Creating natural-feeling sunset lit interior?

[Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell]

Hello. 

Film student here, looking for some advice. 

I've got a scene coming up that I want to set at sunset, but not wanting to confine my shoot to an hour a day I'm hoping to replicate that time of day instead. There are two locations to be lit like this, both interiors with windows and white walls. The way I'm thinking of pulling this is by shooting a HMI (at least 1.8 K, but could go higher) and relying on bounce from the walls to give more interior light, then cheating in a silk or bounce for fill lights in tighter shots while using the "sunlight" as key light. also flagging and neg-fill where needed. Either gelling the HMI or grading for the sunset color.

Will that bounce be enough to fill the space and brighten up all the non-wide shots?

Does it sound like it'll be a convincing replacement?

Is grading the color in at all wise, or should I go to lengths to color the light on-set? 

Any help and advice is much appreciated!

[Max Field]

If you can throw a bit of CTO in there to warm up the light it couldn't hurt. You'll really find the look driven home in post when playing with the RGB curves and spot-saturation.

[David Mullen ASC]

You should color the light. The look of sunset is the combination of very warm sunlight and cool shadows, it just isn’t orange overall.

[Max Field]

22 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

You should color the light. The look of sunset is the combination of very warm sunlight and cool shadows, it just isn’t orange overall.

Are there any examples you have from jobs you could post with some explanation? It would probably help a lot of us. It's hard to wrap my head around cool shadows when there's such a strong warm source that could potentially create bounce in a similar tone.

[David Mullen ASC]

The bounce of course would be the same color but any ambience coming from skylight or light from windows not being hit by the sun would be much cooler.

[Max Field]

1 minute ago, David Mullen ASC said:

The bounce of course would be the same color but any ambience coming from skylight or light from windows not being hit by the sun would be much cooler.

I'm just trying to get the scientific understanding now. Is it to be assumed that the sunlight coming in from the other side is bouncing off the blue sky? or grass? Or is there math to light losing its saturation the more it's bounced?

[David Mullen ASC]

Skylight is cooler than direct sunlight — you can see that with your own eyes. The sky is blue. You mean you’ve never noticed the colder shadows near sunset on a clear day? 

The French Plantation dinner scene in Apocalypse Now Redux is an example, people not being hit by the direct setting sun or its bounce back / reflection at them are lit with a whiter light.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is a telephoto shot I did from my roof of the last rays of sun hitting some trees. Notice how much cooler the shadows are.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is a photo of a statue in the park backlit by the setting sun:

[David Mullen ASC]

Here are the last rays of sun hitting an old cabin in the woods — again, warm sun, cold shadows:

[David Mullen ASC]

“The Natural”, shot by Caleb Deschanel, has a number of interior scenes lit with orange setting sun effect and cool fill in the shadows.

[David Mullen ASC]

You have to imagine sitting in a real room as the sun is setting and then going into twilight to understand the colors of the sun and the sky and how that transforms the room. The sun gets more orange but weaker as it sets so the ambience from the blue sky gets stronger in relation.

[David Mullen ASC]

Of course if you only have one small window and the setting sun is barreling through it, that orange color dominates but even then, as it fades away, there is cool skylight replacing it.

[Max Field]

Thanks for the examples.

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

You mean you’ve never noticed the colder shadows near sunset on a clear day?

There's a lot of stuff with light physics I try to be mindful of in my day-to-day life because I know it will assist in the realism of my visuals. Sometimes the most common everyday things are the hardest to vividly notice because we're so used to them.
I suppose having the eye to break it down as it happens in real life is one of the crucial talents that makes a successful DP.

[Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell]

Oh my god, thanks guys! 

