in a trunk HELP!

J

jeghead1

Active member
hello I am a long time reader and learner of this wonderful site.

I am about to shoot a scene which involves a character which is locked in a trunk at night while the car is moving down the road.

the shots will need to be inside the trunk and there is not going to be much light obviously. however i do cc so the light could be cancelled in post maybe?

I want to make this scene very believable as far as that this guy, who is bound and gagged, is in fact in a trunk of a moving vehicle at night.


any help would be appreciated

thanks
 
Hahah, I love the title of this thread.

Have you considered building a fake trunk with an open side, or better yet going to a junkyard and ripping apart an old car and taking what you need?

If it's for a short while (the shot), you could build it out of tarps, just outside and let light leak in slightly - the winning zombie flick used this technique I believe for the trunk shots.
 
Flashlight + Guy in trunk.

The great thing about lighting scenes with a flashlight: Very little gel necessary to accomplish the color you want.
 
Awsome thread title!

Best part about geling a flashlight, is not only a good seleciton of gels, but it's free!
roscolux.jpg


- Mikko
 
First thing I though of too was flashlight. There needs to be some realistic lightsource in the scene. Otherwise it'll feel fake if there is just an ambient light. Also a cheaper method to the built trunk set would be to just put the back seats down and film through there. Use the flashlight alone with a very tiny amount of fill. Then darken the scene in post. That way you can work with the shadows and black level. If you are on a dvx I would suggest a healthy black level like master ped -2.
 
Ooopps! I just read he's tied up and gagged in the trunk. I guess him holding a flashlight is out. Go for ambient light then. Ha. Unless you can find any other light source he might have. You know, tail light (the back of one, bullet holes in the trunk (ha), cell phone falling out of pocket, ect, ect.
 
Here's another alternate theory - In some cars, there is a light on in the trunk, and you can easily just assume that there is one in this car. You can buy inexpensive area lights at Ikea that click on. Gel a couple of those an extreme color and place them around in the trunk until you reach the desired effect.
 
You could try using small fluro tubes you can buy from hardware/ department stores for next to nothing. They are a lot like the Neon tubes people put in there cars but they emit a usable amount of light. There generally wired to run of a cigarette lighter so its quite easy to rig them into the cars wiring. If you have a look at the guys hands driving the car you can see the blue glow of one thats taped on the instrument panel. A good scene to look at as well would be the one in Out of Sight where George Clooney has a right old chat with Jennifer Lopez when there locked in the boot. That scenes probably lit up more than you like but it could be a good place to start.



 
monte said:
Have you considered building a fake trunk with an open side, or better yet going to a junkyard and ripping apart an old car and taking what you need?
Click to expand...

Best idea.

And all you really need is the trunk lid and the carpet. Careful, tight framing will take care of the rest, and you can do whatever lighting you want.
 
In most cars the back seat back rest portion can be pulled out, leaving you the entire back seat area to set your camera and ligthing.

you shoot at night and use indirect light, just enough to make out the shape of things, it should be dark and people expect that. Unless he's going to break free and turn on a lighter or something.
 
it would help to see a script of the scene. Does it take place during the day or night? Old car or new car? As icarus said, does he break free? In some instances, not seeing anything for a period of time can be a tense effect (if that's what you're going for). Case in point, Kill Bill vol 2 when Beatrix was put in the coffin tied up with nothing but a flashlight, and the time when they're actually burying her, all they show is a black screen for what seems like a long time.
In an old car, you might be able to get away with showing cracks of light through the seam between the trunk and the side of the car (provided you establish the fact that the car may have been rear ended and the trunk door is slightly bent), then you can do a little bit of backlight blocked by the subject to create a silhouette. Also an ominous feel.
 
daustin627 said:
it would help to see a script of the scene. Does it take place during the day or night? Old car or new car? As icarus said, does he break free? In some instances, not seeing anything for a period of time can be a tense effect (if that's what you're going for). Case in point, Kill Bill vol 2 when Beatrix was put in the coffin tied up with nothing but a flashlight, and the time when they're actually burying her, all they show is a black screen for what seems like a long time.
In an old car, you might be able to get away with showing cracks of light through the seam between the trunk and the side of the car (provided you establish the fact that the car may have been rear ended and the trunk door is slightly bent), then you can do a little bit of backlight blocked by the subject to create a silhouette. Also an ominous feel.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

If you've written this scene out and there's an absolute need for lighting, i.e. there's action in the trunk, something's happening in this trunk... then backlight...

