Bus stop at night and Bill Henson inspiration

[Guillaume Gaubert]

Hello!

 

As a very little experienced cinematographer, I have been hired to work on a very small budget short movie. It will take place in the countryside at a bus stop next to the road during the night.

 

I talked with the director about the look and tone of the lighting and we agreed to go for a specific look. The bus stop will be lit using something like one or two Kino Flo 2 bank located at the top (like this scene from the TV series 'Dark').

 

For the rest of the shots where the two characters will not be in the bus stop, I want to create the kind of look we can find in the photography of Bill Henson, specially where the characters are lit directly and where the key and fill lights have two opposite temperatures (the key is warm and the fill pretty cold) like this shot.

 

So I was thinking of mixing two different lights one 5600k and one 3200k or getting two 3200k and using a CTB on one of them and rate the camera in-between. Or maybe using a LED litepanel if it can be cheaper.

 

Am I on the good track ?

 

All the best,

 

G.

[Giacomo Girolamo]

Thanks for the reference shot. Can you tell us more about the shots about the two characters? Where are they? At night too? Where's the motivation for the mixing color temperatures, or is just a esthetic decision?

[Guillaume Gaubert]

Yes, the whole scene takes place at night at this bus stop. At the beginning the characters will be in the bus stop but then they walk a bit, not so far, but the light will need to different as they won't be lit by the bus stop.

 

Concerning the color temperatures mix, yes it is first a pure aesthetic decision as the director and I really like this color palette, and then because the short has an ethereal and dreamy story and we wanted to convey that with a special lighting.

[Giacomo Girolamo]

Maybe if you find some road with this type of lights...

 

 

You can have a tungsten yellowish light that came from the road and a bluish moon light that came from the woods. You can use gel or and LSD panel (which is useful for fills too) with a dimmer and color temperature controls.

 

But to me, in the road, you need to get some light in the woods too, because in the first shot you upload you don't see anything in the back (it's ok though because the main focus is the bus stop) but maybe is just too dark for a shoot on the side of the road.

 

 

Ps. They are in the middle of nowhere or is a bus stop in a suburban area?

Edited December 4, 2017 by Giacomo Girolamo

[Guillaume Gaubert]

Thank you for your answer!

The bus stop will be in the middle of nowhere, so there will be no road lights.

 

Yes I thought of LCD panels as they are quite convenient and easy to use. What kind of tungsten do you have in mind?

 

I was also wondering about lighting the background (which will be woods too), but I'm not sure about which kind of light to choose as I don't think we'll have enough budget to get big skypanels. So I thought about some kind of light and a big diffusion frame.

[Mark Kenfield]

Don't bother with diffusion or soft lights for faint back ground illumination. Get the most powerful lights you can afford (M18s and suitcase generators are ideal for this sort of thing), and put them on full flood from a long way away. That's give you some broad and even illumination across a larger area.

That screenshot from Dark, very much feels a part of a Bill Hensonesque night, where the outside is pitch black, with only the faintest hints of the landscape beyond. So if that's the mood you're going for, I wouldn't suggest putting much light into the background, just a tiny hint of it.

[Guillaume Gaubert]

Thank you everyone for your answers!

 

For the moonlight background, I'll do how you said and how I imagined, so I'll get something big and put it full flood far away. Yeah I don't want to lit the background too much, but just slightly more than the Dark screenshot.

 

As for the recreating the light of the Bill Henson photo, I kept looking and imagined using one ARRI Fresnel 300 for the yellowish cast and one daylight HMI (like the ARRI D5) for the soft blueish light (or maybe another tungsten with CTB depending on budget).

In all the takes, I'll use the blueish light as a key and the yellow tungsten as a backlight.

 

Do you think this is enough?

 

All the best,

 

G.