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Lighting a very VERY wide shot by night


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Hi everyone,

 

For a TV live broadcast, which will happen on a vast land - imagine kind of a beach - without any city lights (except for the background where there is a city across the river) we wonder how can we light our wide shot.

It is a vast place, almost 50 square meters to light where we will have 500+ extras... with hundreds meters of backspace to place the lights.

We would like a light pretty soft, lightly cold temperature.
We will have 5 cameras on location, 5 Sony PMW150.

 

We are thinking of using HMIs that we bounce on white screens. But we don't really know which kind of HMIs or how many we should have.

A rental company can provide us for a very good price :

2* M60/6K

1* M90

4* M40/4K

4* M18/2500W

2* BALLON 4K HMI 

 

Thanks for your help,

Morgan

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To start, I would focus on ways in which you can make lighting easier by using either low-light performing sensors and secondly lenses that are fast and can operate at low apertures while maintaining quality.

I like to start the thought without restriction; say this was just one subject and closeup, how would you light it? Say you want to give everything some edge and definition with something harsh, you could use whatever background/midground out of frame to place some wide-lensed HMIs and simply give everything some depth. Then for your key maybe something very broad and soft to bring some attention to your subjects and keep things looking nice.

Taking this idea further, in this situation I would say you'll need to approach it from a grip standpoint. With such a large scene, you'll need to maybe multiply the size and scale of everything you're using almost by a multiplier. More heads, more output, larger lengths of stands, etc.

If possible, I'd look into using a cherrypicker, condors, what have you to place your key light or back light setup in a place where it has effect but at the same time is out of frame. Or if you don't need it that extreme, a max menace or normal menace arm. Or maybe it simply is too wide for that, and you'll need to designate one side of the set to pushing HMIs through a large 20x or booking through a large 20x.

I always find in large scenes like this it is super helpful to have extra heads ready incase you incorrectly predict how strong a certain light is, or if you need to bring up little details of the scene here and there, etc.

In summary, start from a theoretical point, thinking with no restriction in how you would light it. Then work further in understand how you can scale this up and what tools you may need to achieve this. Then, hopefully, see if its possible within budget!

 

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Hey Jake,

 

Thanks so much for your answer ! 

 

I unfortunately cannot chose the cameras we use, as they are provided by the TV itself and they absolutely want us to use them. 

 

We will have 2 days of testing before the live, so we are pretty lucky with that.

 

I had a meeting with the renting company, and they suggest to use 2 balloon 4K HMI that we will put on two cranes up to 50m... 

 

 

Map-light.jpg

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12 hours ago, Morgan Havet said:

Hey Jake,

 

Thanks so much for your answer ! 

 

I unfortunately cannot chose the cameras we use, as they are provided by the TV itself and they absolutely want us to use them. 

 

We will have 2 days of testing before the live, so we are pretty lucky with that.

 

I had a meeting with the renting company, and they suggest to use 2 balloon 4K HMI that we will put on two cranes up to 50m... 

 

 

Map-light.jpg

Which direction will the cameras be facing? 

I think the HMI Balloon lights are a good start for ambience. I would consider placing them more towards the middle of the crowd and favoring the back 2/3, as you can light the closer 1/3 rows with a separate large key light. Also, then the Balloons will act as a soft backlight on the front rows which may look nice.

It might be a good idea to also plan for an array of back/edge lights from the elevated road. Something like a row of Maxi-Brutes would give you more spread to cover the crowd than a single large HMI.

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Thanks so much for your input Satsuki.

 

We will have 2 cameras on two 9m scaffoldings and 3 cameras on Ronin 1. 
The picture I attached shows where will be those two scaffoldings. 

We will always shoot in the direction of the lake you can see on the right of the aerial picture. 

 

About putting the balloons more in the middle, this is what we wanted. But the guys are a bit concerned of the wind, so they prefer to separate them and put them more on the edges of the crowd.

 

I understand perfectly the lighting you suggest, and I think that indeed a very good idea. 
We are on testing this afternoon and tonight, I will let you know.

 

Thanks so much

Map-light.thumb.jpg.b1502c7e5b62064c528d3e82627037dc.jpg

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Ah, if you’re shooting towards the lake, then you won’t have any platform to backlight from. I thought you might be shooting from the narrow end of the beach towards the wide end. 

But since you’ll have the road to place your cranes, could you just do two flyswatter rigs with 20x20 frames if wind is going to be an issue with the balloons?

Re: backlight

You could try hiring a few boats and placing your HMIs with generators on them for your backlight from anchored positions. Hopefully the lake is pretty calm, as even double anchored boats in a moderate current will have a tendency to rotate and spin.

I’ve been on a few night shoots on boats in the San Francisco Bay where the current is very strong, and it can get dangerous quickly. Was on one shoot where we lost two anchors on the picture boat and also a 4K HMI in the water when the speedboat it was strapped to hit a swell.

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