Shooting at a camp fire with no additional light

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[SIZE=+0]I'm shooting a parody of Easy Rider for a Film Histories class. Working off the campfire scenes. Weve been really busy with other classes, so I havent had much time to mess around with my HVX. [/SIZE]

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[SIZE=+0]Simple suggestions anyone?[/SIZE]
 
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Try a lot of profile close-ups with additional fill lights where the fire is 'supposed' to be? I'm not sure. Are you shooting with no additional lights because you HAVE to, or because you want to?
 
use the fire as your light. It is your key light so shoot like it was. But keep in mind to watch your croma level. You have to watch that. or your image will be all red
 
I remember shooting a camp fire scene at like two in the morning many years ago, and we used the the headlights from one of the trucks for fill. Footage looked great, but we were shooting on Hi-8 at the time. Just an idea to try.

Rich
 
i think im just going to be stoking the fire with pine branches in order to get it light enough. It's for a school project and getting real lighting would be really hard. Site is to far away from anything to draw power and I don't own any lights yet.

Looking for more in terms of making the most out the available light through camera settings.
 
If nothing else, just buy a cheap rechargeable spot light (you can get them at hardware stores for about $10-20). You can bounce that off of a piece of foam core board or slap some diffusion on it. It'll be better than nothing.
 
Campfire at night....Your REALLY going to need some separation light. Talent with dark hair especially. The car headlight gag is your cheapest bet, if you can get your car close enough. Can't hit them from behind or the side with your headlights, try bouncing them into a mirror then into some white reflector board.
Or at least light up something in the background with your headlights, directely behind them. You can afford a couple of flashlights can't you ?? Go to a dollar store if your strapped for cash. Try those on a wide beam or bounce them. There are easy to hide.....If it's worth shooting, it's worth trying to make it look good.....
 
i know people who have had great results with maglight flashlights and colored gels.

build a real fire and show it in an establishing shot and then use battery powered lights with gels (orange and red where you cut out some of the red can give a realistic look) for the stuff that is directly on peoples faces.

also play around with foam core reflectors. they are just foam poster like board from staples etc.

the main look of fire is the red and orange and the flickering. flickering is a huge part of the "look"

if you were using electric lights i would tell you to get one of the plug in dimmers and vary the level or get a flicker box like the ones walter graff makes.

they are good for camp fires, tv's flickering on people's faces etc.

matthew
 
cool, I think ill be using my freinds million candle light spotlight and then bouncing that off something. I dont have a place to get gels this soon.

Thanks all
 
the shot worked out great, we used the light from the fire combined with a large spotlight that we reflected off yellow and orange posterboard.

THX

Edit - Hooked it up to a 60 inch plasma HDTV and image looked great, not much noise in the picture either. =)
 
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I used a dedo (halogen) on a stand, with an orange gel (cellophane) for the fire colour aimed into a photoflex (fabric reflector) that I shook around to bounce the light in different directions like the light does from a fire.

When you have an intense light source, the camera sensor will blow out (when aimed at the fire), forcing you to decrease the usable range to compensate. This means you get really dark areas wherever there isn't fire.

It looks very tacky horror film.

Fire doesn't throw light very far, because it's a non-focused light source that you rarely see in the real world. It's soft, dynamic and a very interesting effect, but it's by definition tricky to emulate with focused lights we are used to using. I find the best way is to re-enforce the scene slightly, not recreate a set on location.

Once you introduce more light, you start to fill in the background and your story gets ambience, instead of feeling and looking slap-dash. Because your light always has to come from somewhere, I found the best way to light is to use the fire as a key and re-enforce it to bring up the background. So I came up with the trick above, and bounced the light from any position along the circumference directly into a radius of the fire.

That hits the actors, provides a more constant light with the fire doing its thing on top and because the dedo has a longer throw than fire, the background is brought up.

Use this theory with try other methods to get the kind of look you want.

-DAVE.
 
I'm sure hes still biting his nails waiting for this
SD with no scene file changes
1173045955.jpg
 
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