Faking passing headlights while shooting on a process trailer

Eric Lin · March 31, 2013

Hi all. I am prepping for a project coming up in which there is a dialogue driven night driving scene through a small town/country road. We are scouting now and want to feel the street lamps, passing cars and see the practicals on in the world outside the windows so decided not to do poor man's process and will get a process trailer. There will be three angles: a frontal shot from the hood, and 3/4 angle Medium close-up coverage from the corners of the hood (where we will see a little bit out the side windows behind each actor).

However, we have an idea to have the headlamps of passing cars pass by at key dramatic moments. When doing poor man's process in the past, I've rigged two tweenies onto a dolly and have it pushed past the car as the lights pan and dim up. For this I was thinking of just rigging some Tweenies onto the process trailer and dimming them up and panning them as you would on when doing this poor man's process style. I was thinking of putting the headlight gag rig on the camera car to get as much distance as I could but I'm worried I can't get the angle for off enough from the center of the picture car to make it feel like it's coming from the next lane over. Also, with the fact that the gag lights are not on a dolly and will be panning from a fixed position worries me that it won't sell.

Has anyone else tried to do this light gag while shooting on a process trailer? I'd love to see examples if it worked. I'm worried about being able to get enough distance with the headlight gag rig so that it will sell the effect. Any tips on how to improve this idea to sell it better would be much appreciated.

One note, the director is comfortable with having the gag play on the driver's CU angle even though ostensibly, you should see a car go by through the window after you see the light gag plays on that angle.

I would really appreciate any ideas you might have. Thanks so much.

Eric Lin

NYC

DP