how best to light a night-time tv watching scene

FiddlerMD

FiddlerMD

Well-known member
I am about to shoot a scene for a commercial where a guy is in bed sleeping and then wakes up to turn on his tv and watch for a few seconds. What i need in terms of lighting is that the room initially look like its' night (bluish i guess? possibly some sort of cookie for wall pattern behind the bed or to the side)
and then once the tv is on, i want to see a small bit of flicker on the person.

What i have is a tota, an omni and a 650w ltm pepper fresnel. i only have a couple ctb gels but i can get more if need be.. i am also comfortable doing the day for night thing in post.

what's the best way to light this so it looks believable? should i have a fairly high degree of light in the room and just tune it down in post? (to reduce grain and noise) or should i actually make it fairly dim?

any tips greatly appreciated.
thanks!
 
I'd use something like a 2k or a 1200hmi coming through the window through a natural cuk like a tree branch

inside use a 2k through a flickerbox to simulate the TV light. this light MUST be tungsten, you can't use flickerboxes on HMI or kino lights. If you don't want that much heat you can go with a two fay which are two 650 pars but you must use heat shield because it will burn through the gells very quickly. You'll use double blue gels.

you're right to stay away from low light with small cameras, best to darken a little in post.
 
i wont have access to 2k's and such .. also - i may not be shooting in a location with a real window
 
Not sure if this would work, but how about using a second TV, tuned to the same channel and placed close to the bed?
 
what my main concern is, is lighting it with enough light to not have a grainy picture but still have it come out looking shot as if at night in the final product - any tips on that?
 
And a valid concern it is too. I tend to side with icarus but wouldn't use that bright of instruments. A couple of 400w / 575w HMIs maybe. One off to the side. Maybe use the other one with the trick of putting the HMI in front of the subject and behind a shutter and opening and closing it randomly to simulate the flickering. Then do the rest in post to make it look darker than it was and adding the sound of the "TV program" in the background.
 
FiddlerMD said:
what my main concern is, is lighting it with enough light to not have a grainy picture but still have it come out looking shot as if at night in the final product - any tips on that?
Click to expand...

TVs are actually quite bright, so don't worry about having too much light in there. Also, they're daylight balanced, so the light coming from your "TV" should be blue as well (so grab some CTB gels).
 
aside from "looking blue" are there any other tricks to selling the "nighttime" feel? should the shadows be hard or soft, should they all come from 1 direction etc?
 
When it comes to trying to decide how to light something, think of motivation. In this situation, you have 2 sources.

1.Moonlight
2. Television

After you have decided your sources, research how those sources behave in the real world. Observe the shadow patterns, harshness, etc. How much does the glass on a TV diffuse the light? Moonlight obviously is soft and flat, so try to recreate that.

As long as you can look at your shot and say that every shadow and light is coming from somewhere, then anything after that is creative. However, that doesn't always mean it looks good :smile:

Heres what I would do-

2 24" China Balls (can be purchased cheap at any film store) - Gel them CTB, and place them where you want your "moonlight" source to come from, if you have a window, place them next to the window, on the inside. This will give the room the overall right feel of nighttime. Then if you want to give things a little more depth, you can place two small HMIs aiming,(575w,etc) One at his starting point laying down, the other at his end position sitting up. Position and flag these so that they just create a sliver of light on his shoulder and head, right behind his ear. (This is called a kicker) Then, use a light from the front, gelled to match the TV temperature output, with 250 or Opal diffusion to wrap the shadows around the talent. Also, this will make the shadow look more attractive. Have some controlling devices ready to place in front of this light, to simulate things moving around on screen, or similar.

Also, don't freak out about the grain. That is something that is really only introduced when shooting an UNDEREXPOSED image. Which means that with the proper exposure in your scene, you will come back with a pretty clean image. However, it is still a good rule of thumb to shoot something like this 1-2 stops brighter, and just crush the image later. Happy shooting!
 
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