Daylight or tungsten bulbs for practical lights in interior daytime scenes?

Jaime Valles

Jaime Valles

Veteran
Hello, all. I'm planning an ultra-low budget narrative film shoot, and I'm researching lights and could use your advice.

The entire film takes place during the daytime, about two-thirds inside a house in various rooms, and the other third in exterior locations around the house. I need to purchase lights for this (I don't want to rent because I'll use the lights for many other gigs afterward).

I'm gravitating toward LED panels like these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1172653-REG/aputure_ls1sv_light_storm_ls_1s.html

And some LED fresnels like these:
http://www.came-tv.com/2-pcs-cametv-boltzen-55w-fresnel-focusable-led-daylight-p-888.html

The LS 1S would be my key light, shot through diffusion or a softbox, and the fresnels would be for backlighting and hair/rim lights.

My main question is color temperature. Since the whole film takes place during the day, it makes sense to me to use daylight balanced LED lights for the whole shoot. However, what about the practical lights inside the house that will be seen in the shots? Should I get daylight balanced bulbs for the light fixtures inside the rooms as well? Or will it look weird that they're the same color temperature as the light coming in through the windows?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. :beer:
 
That's an artistic choice. I've done it both ways. The more "correct" way with everything within a close range color temp-wise works fine, but there's a nice visual contrast when you have uncorrected incandescent against full daylight. It's more funky, perhaps. Or you can split it down the middle, using daylight balanced incandescent bulbs (which always fall short of 5600 anyway) or LED bulbs that allow for dialing from warm to cool. Just be careful with the LED's as most will pulse when you dim them, unless you are able to dial it out via shutter angle.

Sorry that's not the most definitive answer, but...there isn't one.
 
Jaime Valles said:
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The LS 1S would be my key light, shot through diffusion or a softbox, and the fresnels would be for backlighting and hair/rim lights.
Click to expand...
The Aputure ones (all models) are known to have good color rendering, I've seen no feedback so far about the CAME-TV ones. I don't know if the colors will match. However, considering your intended use of the fresnels, it may not matter.

Jaime Valles said:
My main question is color temperature. Since the whole film takes place during the day, it makes sense to me to use daylight balanced LED lights for the whole shoot. However, what about the practical lights inside the house that will be seen in the shots? Should I get daylight balanced bulbs for the light fixtures inside the rooms as well? Or will it look weird that they're the same color temperature as the light coming in through the windows?
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Click to expand...
Daylight balance all the way seems to be the best choice, unless you are looking for some artistic effects, like making it obvious that there are light bulbs in the house.
Should you go for daylight balanced bulbs in the light fixtures, the Star Line from Quasar Science: http://www.quasarscience.com/collections/star-line have very good color rendering.
 
I'd agree with Charles that it's an artistic choice. It's also worth considering that people rarely have practical lamps on in houses during the daytime. I often find it pretty distracting seeing dozens of practicals turned on in interiors that are already well litby the ambient daylight.
 
Thanks for the insight, everyone. This is exactly what I needed. Just wanted to make sure there weren't hard rules regarding this.

I probably won't be using many of the practicals anyway. As Grug said, it's all in the daytime and not many lamps should be on in a house during the day anyways. But it's good to know that it boils down to artistic preference and whatever looks good for the scene.
 
It's not really about "hard rules" in cinematography. The project should dictate the look. I used to feel strongly that shooting day interiors at 3200K and letting the windows remain uncorrected was always a no-no, but I've seen it done a number of times in recent times as a deliberate choice and it does have a certain raw quality that can make sense.

One thing you mentioned was that you would use your fresnels as hair or rim lights. I'd suggest that if you were going for a naturalistic look, you may want to limit the use of hair lights unless there's a window behind the character etc. For a daylight based show you'll likely have plenty of separation. Better to use those units to suggest sunlight hits in the background. That sort of thing is easiest done from outside the windows but that requires larger instruments. Still, I'll often duplicate from inside using pars or lekos when that's not possible. But as above, naturalism is a choice. See Richardson's work in Hateful 8 for an example of backlight for all, regardless of the reality.
 
All great advice, Charles. Even though I'm going for a somewhat naturalistic look, I like adding a bit of backlighting just for that extra bit of separation oomph. Nothing extreme, and I'd certainly be paying more attention to what the background is doing as far as beams of light, etc. I won't have the budget for big lights rigged outside of the windows, but I'm pretty sure I can fake it. The location itself is a gorgeous old wooden house with plenty of character, so I'll do everything I can to bring out the best looks for it.

Thanks!
 
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