light through an upstairs window on the cheap

[djsmackmackey]

I need to shoot a couple scenes with moonlight coming through windows that are prominent in the shot. Anyone know of a good way to fake this. The biggest problem is that they are upstairs with nothing outside to really clip to. Man, I wish I at least had a tree outside that I could like. Instead, right now, it's completely dark outside at night.
Oh, and I'm doing this on no budget with some workers lights and clip lights from home depot.

 

[dmc]

Is it important that the light spills into the room or just that outside the window doesn't look totally black?

If the couple of shots required are static (no moving camera) you could possibly composite a moon/tree/whatever into the widow frame. This however, doesn't solve the problem light coming into room.

What about using an extention ladder? Clip the light(s) onto one of the rungs and lean it against the eaves trough.




dmc

 

[Chenopup]

The extension ladder is a great idea - they're not hard to come by and will give you some option of getting lights higher - as for fixing worklights to them, that may be a bit tricky - last thing you want is those taking a dive 12 or so feet down.

Do you absolutely have to use an upstairs room? Can you fake it at all with a lower level room?

-cheno

 

[djsmackmackey]

an extension ladder is a great idea. The clip lights don't weigh much, and I'm using Daylight CFLs for the bulbs and I already own an extension ladder, so that works out great. Thanks!
Yeah, it's my bedroom that I'm shooting in, and I don't feel like moving all that furniture down to a lower level. Plus, I'm married, so throwing my house into upheaval is probably a bad idea. But the ladder will work perfectly I think. The footage I shot last night I was able to fake it, but there will be some shots where I'll be showing most of the room and won't have the freedom to have lights in the corners shooting through cookies to give the illusion of light from outside. I'll have to actually put lights outside the windows.

 

[j]

You might want to use tungsten fresnell or spot light gelled blue. Fluorescents won't let you focus the light the way you should.

Remember that the moon is the same size source as the sun and without clouds casts a hard shadow.