[David Mullen ASC]

Leonardo Da Vinci observed this and wrote: "The shadows of bodies generated by the redness of the sun near the horizon are always blue: and this is because of the11th [proposition of the book on light and shadow], where it is said: the surface of any opaque object partakes the color of its object. Therefore, since the white-ness of the wall is deprived of any color at all, it is tinged with the color of its objects, which are, in this instance, the sun and the sky, because the sun reddens toward evening and the sky appears blue; and where on this wall the shadow does not see the sun, it will be seen by the sky, because of the 8th [proposition of the book] on shadows, which says: no luminous body ever sees the shadows that it generates; therefore, the derivative shadow will project on the white wall with a blue color, because of the above-mentioned 11th [proposition], and the shadow seen by the redness of the sun will partake its red color."

[Mark Dunn]

Marvellous. I wonder if there's any other cinematography resource where Leonardo would be cited.

[Shane H]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 4/29/2019 at 7:57 PM, Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell said:

Hello. 

Film student here, looking for some advice. 

I've got a scene coming up that I want to set at sunset, but not wanting to confine my shoot to an hour a day I'm hoping to replicate that time of day instead. There are two locations to be lit like this, both interiors with windows and white walls. The way I'm thinking of pulling this is by shooting a HMI (at least 1.8 K, but could go higher) and relying on bounce from the walls to give more interior light, then cheating in a silk or bounce for fill lights in tighter shots while using the "sunlight" as key light. also flagging and neg-fill where needed. Either gelling the HMI or grading for the sunset color.

Will that bounce be enough to fill the space and brighten up all the non-wide shots?

Does it sound like it'll be a convincing replacement?

Is grading the color in at all wise, or should I go to lengths to color the light on-set? 

Any help and advice is much appreciated!

 

In my experience, you're on the right track. Personally, I would opt for a tungsten fixture and change your white balance to about 4000K in camera to achieve this look, but if you're stuck with the HMI then you might try some minus green (aka magenta) gel as well as the CTO. Sunlight tends to shift towards this end of the spectrum as it is nearing the horizon.

I would keep a pizza box or beadboard on hand for tight shots. 

21 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

The bounce of course would be the same color but any ambience coming from skylight or light from windows not being hit by the sun would be much cooler.

One of my favorite ways to replicate this is a little 1 stop Cyan (Rosco #4330) on a soft fixture bounced into a ceiling or other white surface (beadboard, silk, muslin, etc.) to bring up the room just a touch and add those blue-ish tones.

 

Good luck with the project and be sure to post screens!

[Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell]

Okay, done a few tests. This first one is a blonde (not a HMI, sadly) pointed inside the studio door. A bounceboard is rigged up to the left of shot, getting some light to the left of the face, with an Aladdin LED panel balanced to 6000K bounced into the ceiling behind the camera. The image has been graded a little, but the blue tones were visible before I started that process. Mostly curves really. 

[Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell]

This next one is pretty much the same setup, but with a FrenL, gelled with CTO and magenta to the right outside the door. Ambient bounce was pretty prevalent, I didn't use a blue bounce this time though as I felt it got a bit too obvious against the less powerful FrenL, but I'm probably imagining that. Do also wish I'd gotten some better angles of this setup, namely a higher-key one, but time was sadly short. But it's looking promising! I'm thinking that on the day, weather will be either daylight or overcast when I'm putting that HMI in though the window, so I'll have colder ambient light but I might still need to have something extra on set rather than grade it and have to desaturate shadows and have it feel a bit plastic. I think. 

[Patrick wilder]

Similar ask for advice:

shooting a small home interior and want sunset lighting through one standard sized kitchen window. 
shooting on film ASA200. I want to shoot at f-4 aperture. 
I have a joker2 1600w, three Arri 650, three Arri 300, aperture nova 300. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

I like to make golden hour / early sunset-ish light from window by using raw ungelled tungsten light as "sunlight-color" key light and bouncing either ungelled hmi or daylight led light from frame above the window. 10 years ago I often used kinos for the top light on some ocassions but nowadays it is usually overhead frame above the window with bounce or if very low budget and calm weather I may just bounce from two or three 4x4 styro boards or rigging bare white molton on stands without frame if there is no frame available 😄 

the lower the imitated sun gets over the horizon the deeper and bluer the shadows and the sunlight starts to catch more red/purple tones. If the starting point was bounced ungelled hmi as sky ambience and raw ungelled tungsten as sunglight...  when sun gets lower I lower the ambience a little and adding 1/4 ctb. Next the sunlight gets some cto and possible other mild gel depending on taste.  The next the ambience gets lower and gets 1/2 ctb and I may gel the sunlight further. The next I may keep the sky ambience color temperature but will reduce the intensity, either scrim or adjusting bounce angle or area etc. so that reducing intensity further. The sun may get additional cto or other gel next but I am also starting to dim it down. When sun is below the horizon, adding diffusion to the sunlight and dimming it way way down to deep orange or coal red.

