Shooting in the Pitch Black

[ShamrockFilms]

The opening scene of my film is on the Mystic River in Boston in the pitch black, late at night.

The only light comes from the city skyline in the background.

Can anyone give me some suggestions for camera settings or even lighting that works well with the HVX in the pitch black?

I'm going for a 'moonlit' look.

Thanks!

 

[n8ture]

If the only light is the city skyline then do the 2fps hack. If you have any action in the scene though that won;t work.

 

[Cynic821]

Kevin:

Any help on how to shoot in such low light and keep the blacks black and somewhat free from dancing noise? Im sure you can help with this , making the light drop off to black instead of just a noisy area thats supposed to be black

 

[n8ture]

Just drop your master ped to crush the blacks.

 

[Cynic821]

That cant be it? Ive been working with a low lit bathroom recently, and i brought it down pretty far, about as far as i would like to go (around -8) and it just dropped the detail level in the dark areas, but the dancing noise was very appearant in every single area , even the full blacks.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking I could hang a lantern from a pole too and make it look like its part of the pier.

The only real 'action' in the scene is dragging a corpse out of a van and tossing it over into the water. Here is the scene to give you a better idea. I figure you might get a kick out of it anway. This scene will be up on our site in December.

PROLOGUE
fades in over black.

Charlestown, a close-nit community in north Boston experiences one of the highest rates of convicted bank robbers and unsolved gangland homicides in the United States. You are about to meet the Irish gangsters who run this community, otherwise known as “Townies”.

FADE IN:

EXT. BLACK SKY - NIGHT

The sound of WAVES PATTER.

EXT. MYSTIC RIVER - NIGHT
The downtown Boston city lights reflect onto the dark Mystic River waters. A FOG HORN BLARES out in the distance.

EXT. PIER - NIGHT
Garbage and rusty, over-turned shopping carts are scattered about the cracked pavement.

In the moonlit light BUTCHY O’MALLEY, early thirties, winds back with a nine iron. A black Scally cap covers his big, bald head.

BUTCHY
Check it out, Mick. I’m gonna hit the Tobin on this one.

Whack! The golf ball launches across the Mystic River towards the Tobin Bridge.

MICKEY CALLAGHAN, thirty, wears a black Navy pea coat, well-groomed, icy blue eyes, crew-cut hair and a boxer’s build. A lit cigarette dangles from his mouth as he pulls leather gloves on tight.

MICKEY
Let’s get this goin'.

EXT. VAN (PARKED) - NIGHT
Butchy and Mickey stand behind the rear doors of a beat up utility van. The interior light turns ON as they pull the doors OPEN. Butchy tosses his nine iron inside.

INT. VAN. - NIGH
On the floor of the van is a gift rapped corpse, chained up in a shiny GREEN tarp with a GIANT GREEN BOW on top, Adidas shell toe sneakers sticking out of one end. They grab the corpse by the chains and drag it out of the van.

EXT. PIER - NIGHT
The corpse thumps to the ground. Mickey stares down at it oddly for a few moments.

BUTCHY
It’s from the whole gang... Not the best rappin’ job, but what can ya do. Jimbo picked out the color.

Mickey nods. Butchy pulls out a huge knife with a serrated edge.

BUTCHY (CONT’D)
Wanna open up your present?

MICKEY
What?

BUTCHY (CONT’D)
F'ck cost you four years in the can, Mick. Go ahead, give him a poke. It’l give you some, uh... What’s that word?

Butchy snaps his fingers.

BUTCHY (CONT’D
Closure... That’s the f'ckin' ticket.
(laughs)
Listen to me. Closure. I sound like Doctor f'ckin' Phil over here... So? Whatdoya say?

MICKEY
He’s dead. That’s closure enough for me.

Butchy squats down over the corpse.

BUTCHY (CONT’D)
We were gonna keep him alive ‘til you got home, just torture em a little. Ya know? But he started making this f'ckin' noise. Aeeerrr! Aeeerrr! Dude, I gagged the f'ckin' shi* out of em and I could still f'ckin' hear it. Aeeerrr!

Mickey cracks a little laugh. Butchy holds the knife over the corpse thirstily.

BUTCHY (CONT’D)
Whatdoya think? Take the air outa the lungs?

Mickey grins.

MICKEY
You haven’t changed a bit.

Butchy plunges the knife into the chest of the corpse. It sounds revolting. Thunk. Thunk... Thunk. Thunk. Mickey glances at his wrist watch.

MICKEY
Butchy.

Butchy stops, looks up to Mickey.

MICKEY (CONT’D)
By the time you throw that stiff over, he’s gonna land on a police boat.

Butchy stands up and retrieves a 25 pound barbell weight from the back of the van and then clips the weight to a chain rapped around the corpse. He picks the corpse up by the sneakers and runs backwards with it, dragging it across the pavement and then turns and launches the corpse with great force into the air. It spins and splashes into the Mystic River. Butchy spits down into the river.

BUTCHY
Aeeerrr!

Mickey walks up beside Butchy, smokes his cigarette. They watch the corpse sink little by little into the Mystic River.

BUTCHY
He can hang out with the rest of the f'ckin' rats down there.

Butchy takes notice of Mickey’s eyes fixed across the River.

BUTCHY
Whataya lookin’ at? Charlestown?

