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Lighting a Day Car Exterior in the Desert


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Hi all!

Been racking my brain for a while on how to best light a car for a spec I’m shooting - specifically in the desert, exterior, during the day. Unfortunately our piece has a lot of narrative moments, so I can’t shoot during blue hour/sunset as this wouldn’t leave time for our long scenes and totally throw off the consistency. Long story short, I’ll have to deal with the sun - that being said, does anyone have some tricks for dealing with the big, flaming ball in the sky?

 

My current thought is to just use sub as backlight, edging the car and potentially losing the reflection, and then using some soft 12x bounce in one of the car’s blind spots. I figured the sun being direct in any sense would look bad and secondly adding diffusion frames won’t work for some of our wides and would be seen in reflection. 

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are you talking about for wide exteriors of the car? In that case I agree with Satsuki, that stuff has to be done natural light, shooting in overhead sun is going to suck. 

If you're talking about narrative moments inside the car stopped then yea bouncing light back into the car makes a lot of sense. I would probably work with reflectors and small diffusion frames though, but 12x could work. 

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If shooting dialogue, I always try to keep cars backlit, whether they are moving or not, and then fill with a large bounce (if they are not moving). Backlit meaning downstage from camera, rather than the actual back of the car.

If you're shooting wider shots of the entire car then use whatever angle gets you the best reflections.

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Keep in mind the look on the actors you want in your decision. For instance if it's a tender moment or romantic, perhaps the dark rings under the eyes from midday sun are undesirable, so perhaps an overhead of half-soft frost or 1/4 grid is good for medium/closeups. Or if it's a harsh scene then perhaps nothing will work. Or perhaps you like the harsh toppy light of the sun but don't want it so intense on the actors, then a single/double net would work.

In any case, surely you'll want some kind of side push. Yeah, ultrabounce for sure.

As for the wides. Perhaps plan for those shots during the earliest/latest times of the day where the sun serves most as a backlight. During mid-day, despite being behind your actors, it's still be very toppy.

For backlight of large areas (especially for wide shots), I'm a fan of the silver lame. It's a soft reflector rag. And can push a large area from a single source. My preference would be a 12x12 far enough away that it affects not just the talent and car, but some of the location elements as well.

A Polarizer would help tame some of the hard sun kicks off the car, but not direct reflections. But it'll also affect the actor's faces as well. Might work out well for the wides though.

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21 hours ago, Stephen Sanchez said:

perhaps the dark rings under the eyes from midday sun are undesirable, so perhaps an overhead of half-soft frost or 1/4 grid is good for medium/closeups. Or if it's a harsh scene then perhaps nothing will work. Or perhaps you like the harsh toppy light of the sun but don't want it so intense on the actors, then a single/double net would work.

Unless the car is a convertible, high sunlight won't be much of an issue. If it's reaching into the car at all, it will mostly be arms and legs that it hits. You can deal with that with 4x4 frames easy enough. If you're going to bounce some fill in, rather than light it, I always think that keeping the bounce low looks more realistic, as if it was coming back off the road. Some white sheets inside the car can also help to lift the overall level, but can also make it look very flat if you over do it. 

As far as lighting for mood goes, you're pretty much tied to whatever the exterior conditions are. You could have it low key and moody in the car while it's full sun outside, but it might look a little strange.

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The advantage of shooting in backlight is that you can open up and expose more for the shadows, so the difference between the interior and exterior view isn't as extreme. The only downside is that you can get hot kicks off of the roof of the car into the lens.

Of course, the other problem is that not all roads are straight and sometimes cars take turns so it's hard to maintain a backlit angle. Plus not everyone wants to take the time to drive back to the start position before doing more takes, often they want to roll driving in both directions.

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Hi everyone! Thanks for the replies, good to see some approaches I can integrate. I love the white sheet idea inside the car.

Some more context:

- The car will be parked in one position, with talent only ever outside the car.

- I have choice over time of day, but it can't be blue hour as this would ruin consistency with the other parts of this scene. I'm going to try to get the most backlight on the car as possible so aiming for 3-6. Luckily we're shooting in winter, so sun will be quite low most of the day. 

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On 10/11/2020 at 7:31 AM, Stephen Sanchez said:

For backlight of large areas (especially for wide shots), I'm a fan of the silver lame. It's a soft reflector rag. And can push a large area from a single source. My preference would be a 12x12 far enough away that it affects not just the talent and car, but some of the location elements as well.

Ah I've been wondering if there's anything reflective in 12x! I use 4x mirrors so much but they often are only good to backlight one subject. Is it basically a 12x of shiny?

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It's a lamé material; Metal fibers interwoven with fabric. I think it's the same used in those 5-in-1 pop out reflectors.

I've noticed two styles: the typical semi-shiny type, and the dull-shiny type (which may just be degradation from age). You can see the difference in the two styles (pictured on 4x4 frames). I've only worked with the duller type. The shinier the material, the more directional it is.

lame 1.JPGlame2.JPG

lame3.JPG

Edited by Stephen Sanchez
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