Lighting For NIGHT EXT.

[Shashank Walia]

Hello

 

I am a student of cinematography from India and am going to shoot a short film soon on ARRI 16 SRII or ARRIFLEX 16 BL. Now, its a night setup with ample amount of light coming from window. I am planning to use tungsten (fresnel and open) 600W-1KV bulbs for interior lighting. For lights to be used in EXT that could be light coming from a street lamp or a tube light outside a window, I want to know what kind of lights I should use to differentiate between color and tones of INT & EXT.

 

Either I should go with HMI's (2.5KV-5KV) or I should go with cellophane coloured gels on tungsten only.

 

I don't have the facility of a color temperature meter so cant exactly set the color tempreture or use gels accordingly.

 

Help will be appreciated.

 

Shashank Walia

AJK MCRC, JMI, India.

Edited December 30, 2009 by Shashank Walia

[John Sprung]

In this case, you really don't need a color temperature meter. They're hardly ever used, and precise color only matters for skin tones in good light.

 

For the light coming in from outdoor night sources, you get to take your pick of the possible kinds of light that could be there. Moonlight is generally given a slight blue color, which you'd get from an HMI since you're balanced for tungsten. In some places, they still have tungsten street lights. Or you could choose sodium vapor, which is more orange, or mercury vapor, which is even more blue than the movie tradition for moonlight. There are many other things you could have outside, depending on where this is supposed to be, such as passing car headlights, neon advertising signs, etc. That kind of intermittent lighting can be very helpful in creating the illusion that we're in a second floor hotel room in a busy business district, for example. For these more extreme less precise colors, you can pretty much go by eye, and make your final adjustments in post production. Look around at real locations like the one you want to create, and see what kind of light exists there.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Vivek Marimuthu]

Hello

 

I am a student of cinematography from India and am going to shoot a short film soon on ARRI 16 SRII or ARRIFLEX 16 BL. Now, its a night setup with ample amount of light coming from window. I am planning to use tungsten (fresnel and open) 600W-1KV bulbs for interior lighting. For lights to be used in EXT that could be light coming from a street lamp or a tube light outside a window, I want to know what kind of lights I should use to differentiate between color and tones of INT & EXT.

 

Either I should go with HMI's (2.5KV-5KV) or I should go with cellophane coloured gels on tungsten only.

 

I don't have the facility of a color temperature meter so cant exactly set the color tempreture or use gels accordingly.

 

Help will be appreciated.

 

Shashank Walia

AJK MCRC, JMI, India.

 

If you want to get the effect of a spill light from a streelight outside, you can use a combo of two 1K lights from with a CTO on the barn doors and placed side by side. Place it about 5 Feet from the window and angle it down from just at the upper window ledge.

 

If you want to emulate a floursent light outside the window, use one 2K outside with a CTB on it and placed at same position as above. You should be able to get the desired effect.