How do you light CAR interior Day and Night??

[Maxime Normandin]

Titile say it all. What do you use?

[David Mullen ASC]

For day driving, sometimes no lighting at all is needed. Other times, you have some soft daylight filling in, usually through the front windshield. But where and how the lights get mounted depend on whether the camera is on a process trailer and where the camera has to go. But often I end up with two 2.5K HMI's near each corner of the front, or if further back on the back corners of the camera car, two 4K HMI's. If the camera is looking through the side windows, I often put a 4'x8' frame of diffusion on the hood (again, when on a process trailer) to soften the HMI's, otherwise I usually have diffusion on the barn doors or a 4'x4' frame in front of each HMI, just depends on space and how well it can be rigged because wind is a factor, every diffusion frame has to be securely mounted.

 

But if there were bright enough LED's that could be soft enough, I'd love to try that because HMI's are a pain, they go out too easily and are hard to knock down enough if suddenly it gets very dark outside, like when shooting into dusk.

 

For night driving, it depends on where the camera is driving -- through the city, through the country, etc. If you are in a well-lit urban shopping district, sometimes all you want is a very weak amount of fill like from a hidden LED strip or Kino MicroFlos or just some dim ambient fill coming through the front windshield.

 

Other times, you may need to add a bit of your own interactive lighting coming through the windows with gelled tiny lamps (like 200w Peppers, etc.) on dimmers fading up & down.

 

It gets harder if it's supposed to be a country road. Sometimes I've shined lights outwards from the process trailer to suggest the ambience from the headlamps are lighting the sides of the road close to the car, like passing bushes and trees, letting everything fall off to black deep (because I don't have a choice).