MICKEY
...Yeah.

BUTCHY
Townies for life, brother... I gotta tell ya, it wasn’t the same without you... You miss it?

Mickey pauses, flicks his cigarette in the river and walks away.

INT. VAN (PARKED) - NIGHT
Mickey appears at the rear open doors of the van, reaches in for a satchel of tools, checks inside it. He pulls out a clown mask, holds it up, shakes his head and then chucks it off the side of the van.

As Mickey continues to check his tools are in order Butchy appears beside him, picks up the clown mask and pulls it on his head. Mickey fixes a black ski mask on top of his head, slides the satchel of tools out and then looks over at Butchy who wears the clown mask.

BUTCHY
What am I a clown? I make you laugh? I amuse you?

MICKEY
Yeah, you amuse me alright.

Mickey pulls his ski mask down over his face. They shut the van doors to BLACK.

"TOWNIES"

 

[ShamrockFilms]

I actually asked a friend about shooting in the dark via private message before I post the question. Here was his response. Hopefully it will be useful to someone else too.

-----------------------------------------
For filming at night, you have two options... One involves really bright 5k or 10k lights.. or HMIs.. and you want to shoot this from Above and slightly to the rear... You can then use the bounce from these lights as fill.. and also put up some fill to use..

The other option is to still light from the rear.... but possibly add a slight blue tint to things.... Some people hate it, but it's a nice cheap way to get a mood across... I personally would also add some color in the background... Lanterns are a great idea and can be pulled off pretty well... You might also think about lighting it with headlights... as I've done before...

The real skill is making it look un-lit... so I'd stick with hard rim light behind them.. and a bit of fill... THe HVX needs contrast so make sure you have some highlights and not just murky grays... Have some deep shadows and high lights in the frame and you'll be fine....

 

[n8ture]

But that means that you no longer are using just light from the skyline.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Well, I'd like to have a moonlit look and I'm assuming I'll need lights for that. Here is a test video I shot of the pier. I shot it on a cheap home camcorder, but it will give you an idea of how dark it is. In part of it there's a dim flashlight aimed at the actor.

I'll run your suggestion "Just drop your master ped to crush the blacks" by my DP.

WARNING: Adult language
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu6wkUBJCFY&eurl=

 

[vidled]

Hey.

Mystic River? Ha! Brings back memories.

We're about to put together some rental kits which will each include several LED lights (either self-powered or external battery pack powered).
PM if interested.

 

[John Froton]

Slow the shutter speed and close the iris as much as you can while trying to maintain your optimum level of exposure. The slow shutter will let in more light as the closing of the iris (higher f stops) will reduce noise.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Won't the characters look in slow motion if I slow the shutter speed?

 

[John Froton]

It can cause a great deal of motion blur and strobing once the shutter speed goes below the frame rate. However, the intensity of the blur and strobing is directly related to the movement in your shot. In the case of shooting live action with actors, you wouldn't want to set the shutter speed below the frame rate.

I think that lowering the shutter speed can make quite an improvement with light intake but after rethinking my statement, it probably only really can help to reduce noise if your iris is fully opened and going into gain boost levels. The added light from the slower shutter speed can at least help to keep you out of using any gain settings that would amplify noise. I may be wrong but I don't think that the noise would drop in going from f2 to f8.

Beyond trying to light the setting, you could try shooting some test footage a little dark (slightly underexposed) and see what you can do with it in post

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Thank you

 

[Cynic821]

Shamrock:

Please do post if you get a chance to test out lighting situations and what not with the HVX on this shoot. Im sure not only myself but others are interested in this as well , and we hope it turns out great for you.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

No problem Cynic. The help here has been great.

I am a big fan of naturalistic lighting in the dark. Not lighting the character, but instead lighting the environment with what is arleady there (car headlights, street lights, fridgerator lights, the moon, cigerette lighter and so on).

 

[ozduc]

Did you see the movie "Mystic River" directed by Clint Eastwood? There is a couple of night scenes in that down by the river.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Did you see the movie "Mystic River" directed by Clint Eastwood? There is a couple of night scenes in that down by the river.

You're right. I'll have to check that out. Totally forgot about that scene. Thanks.

 

[ShamrockFilms]

Here are some screencaps from the night scene in the movie Mystic River. It looks like they captured the light from a couple of tall street lights by the bar in the background. I wonder if the light on the actors is actually coming from that source or from somewhere off screen, particularly in the close up shots. It's almost like the movie is saying "Hey look at this light over here (last photo), this is where we are getting our light from." And then in the close up shots the movie is saying, "Remeber that light you saw? Well now its casting on my face over here. That's why you can see my face." Its like you have to establish to the audience where the light is coming from "first" and then after let it land where it should. I never thought of it like that until now looking at these photos.

 

[DavidBeier]

All those shots in Mystic River were lit with real lights. Either they used typical studio lights or they screwed more powerful ones into the street lights. I promise you it's not natural lighting.

There are important things to remember about film and digital when handling low light. Generally, digital is going to be more sensative. You're going to be able to shoot in less light then you typically could with film. HOWEVER, it's going to give you a much noiser/grainier image. Low light adds grain in film too but not quite as much. Film can be under-exposed and look fantastic (look at The Godfather) while digital tends to turn into a noisey mess, especially with 1/3 chip HD cameras like the HVX200.