Lighting an overcast scene, help.

[Chris Hurn]

Hi everyone.

 

 

I am sorry for bothering you all with these silly questions, but since I am a high school student on a very low budget, I cannot afford to go out and do a lot of experimenting (rental costs) for this scene. So I am here to ask you all what you would do, before going and experimenting.

 

I am planning a short six minute film for a competition. I was originally going to shoot with a cheap 1 CCD DV camcorder, but I have now decided to hire a Panasonic AG-DVX100A. I understand part of getting the 'film' look is lighting.

 

The scene is set on an overcast day. Luckily, I found a picture to illustrate what I mean exactly. You can see it here: http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/Images/movies...stsamurai/5.jpg

 

The scene is not a happy one, so the 'foggy gray' color is what I'm after.

 

I understand I could use a gel, but which colour would I use to light the scene without making it look like it's lit, if you know what I mean. Let's pretend I was lighting the scene from the Last Samurai posted above. Roughly what equippment would you use and where would you place it? -- would I even use lights out in a scene like this? It doesn't really look like there's much here.

 

I saw another topic like this, but I didn't really understand what everyone was talking about. Exactly what do you do with a bounce card? Wouldn't a reflector be useless on a cloudy day, since there is no sun?

 

Thanks all,

 

-Chris

[Adam Frisch FSF]

No, a reflector or bounce board or whatever you call them are not useless on a cloudy day. Soft, refracted light is less directional but it's still light and can be reflected.

 

Negative fill is the "reflection of darkness", if you will. By putting up a black flag (or any black material) close to someone's face you'll se it'll subtract light from that side of the face.

 

These two reflectionionary tools combined are all the lights you need on an overcast day, really.

 

As for the picture from The Samurai: The warrior in the center is lit from the right by a light. It's fair to assume that the guys behind him are lit with the same lamp, but it looks much less harsh on them and more natural, so I'm not sure about that. On his left side the warrior's definietly got some negative fill. The whole set is swamped in smoke which is a nice effect to get on exteriors, it is however very expensive and labour-intesive to do so, so maybe not vialble for a student film.

 

Minus the fog and smoke, this image would be fairly easy to mimic without lights. Just use a reflector (preferrably many big ones) and some negative fill.

[David Mullen ASC]

The shot from "Last Samurai" you posted is lit from the right side of frame with a large soft light, probably an HMI going through a large frame of diffusion. Otherwise, you'd only have a soft top light with the faces darker.

 

If you really have overcast weather and you want it to look overcast, you don't have to do anything excpet maybe hold a white card next to someone's face on a close-up to bring out the eyes more if they are shadowed too much.

 

What Toll did a lot of in "Last Samurai" was "negative fill", using large black flags on one side of a face or overhead to create more shadows on a face, more contrast, sometimes then adding a soft key light coming from one side, so instead of a flatter soft top-lit face you have more of a side-lit face with a darker shadow side. If the artificial light is soft enough and the same color as the skylight, then it shouldn't make the scene look too "lit."

[Rolfe Klement]

I read in ASC the smoke in that film and the variable daylight caused more than a few headaches - and lots of money in the DI to fix

 

But the smoke in that image is a huge player - it acts like shooting into diffusion. I have shot quite a bit in UK overcast skies and always have issues

 

If you were shooting film I could give you a whole lot of advice. Here is a DV image from a 35mm transfer I just shot - so the image looks terrible compared to the master

 

 

and another image

 

 

MY advice would be to bring the foeground up (make it brighter) then have the sky retain some detail (just a little) otherwise you get a grey goo

 

thanks

 

R

[Chris Hurn]

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. Just to confirm - I'd place the reflectors down from the character, maybe on the left or right and reflect the light back onto the characters? Can I use cardboard with alloy foil, or is it better to just rent a proper one? I'm guessing they have to be pretty big.

 

 

If the artificial light is soft enough and the same color as the skylight...

 

Mr Mullen, how many watts would that soft key light be? Can you even get gels that are suitable for overcast/cloudy scenes...like gray?

 

-Chris

Edited January 22, 2005 by Chris Hurn

[David Mullen ASC]

Reflectors in overcast light are more for tighter shots because they can't be too far away since the light output is low. Or you can use large white boards even closer.

 

You can probably create your own with aluminum foil since you are reflecting a soft light (the overcast sky) not the hard sun, so you shouldn't get weird ripples and kicks. Reflectors are nice and heavy and stay where they are aimed on a stand, whereas it's hard to adjust and set a flimsy piece of foiled cardboard unless you hold it in place manually.

