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CHARECTER LIGHTING IN JUNGLE


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I will be doing a shoot in jungle. I want to know how can I control the day outdoor light. The weather condition around here is sometimes rainy and hard sunlight. I want to do various scene in different lighting, so please help on how I can create the different lighting scene

1. diffused lighting on character and the surrounding trees.

2. hard side light to fall in character face.

3. using top sun light for a day murder scene. ( i want to use a lot of highlight in the scene, how it would be as using top sun light? and what precaution are required )

Kindly help me with what hmi, or solars i can use and how to use it

I want to have a bit of contrast between the character and background ( i want the character to be 1 stop up and the surrounding to be 1 stop down )

 

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Edited by Sushanta Barman
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Woods/Jungle lighting is difficult, both for controlling contrast and dealing with lighting continuity.

Not trying to be negative, but...

I'm not sure you can really learn what to do on this forum, the questions are a bit "tell me how to do my job". The questions you ask should be something a "cinematographer" should know.

Since we don't know the location, shot size, action etc... its next to impossible to suggest what lighting instruments you need. Same with power requirements, generator, budgets, crew level etc...

In this situation I would recommend you hire a DOP with experience of shooting in these conditions.

If you plan to go ahead yourself, I would recommend you shoot some tests and practise. Another thing you could try is see if you could shadow a local DOP and watch how they work. 

Or just shoot with available light and use a little bounced light and work with what you have. That would be simpler/safer then plowing into the Jungle with a load of HMI's and no clear plan. 

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As Phil said it is pretty impossible to recommend any solution without knowing the specifics. 

As a general note, the logistics in that kind of location tend to be very challenging and probably the location is not easily accessible for big trucks and lifts/cranes so you are provably down to using small under 2.5k hmi:s on close to ground level with portable generators if you need additional light. Led lighting is also an option though not as powerful as hmi. Getting your lights high up over the trees is pretty impossible without the cranes/lifts of at least 150/200ft high and being next to a good road. Rigging the lights to the actual trees will take forever and will not look the same though could work if you have plenty of time and people trained and capable of doing that safely. 

I think a good gaffer can figure out some solutions for you if seeing the actual locations. One possibility is to use lightweight led lighting as backup and mainly just shape the natural light and trying to find good locations and times of day to shoot when the natural light looks great

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I think that using heavy lighting equipment will slow you down and make the end result worse than working with lightweight gear and taking advantage of the natural light. You will need to know your locations very well to know which times of day the sun position is perfect for a scene. then you will just bounce and reflect the sunlight as needed and need to work very fast before the sun changes position. With lots of pre-planning and precise schedule it should work great but your scenes can't then be very long or complicated. try to choose a day when the sunlight will be consistent (no clouds at all or full overcast the whole day) . You can have battery powered led panels as a backup but they need to be easy and fast to setup whenever needed. You could use frames and silk to soften harsh sunlight but setting them up will slow you down considerably (there may not even be enough room to use them in the jungle anyway) and you will need a larger crew (though still easier than using hmi and generators in that kind of location) .  it could be possible to add a small portable generator which would be just enough to run a 1.2k or 1.8k hmi to create sunlight effect on small couple of meters areas if absolutely needed. But as said you will need to work FAST and any kind of bigger lighting package will slow you down.

I would see the biggest issue being the massive green ambience you tend to get when shooting around and under vegetation. You might want to have SOMETHING to try to cancel that out which is why I would want to take some led panels there if nothing else. otherwise it tends to be super green in the shadows and the sunspots still normal looking which looks kind of weird.

surely there is some Indian productions where you could see how others are shooting in similar situations? 

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If you don't know what your doing, either hire someone that does know what they are doing.

Or keep it simple and shape available light. Nothing wrong with grabbing a reflector and diving in and see what you get. You'll probably learn a lot and if you lucky with the weather it may turn out nice

This forum isn't the time and the place to debate lighting a whole film from scratch, when your effectively starting from zero. 

Tell me how to improve XXXX, is fine

Tell me how to do my job... not so much 

Not trying to be mean but this website is more useful for specific questions after you have done your homework. Otherwise there are ton of books etc... that you can read to cover the basics

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