sun is behind it. but them until 5:50 pm the street an the building is with the sun in the most horrible light, very hard.

the budget is very very very VERY low so, if you can bring some advices they ill be received very gratefully.

;)

the picture below is from the building that we'ill use. the photo in currently take at 10:20

post-37692-1239602510.jpg

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get as big of bounce cards/film core as you can and bounce it from the street to the in shade part (in the pic, <--referring to the morning shoot), but I personally see nothing wrong with using that shade to your advantage.

 

it would be a good way to show a subtle lapse of time. also, for your close up shots you can use some chinese lanterns to provide the fill/key you'd need.

 

also, for when the sun shines directly on you...you can use nd's/grads to stop it down.

 

what are you shooting with? whats the story, mood, etc....as that also makes a big difference.

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  • 4 weeks later...

hi everybody. thanks to Daniel Madsen and Peter Mosiman for the advices. what we did were just use the weather in our favour. we change the film planing and we had three days, and two of them were in exteriors, the first and the last. in Costa Rica the rainnig season is just beginnig, so the days are completlely cloudy, so the light is completly diffuse all day long. the most important day we have a two hours delay because of rainning, but we are in the tropic, thats always normal. we just use for a fill a arri 1k 3200 with a CTB 50% but in the shorts.

we could make it and its was my first short using film, so i am happy. i think i did what a have proposed. i hope i can show you later the short. thanks for the advices.

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Alright, what I would do is shoot the long shots either before 10 am or after 3 pm, because the sun will be more at an angle rather than being at the highest point which will make your image very flat. Then for the CU's you can shoot between 10 am to 3 pm, cause then you can use a scrim. Put the scrim just over the actor to soften the light, and then you could even use a small 1x1 bathroom mirror to bounce some light for a nice kicker. I once built a really nice little overhead scrim by using just a few 6x6 PVC pipes and a bed sheet. It worked great and might have only cost me $10.

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