Real Fire light and remote lighting in night shot

brownpaperbagproductions

brownpaperbagproductions

Well-known member
I have this night shot where there will be a band lit (silhouetted) by a bonfire in the background, and two people lit by god knows what, maybe a battery powered lantern, in the foreground; my questions are...

1. How will the fire effect white balance?

2. How do I get the two people in the foreground lit without a power source to plug into?


This will be shot in a beach park so there's no street lights, my fear with the lantern is that it will either look like a guy is following them with a lantern or not strong enough or be too strong on their faces and too dim on the ground. Anyone have any advice or experience with lanterns, they will probably be camping florescent ones.
 
Yes this is a tough situation. You're probably looking at 4200K or 6500K for the lantern and around 1700K to 1900K for the fire. Probably the ideal would be to have a larger tungsten fresnel out there with a generator but you said you won't be able to do that so you may have to struggle through with your lantern(s) and just try to make it look as good as you can.

For the lantern you might use this HID spot which comes highly recommended by some and is apparently very bright. You could get a couple of them and the price is not too bad at $59 each. I believe Samsclub.com has them also:

http://boatandrvaccessories.com/SLH100P

White balance to your lantern if you can get a good, bright one.
 
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No, I think that's the point though. You're not screwed until you give up. There should always be a solution it's just a question of finding it. Developing a philosophy that failure is only giving up is really indispensable in filmmaking and videotaking. ;-) Just takes a lot of knowledge about how things work and applying what you can get to solve something rather than worrying about what you can't get. Like MacGiver always did. Here's another one I found recently. Think this would light your subjects up a bit?

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=92396&highlight=tank
 
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