If there's no need to see what's happening in the trunk, beef up the sound, get the blackest black you can, and save time shooting a scene.

I'd suggest, as the guy above, just the faightest shadowy silhoutte, at most. Depending on the scene.
 
I guess another option is to give the guy a torch in the trunk.... have his hands bound at the front.. theres a torch and he manages to turn it on ... shinning at his face. Just a thought.
 
And if the car in the story is moving, you could get some really fun moving patterns of light through cracks in the trunk.
 
building the trunk sure seems like production design fun! I'm guessing it's rolling down a hill, but you don't see that because the trunk is closed. So motion is an issue. If you just shake a fake static set, it will never look as convincing as the real deal. Although good sound FX will help immensly.

You may want to consider tossing a camera and operator in a brightly lit trunk with a lot of green taped "X" marks everywhere. Let the car role at a desired speed and shoot the X's, then you can use that movement as tracking data in shake or AE or something and get some real car motion shake in there.

Also, in terms of light. Cars in movies are never "realistic" we accept a lot in car scenes. Either that or cars have way stronger dashboard lights than thought of. I would definetly hit a lot of light on the closed trunk (rig) and see where light shines through. Use that as your "realistic" light sources. If the car is moving, you can even put a light on a C-stand and swivel it in circles or have a friend with a high powered flashlight wave it back and forth as if cars or street lights are passing by. Add a little canned diffusion in the trunk and you may even get some cool streaks of light coming through. Mixed with sound effects this could be really effective in selling the scene.

A lot of it depends on your artistic vision. The whole scene could be just sound. The whole scene could just be the whites of the guys eyes. Or it could just be these streaks I am talking about. Or if you want to see more of the inside of the trunk, then add some general very even fill light at lower but visible level.

May I dare suggest you could play with gain too, sometimes in digital stuff, like Colateral, that hypergrainy look at night is cool and accepted.

Framing is an issue to. How tight? If it's just his face, just shoot the whole thing on a piece of black cloth with a tire iron next to his head. You can use a black solid on a C-stand and a minimole or something to make it look like the trunk is closing on him with light (without even seeing the trunk). All you need is him to be lit, then for the light to slashacross his face until he is in darkness.

These are all tricks and tools, as with all the other great suggestions. Movie Magic is wonderful and fun. People will buy so much more than you think they will, especially if lighting and coloring is consistent, and most importantly, the performance and story are good.

If people are really worriyng about the technical realism of your trunk lighting, then there's something wrong. They should be involved with and feeling tension over your character in the trunk. Remember, performance performance performance!

Sounds like a fun shoot! I'm jealous!
 
If you watch this short (http://www.psychicbunny.com/video/Fisherman4.0_s01e01_320.mov) there is a section about 1/2 to 2/3 through where there is a character in a trunk. We shot it in an actual trunk in about 10 minutes using only ambient light and two of those flourescent emergency radio/signal light things. Then it was color corrected a bit. My co-creator played grip and rocked the car occasionally as the shot went on. I find the effect pretty satisfactory and it was EASY. We could have gone a little bit wider than we did here without spoiling the gag.
 
Its kind of hard to know the best option without checking the script. But I have seen a torch used and as the light from the torch frantically flashed across the persons face it added a nice element of panic. I actually think it was an X-files episode.
 
why not park the car in a garage with the trunk open, and then light the garage dimly untill it looks good on camera.
 
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