hazed beam thru window

[Chris Lange]

Hello,

 

For a student short, I plan to shoot at a diner at night, which we need to make look like DAY. We'd like a beam of sunlight coming through a large window to hit a character (his left side) sitting at a table with his breakfast. My plan is to bring up the ambience of the room to an appropriate level that feels like daytime. This ambience will be a few stops lower than the strength of the beam coming through the window, which will be visible via use of a hazer. My strongest light is a 2k HMI fresnel, which will be used for the beam. I will supplement this with a 1k fresnel for a background window, behind sitting character, for a beam directed at the same angle. The room fill will be achieved via bounced 600w Omnis with CTB.

 

Does this seem like an appropriate setup?

 

Thanks,

Chris

[John Holland]

What are you shooting on ? what ever it is i would bounce the key spill off poly or card to maybe lift the morning feel . Go over on the key and then let shade look after its self .

[David Desio]

Hello,

 

For a student short, I plan to shoot at a diner at night, which we need to make look like DAY. We'd like a beam of sunlight coming through a large window to hit a character (his left side) sitting at a table with his breakfast. My plan is to bring up the ambience of the room to an appropriate level that feels like daytime. This ambience will be a few stops lower than the strength of the beam coming through the window, which will be visible via use of a hazer. My strongest light is a 2k HMI fresnel, which will be used for the beam. I will supplement this with a 1k fresnel for a background window, behind sitting character, for a beam directed at the same angle. The room fill will be achieved via bounced 600w Omnis with CTB.

 

Does this seem like an appropriate setup?

 

Thanks,

Chris

 

 

How wide do you plan to be? with only one 2k it will be difficult to make all of the windows do what you want, but if you have a tight frame or are avoiding the windows for the most part it may work. got any pics of the location? Also, when you say beam, how narrow are the windows and beam supposed to be? Can you get anything like a source4?

[Albert Smith]

sounds like a decent start. For beams I would say a Par light would be better to work with as it would give a sharper beam of light. your 1k Fresnel also may be an issue as the HMI will be 4-6x more output then the baby, its a bit hard to understand what you mean by a background light...is the 1k lighting a background element or hitting a subject and if so why do you need 2 lights from different angles through your windows....there is only one sun.

 

also keep in mind if you are gelling those omnis full ctb you will be losing a lot of output. they will be like 150-300W lights....and you are bouncing them. If you are going for a really strong ratio though and have a camera with good latitude you maybe ok though.

 

 

often for day interiors like this I will put one set of windows off camera and key through them and then use smaller sources hitting curtains from the outside to simulate a day ambiance.

 

 

In the past on a really tight budget I have used 1k Molepars through windows instead of hmi's. Maybe something to consider as it doesn't sound like you need that much power out of your lights and if your stuck with only the omnis for fill it will make it a bit easier to match exposure on the fill side. and then you can shoot everything tungsten balance.

 

(if your not already aware btw that 2k hmi will NOT run on house power)

Edited April 4, 2011 by Jake Zalutsky

[Chris Lange]

Thanks for the suggestions, comments...

 

We really roughed this shoot in, and to my surprise it worked well. We framed the key window out of frame and ended up using the HMI fresnel. We gelled it much warmer than expected, as the scene required stylization as a flashback. We used an additional 1k in a smaller corner window, aimed in the same direction as the HMI. The omnis provided our fill level.

 

Prior to this setup, we were falling behind schedule. I was surprised at how fast we were able to make the setup work. It happened very quickly, in a sort of creative rush. We managed to rough something in, and it looked great via color temp and gelling. I suppose my choices were artificial or unnatural, as I ended up using much CTO. In the end, we found the look for the stylized flashback that felt like a warm morning light. It held an idea of sensory memory.

 

I enjoyed the process, but have not idea of its truth yet.

 

Chris