Night Exterior

[Dinko Rupcic]

Night lighting has always been a problem to me, not because I am a student but because usualy I would not have the proper equipment to do the shots the way I want them to look.

I wanted to do this scene with ballons, since I dont have the money then I have to do it with the lights I have and those are:

 

6x 1k ellipsoid beam PAR 2x EL generator 6500honda

 

2x 4light-(4x650w PAR)

 

1x 6light-(6x650w PAR)

 

2x 2k

 

and a half a dozen of 1k and 650w fresnels

 

The question is how to make a light that is similar to ballon light out of the equipment that I have just listed?

 

Can you achieve it by putting a lot of china balls together? Has anybody tried it?

 

If anybody feels like answering on this one I will appreciate all help I can get, or if somebody knows someone who has a 20k ballon a generator and is willing to operate it for under $300 that would be incredible. (i know it's not possibile but at least I tried)

 

Thanks in advance

dinko

[Mitch Gross]

You have a lot of gear there and you should be able to do a lot. Think about backlighting and edge lighting. Since you do not have a balloon, perhaps you can rent some scaffolding (cheap) or a scissor lift or condor (more expensive) and rig the lights up high.

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

U do have alot of gear=) But hard to mimic balloon though I think...

As said, try to get the smaller units up high as back and maybe bounce the larger into silks as fill and keep them low. soft and edge at same time if that´s what you like.

 

Good luck !!!!

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

OOPS! Misty field u say..... Didn´t see that. Try edge from ground or so then :)

[Dinko Rupcic]

Thanks on the suggestions, I really appreciate any help.

 

I know it is hard for you guys if you don't have all the main info on the film to pitch anything so I will explain the situation better. I just thought that one of the guys here did improvized a ballon light out of the (limited) equipment he had.

 

I am shooting on sup16, 7218 with T2.0 primes package.

I usually approach the scene first looking at how I am going to light the long shots then I make my way to the close ups and so on...

In this scene I have a couple of long shots and I don't have a lot of ideas and same goes for the experience.

I will also have a couple of hazers to do the mist, and if wind ruins the situation I will just have to go without it.

 

Hazers will leave me with about 12k of generator power to do the lights and I wrote what my light package includes in the first post----I did not wrote that I have one kino flo, and 6 or 7 500w chinabulbs.

 

My backlights should be 2 to 2.5 stops over and my key light should be 1 to 1.5 stops under.

I am going for 1/2 ctb on the backlights/sidelights and full ctb on the key lights to give a little bluish cast to underexsposed areas.

 

Because I am using soft for key I will not be using any fill light and I don't like the effect that it does when shooting for moonlight.

I feel that I could only go wrong and overlight the scene with fill light, especially if I have hazers doing the mist, that will bring my light levels up- but if somebody thinks different let me know.

 

I want to ask Fredrik why do I need to put backlight on the ground now that you realised that I am shooting in a misty field?

 

I really wanted it to look like night scenes from "sleppy hollow" or "band of brothers" episode when they are stuck in the ardenne forest-(I will not have snow like them). I knew they had a studio and they lit those scenes I think with bunch of space lights.

I can go on forever talking about this. One more thing is that every other scene in the film is going to be lit like a Norman Rockwell painting-my personal reference. When I came to think about the night scene I did not had any reference because I couldn't find any night exterior paintings from Rockwell- again if anybody has something on the topic please write it.

 

Thanks everybody for reading this, hope somebody replies.

 

Dinko

[David Mullen ASC]

Seems a little bright for moonlight, 2.5 stops over on the backlight and one stop under on the key (assuming that the key and fill are the same thing here, i.e. soft dim light in the shadows to see some detail with the backlight being the "moon".)

 

I'd probably expose the backlight at key (normal) exposure and the soft key/fill at two stops under, maybe even three stops under in the wider shots.

[Dinko Rupcic]

Thanks David,

as I said I will be shooting on 7218 and I want the contrast later so I was thinking over exsposure will bring it up a notch.

My other materials are EXR stocks, sorry that I did not post that.

 

Dinko