 

You don't really need to do too much if you want the overcast look and it's overcast outside, so keep it simple.

 

Gray is not a color. A gray gel is an ND gel (Neutral Density) -- it just cuts the amount of light output without changing the color of the lamp.

 

If the light coming from the sky is "x" color temperature, you should probably match it with your artificial lights UNLESS you want to restore some warmth to the face and don't mind the mismatch, making the shot look lit.

 

So while an HMI is probably a close-enough match for the natural overcast daylight, if it looks slightly warmer than the natural light, you'd add something like a light blue gel to the lamp to cool it off, color temp wise, like a 1/4 CTB.

[Chris Hurn]

Reflectors in overcast light are more for tighter shots because they can't be too far away since the light output is low.  Or you can use large white boards even closer.

 

You can probably create your own with aluminum foil since you are reflecting a soft light (the overcast sky) not the hard sun, so you shouldn't get weird ripples and kicks.  Reflectors are nice and heavy and stay where they are aimed on a stand, whereas it's hard to adjust and set a flimsy piece of foiled cardboard unless you hold it in place manually.

 

You don't really need to do too much if you want the overcast look and it's overcast outside, so keep it simple.

 

Gray is not a color.  A gray gel is an ND gel (Neutral Density) -- it just cuts the amount of light output without changing the color of the lamp.

 

If the light coming from the sky is "x" color temperature, you should probably match it with your artificial lights UNLESS you want to restore some warmth to the face and don't mind the mismatch, making the shot look lit.

 

So while an HMI is probably a close-enough match for the natural overcast daylight, if it looks slightly warmer than the natural light, you'd add something like a light blue gel to the lamp to cool it off, color temp wise, like a 1/4 CTB.

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Thanks again Mr Mullen. You have been very kind answering all my questions at studentfilmmakers and here. I wonder if there's anything you don't know. :P

 

-Chris

[David Mullen ASC]

Here's some overcast shots in "Northfork". I didn't do too much in general. In this first one, there was an HMI shining through a 4'x4' frame of diffusion adding some light from the side:

 

 

In most shots however, I just had a 575 watt HMI with diffusion on the barndoors next to the camera lens to add a little fill light.

 

[Chris Hurn]

Sorry to add to the topic again, but when you say diffusion - what is a 'diffuser'? What kind of material do I place on the bardoors, and what is the effect?

 

EDIT: Sorry, also - what material are the black flags you said that John toll used and roughly how big are they?

 

Thanks,

 

-Chris

Edited January 24, 2005 by Chris Hurn

[Mike Williamson]

In terms of negative fill, what size flags are generally used? For example, in a situation where you have an overcast day with even lighting, how large of a flag would you need to create roughly a one stop difference between key and fill side of a person's face in a medium or American shot? How large for a close-up in the same situation (assuming you can move the flag in closer)?

 

If that's a vague question, what would John Toll have used in the above example from "Last Samurai"? I love his exterior work, "Thin Red Line" has a lot of amazing lighting in it and I seem to recall reading that he used mostly bounce and negative fill to achieve that look.

 

The examples from "Northfork" are extremely elegant, thank you again for putting up beautiful images, David, it's very helpful in illustrating your points.

[David Mullen ASC]

There are many brands of diffusion gel or material for lighting. How heavy or dense the material is will determine how much the hard light is spread. However, once it spreads to fill a diffusion material surface completely, it can't get any softer no matter how much more diffusion you add -- at that point, you have to create a larger frame of diffusion to make the light softer. The softness of a light is determined by the size of the source (the diffusion becoming the source) relative to the distance to the subject.

 

Since I was just using the 575 watt as a frontal eyelight, very flat, not trying to create modelling as with negative fill but add more fill light under a hat brim, I wasn't creating any large soft sources, just putting the diffusion on the barndoors (I think it was 216.) I've also done it by putting a small Chimera softbox on the light.

 

In the other shot where I was trying to create more of a soft key light for a close-up, I used a 4'x4' frame of diffusion.

 

You have different strengths of diffusion because you need to find a balance between softness and getting enough light output.

 

For a close-up, you can probably get away with 4'x4' black floppies to create negative fill, maybe a 6'x6' overhead -- but for something like a cowboy shot, you'd want something more like a 12'x12'.