Advice on Day for Night lighting?

twobitp

twobitp

Active member
I just finished shooting some day for night stuff the other day & have another shoot coming up. I shot a scene which takes in a backyard with very little light at night. Now I'm required to shoot a scene at the opposing side of the same backyard with more light coming from the house/fixtures around the backyard. I'd like to light it with some LED panels and am thinking of renting some, but have little experience with them. I need to match the color temperature of the existing lights and I'll be filming at magic hour again, but I'd like some soft diffused light on the actor's faces. I've lit the rest of the film using mostly kinos/fresnels and would like to experiment a little while differentiating the style of the upcoming scene from what I've already shot. Here's some examples of what I've done so far.

http://postimage.org/image/rxcx5hnjr/

http://postimage.org/image/4sja0g2ar/

There's no lanterns here because one of the kids in the scene remembers it differently.
http://postimage.org/image/z23oqdeut/

The director is happy, but would like the next scene to look more exposed and used the high school party at the tail-end of "Superbad" as an example. I'd really like to experiment with LEDs, but have found very little footage where LEDs were used at night other than mounted to the camera. If anyone has any alternate ideas or examples of LED lighting at night I would be most appreciative.
 
I don't think that you should include a blownout (white) sky in your shots. A nighttime sky is black. Also what I see is too much blue. It tends to look tinted rather than as an effect. It may need more contrast, too, in order to not look underexposed and to define your subjects better.
Day-for-night is really very hard to pull off and be creditable. It is usually easier to shoot it as night-for-night unless it is a posse riding through the desert chasing the bad guys.
Good luck.
Ken
 
Last edited:
I never shot the sky, the blown out white is the china lanterns behind the actors. Which looks better when they're moving.

I agree it's too blue, but I'm overseeing the color correction and haven't had a chance to do that. We're shooting nearly everyday and when I get home I'm lazy so I haven't been speaking with the editor or compositor.

Just wondering if anyone has examples of LEDs being used at night. I'd actually much prefer to light the scene at night.
 
I don't have any examples handy, but I have used LED, BUT only for a bit of key on the talent's face (inside a car at night for example). For lighting large areas at night I use tungsten. If you're shooting near a house (as opposed to in the woods) no reason you can't run stingers and light the scene just as you would any other scene.

In the screen capture below there is an open face 650 with a branch attached to a C-stand in front of it out of frame to the right.

7275360736_acb6673e6e_c.jpg
 
Thanks gonzo_entertainment. I've shot like this before and am usually happy with the results, but the director wants something like this...

http://cdn2.hark.com/images/000/550/142/550142/original.jpg

I know I can do this with the tungsten lights I have, just wanted to experiment with different lights for different uses. I've also shot with LEDs in cars and even as spot/fill/highlight for interviews, but I like the evenness they cast and was thinking of trying to use them to fill a wider frame. The only drawback I see is the limited throw.
 
twobitp said:
Thanks gonzo_entertainment. I've shot like this before and am usually happy with the results, but the director wants something like this...

http://cdn2.hark.com/images/000/550/142/550142/original.jpg

I know I can do this with the tungsten lights I have, just wanted to experiment with different lights for different uses. I've also shot with LEDs in cars and even as spot/fill/highlight for interviews, but I like the evenness they cast and was thinking of trying to use them to fill a wider frame. The only drawback I see is the limited throw.
Click to expand...

That's been my issue with them. I know they make much bigger ones, but with what I view as limited utility I haven't had much interest in them. I've only used the smaller units and they have a very limited throw.
 
just shoot at night(or very early sunrise for that blue tinge) using powerful light coming from the house. match your fill lighting to your blue colour correction you used for day for night shots. you might need more than led's to get the light illuminating the exterior enough. a few led spots on each character will bring them out as if they are stood outside a house party.
 
There's actually no color correction in those stills. The director wanted blue so I white balanced on orange. He's since come to his senses and thankfully a slight dip in the blue curves makes it how I envisioned this originally.

Just did some tests & I Think I'm going to use a couple 1K Fresnels (maybe open face, can't decide if I like a tight spot for this) for spots and some 200W fluorescents with silver umbrellas for fill. Looks very contrasty in a slick music video kind of way, but I really like how it turned out. And I don't really have anything that remotely looks like a music video on my reel as of yet.

I'm still interested to see if anyone has examples of LEDs being used for spot/fill at night though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top