OVERCAST EXT. SUNNY DAY?

[Ken Keeler]

ok so im shooting a scene for my next film this saturday, on an ARRi SR2 S16 with a Tiffen 85C correction filter on Kodak Vision 3 500T/7219

and the director and i have decide to make the first visit at this location overcast based off the story and what are character is going through. we ideally would like it to be dark overcast as if it were thunder clouds, are contrast ratio would be at 3:1 on our talents face but no hard shadows i would like them to wrap around sort of like this picture the film is not a war film its a dark comedy but i like the contrast ratio on Tom's face and the overcast sorta look.

 

this will be shot on a front door step that is covered, but my biggest issue is what time of day i shoot this scene, whether that be morn mid day or afternoon? another issue is that when camera is getting a wide medium or close up we will see the street behind him and houses( the house is in a culvasac)

 

my plan for that is to throw up a 12x12 silk outside behind the front porch (the porch is covered) try and frame all hard shadows out and as of right now im going to throw in a ND .3 or .6 two cut down the background a 1-2 stops i also have ND Soft graduated .3 .6 and .9

my place for lighting was to bounce a 1.2k HMI or 4k HMI (depending on what filters i use) on a 6x6 grif.

 

any ideas, thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated, any gels that could get me closer to this look, i will also be shooting a scene with a car in the street that is supposed to be the same time of day the car will be parked?

 

thanks for all your help!!

 

Ken Keeler

Edited October 6, 2009 by Ken Keeler

[Ken Keeler]

anyone? :huh:

[Chris Flowers]

Try and throw some kind of heavy frost over your 4k for the face... like a hollywood frost or something like that. Keep it at a distance but is should give you enough to bounce a little off of the fill side. as far as the bg goes you are going to have to fight the sun on that moving it as the sun moves which sucks but must be done. use the 1.2k as an eye light bouncing into you 6x6 frame. thoughs are my suggestions let me know what you think

[Ken Keeler]

Try and throw some kind of heavy frost over your 4k for the face... like a hollywood frost or something like that. Keep it at a distance but is should give you enough to bounce a little off of the fill side. as far as the bg goes you are going to have to fight the sun on that moving it as the sun moves which sucks but must be done. use the 1.2k as an eye light bouncing into you 6x6 frame. thoughs are my suggestions let me know what you think

 

well heres the update as of sunday we finished principal photography but here what happened, so we had a huge time issue because some how our lead actor never got a call sheet he lived far away from our location so we ended up being 3 hours behind so i actually got the establishing shot to look like dark overcast but i got pushed for time and was told to scrap the overcast look and just shoot a normal day. i was extremely pissed ha but really i couldn't control all the issues we had luckily they weren't because of me or my crew. also our camera house made a massive mistake on my filters so really i dont think i could have achieved this look without the correct filters. so i never got to go threw with the lighting style that i had planned for months.

 

But i like what you have suggested the 6x6 with the 1.2k hmi is a great idea for creating eye-light because its a big source that the eye would pick up, i would have just kept it away enough to make sure it didn't change the exposure on my face to much, the 4k with frost would have worked great as my key especially with the 4 stop loss from ND filters to make my background dark, as for fill i was going to use 4x4 floppys as negative fill to give me the contrast ratio on our talents face.

 

THANKS FOR YOUR SUGGESTIONS THEY ARE GREAT IDEAS!!

let me know if you need help with anything in the future ill help ya as much as i can

take care

 

Ken Keeler