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Shooting in the desert...


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I'm shooting a super16 student film that's coming up soon in the Anza Borrego desert (SoCal). The film is much like Thelma and Louise meets Fear and Loathing in LV.

 

The shots mostly consist of the characters in a convertible...so car mount shots, in-vehicle shots, and some shots of the car from another car. There will also be shots of them outside the vehicle roaming the desert.

 

I'm pretty new to all this, so can you guys recomend a good way to control harsh lighting from the sun? We will not have any lights or electricity whatsoever. I'm thinking that just bringing some nets and reflectors will suffice...but other tips would be appreciated.

 

Secondly, we are also doing a nighttime bar scene (during the day) that i rented some kino's, a 650 and 250 kit w/ chimeras (from school) for. Any tips on how to light a small, VERY dark bar as well? I want it dark, warm and moody. Do I need a fog machine? gels? Sorry if these questions are vague.... Thanks in advance,

 

-Dan

Edited by Dan L
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Hi,

 

I'd love to help you out, but I live in London, we don't have sun, let alone deserts.

 

But for what it's worth, yes, I imagine you'll be scrimming and netting right left and centre. What you probably really should do is stick the car on a truck and rig all your lighting on that, but I have no idea what you'd do about windage and the sound department.

 

Phil

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Try to avoid shooting during the middle of the day. Harsh overhead sunlight is nasty! If you can shoot early morning and early evening when the sun is lower, and try to keep your actors back-lit or 3/4 lit with the sun, it will look much better. You going to need a lot of fill, so have plenty of beadboard to hand, also reflectors, and maybe some large mirrors for hot edges.

 

If you have to shoot at midday, using some silks over the actors will take the harshness out of the sun.

 

It's a matter of taste, of course, but I always really like the look of long lens work in deserts, picking up all the heat haze...nice!

 

Stuart

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Hello,

 

You can get the reflectors from construction supply stores for $6.00 per 4' X 8' sheet. The generally most useful is 1", single sided styro. It gives you a foil side on one side and white on the other. Tape them around the edges with 2" gaffer's tape to reduce damage. You'll need two crew guys to hold them on windy days. You won't be able to use them much on a rolling car. Your car thing is a pretty wicked situation to work with. You can cut White foam-core sheets to fit in their laps angled and taped to the dash board. Other than that, You've got a challenge to meet without the usual tools DPs use to meet it.

 

Good luck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You can make an inexpensive butterfly that will take some of the curse off of the sun with a thick clear visqueen. I believe it's 6mil however it might be 8mil. It will look approximately like Hampshire frost or half-softfrost, and still allow almost the entire amount of light thru, so you won't have to worry about the BG being too hot.

 

If you need to save $$$ on the car window tint, try some shade screen from a hardware store - it's pretty cheap, doesn't reflect like gel, and you can usually tape it down pretty good for when you are driving the car at low speeds - and use paper tape, not gaff tape or duct tape on the vehicle.

 

Shoot as much golden hour as you can, and leave the inserts and car chase stuff to the middle of the day if possible.

 

Buy, beg, borrow, one of those silver screens that people use to keep the sun out of their car, and keep it by the camera. If you really want to go all out, paint one side of it flat white, so you always have a silver/white fill close by camera.

 

You may want to take some tips from Ron Dexter's website: http://www.rondexter.com/

 

Wear a hat and sunscreen, and drink more water than you think you need.

 

Hope your shoot goes well,

 

Mike Hall

Arizona (THE desert ;)

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It's pretty hard to do anything safely to soften the light with overhead silks when you're talking about a moving convertable, even on a process trailer, because of the wind factor.

 

If you noticed, "Thelma & Louise" was shot mostly in natural light for those driving scenes, sometimes in very harsh sunlight. Your best bet is to do what they did -- pick the direction of travel and time of day to create the look you want.

 

As for lighting a bar, you have a decent lighting package for that. Smoke helps -- bars look too clean with it.

 

I'm not sure I can instruct you on how to light a scene without knowing the staging and action. Like anything, your choices tend to be to light from above, below, in front, from behind, and from one side or the other. Assuming you don't want flat lighting, you can eliminate the "from in front" direction of light except for fill. When people sit at a bar counter in a wide shot, they tend to be lit (if at all -- in real life, people actually aren't lit much in a bar, they sit on the periphery of lights in the darkness...) from above or below the counter. If there are overhead sockets for light bulbs, I'll put in Narrow Spot PAR bulbs, like 75 watts, for a hot tiny down-spot of light. Sometimes that's enough to bounce back up off of a white napkin and light the faces a little. Sometimes you have to motivate some soft light from another direction.

 

I've also keyed people with party-gelled Kino tubes laid directly on the counter, usually running along the trough on the backside nearer the bartender. Sort of that lit-from-below look like in "The Shining".

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Hello Dan,

let me begin by saying I have been in situations such as the one you describe many times, and the first thing I can tell you is that you are going to have to surrender to nature (for the day scene). If you do this from the start you will not be too stressed out and your results will improve. What I mean by this is, if you have a decent budget you can fly in 20x20 silks or whatever else you want to control the existing light, you (apparently) do not have this luxury, this however doesn't mean your shoot can't yield beautiful results. For example you can use the different times of day and their corresponding direction, colour temperature and qualities of light to accentuate the content of your piece, for example use the harsh midday toplight sun (although this is probably not advisable as it is not very pretty and can give the actors dark sockets a.k.a "pandas" over their eyes if not filled enough) to accentuate someones imperfections for a mean gritty look. And counterpoint this with sunset lighting for a softer more romantic scene. These are just examples, and only you know the content of what you will shoot, but what I am getting at is that there are many looks out there in nature and since you lack the means to counteract them you will have to embrace them and make them work for you. Also, bring a roll of reynolds wrap (aluminium foil) it can be stuck in small places with clips or tape were a reflector cannot fit, and can produce a surprising amount of fill or act as a nice little glint in someones eyes.

Good luck.

Tomas.

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Hello all,

 

I haven't tried this yet, but I understand that flashing the film will knock some of the contrast out. Is this a viable strategy fro this person?

 

Flashing softens the toe of a camera negative film, reducing the contrast in the shadow areas. Consider a pull-process to reduce overall contrast, or perhaps the new Kodak VISION2 HD System with 7299:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/plugins/acrobat/en...PCN040105_Q.pdf

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/about/news/hdNAB.jhtml

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Not many labs want to flash film for you, and it takes some testing to determine the right percentage of flash. There are two in-camera devices for flashing, the Panaflasher and the Arri VariCon, but the Panaflasher goes on a 35mm Panaflex. The Arri VariCon needs to go into a 6x6 mattebox, which is certainly possible in 16mm but may be awkward.

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Re: INT. car shots - Just a quick thought, if you can't afford silks we once used white tissue paper. Depending on how you're setting up your shot and what will and what won't be in the shot...you can try putting some tissue paper on certain windows that aren't in frame. Add double or tripple ply as needed. Not only did we cut down some glare, but the white tissue paper also acted as a soft bounce to illuminate some darker areas within the vehicle. Don't know if this'll help. Happy shooting.

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Hey again,

 

I've heard of this trick, but again, I don't know of it from experience. Can this person load a roll of film, set the rotation manually, mark the film in the gate with a sharpy, shoot a properly-lit neutral screen, then can and reload the film for shoot based on the mark? This is something I'd like to hear about as well.

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Once again,

 

I should have mentioned that flashed film has a shelf life. As I understand it, activating the crystals changes their longevity in some way. John Ptylak would probably be the best person here to advise on that.

 

Thanks,

Paul

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