Lighting the film "NERVE" By Michael Simmonds

[Julian Garofalo]

So last night I watched the movie Nerve, DP'd by Michael Simmonds and I just loved the high stylized look similar to John wick and Drive but different.

 

My question here is, does anyone know what lights he used. Simmonds placed colorful practicals in the scene that had this neon look to them. Are they just gelled kino tubes or a special light made for this? The actors had this bright neon glow to them. The scene that got me questioning the most about how it was lit is the picture attached where actors Emma and Dave walking into some place and the overhead has these small dangling Christmas like lights with the over exposed ceiling ( but I would not say it's over exposed. More like a neon or black light look that of what you would find glow in the dark arcade).

 

I would love to know how they lit this.

 

Thanks

[Alex Sprenger]

I personally think that those are just plain kinos with (sometimes heavy) color gels. The first picture looks like that a lot + an almost balanced source in the Mac. If you want to nail that look rent a Blackmagic (saving that budget) and visit your local light rental place. Most of them have a wide variety of gels and would let you test them for a sixpack beer. Just set up a single kinoflo tube (for that fluorescent look) and try it with different colors, see what you like.

 

Also, especially the blue in the background of the third and the pink hues in the second picture look like they tinkered with hue and saturation vs luminance and saturation quite a bit in post. Again, I would try to test that with different gels, but I would think that its not really the light source but more the gel and a bit the post processing.

 

Furthermore: the blue and pink lights in the second and third picture arent necessarily Kinos.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Alex Sprenger