One cool trick, if you have very powerful tungsten lights like (or just lots of 2k's and 1k's in a row for example), is to use a dimmer to dim them down to like between 10% or 20% level. One gets this weird eerie deep orange a-hint-of-coal-red hue with a hint of sepia feeling to it. Depends on the camera how it captures it but on set it is something pretty unique by my opinion, like watching real fire instead of a replica of it 🙂 

If having the joker and the couple of small tungstens, I would bounce the joker from as large overhead frame possible and reducing its intensity as needed. then packing all tungsten light you possibly can behind a small-ish diffusion frame like 3x3 or 4x4 etc. with them gelled with 1/4 cto.  Then if you need deeper color balance difference, gelling the hmi up instead of touching the tungsten gelling because you want to get as much light as you can from the tungstens. When sun sets more, adjust the sky ambience to lower level and when sun gets really low you can start to adjust the tungstens again

[Aapo Lettinen]

the "sky ambience" needs to come through the same window than the sunlight does. you can add some boost to the shadows by bouncing similar ambience-coloured light from inside but most of the ambience really needs to come from the window to sell the sunset effect as people see how the window opening shapes the ambience coming to the room and curtains etc are lit by it.

people will see if there is only sunlight coming from outside and everything else is coming from inside, quite often they interpret this as it being a night scene with the outside light coming from a orange streetlight because there is no ambience to tell that it is real sunlight. If there is no ambience from outside then it is nighttime for the audience no matter how well everything else was done

[Aapo Lettinen]

On 5/6/2019 at 5:44 AM, Oisin Hugh Edwin O'Connell said:

 

as per my previous post, this shot is probably interpreted by the audience as being a night scene because there is no ambience coming from the same doorway than where the warm light is coming in even when the light is pretty bright for a night scene. And they would probably think the warm light is artificial light like very bright incandescent in the next room, or car headlights flashing the door, or some heavy industrial light in the yard because it is so bright.

adding some high temperature blue-ish soft light coming from the same door would be interpreted as sky ambience and thus people would explain to themselves that the orange light must be real sunlight

[Aapo Lettinen]

I actually did some tests in the past, maybe 12 years ago, if one can make "sunset light" by using only one light fixture and still sell the effect.

I used a 1k tungsten fresnel. I added 1/2 cto to barndoors to the right side of the centerline so that the right side of the beam was orange very warm "sunlight" with sharp beam.

Then I added full ctb on the left side of the beam and some full diffusion over it. The ctb made the left side of the beam cool high colour temperature and the heavy diffusion spred the beam all around reducing all directionality. this spred to all over the room bouncing back from the white ceiling and walls and creating cold ambience light. Viewed in the same room than where the light was it was not entirely convincing but in the next room, when that light was coming through doorway, it was pretty much a convincing "sunset light" because it had these two components even when it was really roughly made and the ambience still had lots of sharpness to it because the surface area of the diffusion being so small.

But just something to remember:  you can make two or even three "different lights" from one fixture by adding partial gelling and diffusion areas along the lightpath. Making one warm sharp light and one soft cold light is pretty easy, for example gelling first half of the beam to cold colour temperature and then shooting that warm+cold light combination past a diffusion frame so that only the cold light side gets diffused.  Or you could reflect the undiffused cold side of the beam up with shiny board, then bounce it back down from large overhead frame to create very soft sky ambience. If, for example, having only one 5k and nothing else would be pretty handy trickery to get multiple lights done with one fixture