Lighting advice.

[Fuad zulkifli]

As picture below, I'm shooting a horror film and this location will be my biggest scene. What kind of lighting scene or anything would you give your advice on.. I'm going to spray water on the floor and maybe add abit of smoke to create somewhat 'silent hill' kind of art treatment. But for lighting ways, i'm still clueless. Any suggestion or advice would deeply appreciate

[Phil Rhodes]

Use lots of physical effects. Depending on the specifics of the scene, consider dripping water, steam, flickering light. Sparks if things are damaged. Litter, including trashcans surrounded by piles of it to break up the linearity a bit. Flashing warning lights. Illicitly-posted posters on the walls, peeling off. Graffiti. Cables hanging down from those cable trays. Consider going to a junkyard and filling a vehicle with generic stuff to strew around. Blu-tak project boxes with LEDs and lightbulbs in them to the walls, to add points of light and interest to bokeh (use the bright, directional ones). Sweeping light from passing cars, advertising hoardings, traffic signals, etc.

 

The Bradbury Building in Blade Runner was made to look a complete wreck every night and in use again the next day, so with enough hands to assist it can be done quickly and without damaging the location.

 

Also, backlight!

 

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[David Mullen ASC]

First question is whether you want to add any practical sources in the frame -- light bulbs along the wall, like in a string of work lamps, someone carrying a flashlight, etc.

 

Beyond that, you can rig some down spots above the pipes.

 

You can also consider putting a bright lamp at the far end, centered with the hallway, and pointed into the lens -- it will reflect / glare off the the sides and floors, silhouetting people coming down the hall, especially if you can also add some smoke & steam, and even more so if you wet down the hallway. You can even block the actual source to camera with some bit of art direction in the center of the hall back there and still get the glare on the sides, ceiling, and floor.

[joshua gallegos]

I'm no expert, but from what you said about 'Silent Hill', you could turn off the panels and add green fluorescent tubes on the empty spaces above and maybe have a few of them flicker. that way there's definite darkness in some spaces and pools of light above the tubes, maybe add a tube tha's swinging, so there's some thing happening with the light. Maybe have the actor use an LED maglite? It's a great location, I wonder why is there always smoke? Maybe if it was cold, you could add some mist, instead of smoke, whenever I see a horror film and see al that smoke I wonder where it's coming from and why it's there., I don't think fluorescent tubes are expensive to rig, if you film at 800 ASA with fast primes it wouldn't be much of a problem to get the exposure right.

Edited December 2, 2013 by joshua gallegos