$1500 to spend... advice?

[Eric Elliott]

I'm going to be shooting outdoors at night and need to get some light on the background (mainly trees) as well as the actors. Assuming I've got almost nothing else in the way of lights, what would you guys recommend to fit in my budget?

 

[Gopher_Greene]

Rent some 9 pars and /or ruby 7, that should take care of the trees, then light your actors seperatly.

 

[Icarus2005]

Exterior nights are tricky. It can be very expensive as well.

Without knowing the location and and shots, it's impossible to guesstimate. What I can tell you is you'll need a lot of distro (electric cords and power). You'll also need a lot of lights, ranging from 200s to 4k, even high in some cases.

In a perfect world you have HMIs, but you won't, so you'll need a lot 1/2 blue gels, possibly 1/4 if you want somethings a little warmer.

if you have any practicals with incky bulbs you might want to change those to daylight.

On a budget you can use a lot of shop lights or par cans

It can take a very long time to setup such shots. I've been on sets where we started lighting for night several hours before dark.