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A raining scene by night, in the countryside


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Hello,

 

We will have a shooting soon, in the deep countryside where there is absolutely no street light so.

The scene is a man running, under a heavy rain, by night. He will run about 100 meters. 

I understand that we need a backlight to see the rain, but I wonder if you have any inputs on which kind of lights I should use? 

 

Thanks ?

Screenshot 2021-08-25 173741.jpg

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Any bright light would work -- big HMI, Maxibrutes, bank of Skypanels, it depends on the color temp you want and the brightness you need. I think the bigger issue is actually the height, if they are running towards the camera for 100 meters, you might have to use longer focal lengths because you won't be able to get the backlight high enough to get out of your frame on a wider angle lens. You should start with the biggest condor you can get, the 125' if possible - but that needs a wide footprint on flat ground.

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A moving reflector with moving lights will cause the light to dance on your subject.

And having backlights and camera track with your subject will work, but you wont see the background. In which case you could probably find a way to do it stationary in a controlled environment.

So David's answer inherently solves all of that. The main takeaways are: Punchy light sources up high. So long as you can do that you will see the rain and background.

You could still try to follow with backlights, and light the background separately in small pools of light ( say if you only had access to the weaker fixtures), but you won't be able to see much of the rain in the background.

So it depends on your goals.

As for the key light. I would make that a powered source or at minimum, a white surface.

 

 

Edited by Stephen Sanchez
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If having the lights track with the runner, it would be better having the them on vehicles, since it's unlikely that someone running will hold them that steady and keep up a running pace. You can hard mount them on the vehicles and the actor can maintain their position to the front vehicle, which will act as the pacemaker and the rear one will just follow along.

I would also mount the camera on a vehicle, however, be aware of safety for the camera operator, so that legs etc aren't sticking out and they're safely strapped in.

The David's method is the best way to go, although a 100 meters of rain is a lot of water to be pumped unless you've got access to the water mains and suitable hoses. 

 

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Shooting in rain is a bit like shooting in smoke -- if the backlights are too close, you're going to see a fast fall-off in the rain with drops being very hot near the source, hence why higher and farther and bigger makes more sense to backlight the rain unless you are suggesting that the backlight comes from some vehicle pursuing the actor.  Now maybe this whole scene takes place in an 85mm close-up that is so abstract that it doesn't matter, I don't know.  But if the camera isn't close, I don't see how you can have a moving backlight -- the drawing suggests more of a 3/4 kick angle at best otherwise the stands would be in the shot. At least I'd consider a menace arm from the back of a flatbed truck running alongside, as long as you don't need good sound (the rain is going to be noisy anyway.)

The other issue is the rain machine itself.

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