Lighting Cars & People outside with no power

[Jonathan Bryant]

On Friday I be assisting on a shoot for a major university where we will be filming cars and actors outside. We will shoot this on video with a Sony DSR-500 in widescreen. We are limited in time,power, and lighting kits made for the outdoors. We have every Lowel light there is probably with color correction gels, but no HMIs. But I am told tieing into the power is very unlikely. We usually use sheats on light stands to diffuse the light on people outside ,a reflector to fill, and sometimes a Lowel DP light with color correction filter extremly close to the subject. We have one photoflex lite panel with all the Translucent and White/Gold Fabrics to help out. From what I understand cars are almost like mirrors and that the most ideal light for them is a soft box overhead in a studio. I pretty sure we should use a circular polarizer on the car shots too. I have heard mirrors make good backlights outside for people. We also have a black pro mist filter to soften and lower the contrast of the image. What do you guys suggest if we don't get an overcast day?

[boy yniguez]

hi,

 

precisely because cars are like mirrors it would be most natural to shoot it in available light with the sun as your key light when it is sunny and/or the sky as your softbox when not. also you would get reflections of your natural surroundings like buildings, trees, assuming that's what you want to see of course.