Lighting a car for a tv commercial

J

j416j

New member
Hi there

I'm about to shoot a spec commercial in a couple of weeks and was wondering if I could get some tips on lighting a car. This will be shot on a Canon 5D, and it'll mainly be an exercise and a lesson in lighting a car.

The car will be parked in a driveway, and the director wants a basic lighting setup with long even highlights on the car's body, while avoiding any unwanted reflections (see reference image below or jump to 0:34 here: http://youtu.be/R55e-uHQna0). The car will most likely be silver or grey color.

I'm hoping to get some tips on how to achieve the best possible lighting setup on a very tight budget. any behind the scenes photos or videos you can share will be quite helpful.

I'll be glad to share the final video as a result of your tips on here for everyone else to learn as well.

thanks
 

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A shiny car is a huge mirror

Lighting cars is very hard - often with huge diffuse lights

0carphotogr01.jpg

The only cheap way of doing it is to use an overcast sky or shoot just befroe sun up/down

Or as you say bounce or shoot through very large white things - maybe bedsheets if you are on a budget!

S
 
@nwstudios: do you think some sort of overhead diffuser was used to light up the car in the photo i attached?

@morgan: i think an overcast sky just before sunset sounds like the best way to go.

how do you guys think the parked car was lit here: http://youtu.be/R55e-uHQna0
 
I remember reading (years ago) about a big-budget nationwide car commercial. The DP had a few bolts of white cloth, which he suspended above and alongside the car, stretching from front to rear. The cloth was back lit, maybe by the sun or maybe with lights (I can't recall). Apparently, using long streaks of white light is the best way to show off the contours of the car.

- Ken
 
j416j said:
@nwstudios: do you think some sort of overhead diffuser was used to light up the car in the photo i attached?

@morgan: i think an overcast sky just before sunset sounds like the best way to go.

how do you guys think the parked car was lit here: http://youtu.be/R55e-uHQna0
Click to expand...


I think that the car in that commercial was lit with a very large soft source placed on the passenger side of the car off camera. The shot at 0:34 definitely is most surely lit and if you look at the rear quarter panel of the car there appears, to me, to be a reflection of a some type of large rectangle light source. At 0:42 you can see another reflection of a possible light source in the front quarter panel.
 
David G. Smith said:
I think that the car in that commercial was lit with a very large soft source placed on the passenger side of the car off camera. The shot at 0:34 definitely is most surely lit and if you look at the rear quarter panel of the car there appears, to me, to be a reflection of a some type of large rectangle light source. At 0:42 you can see another reflection of a possible light source in the front quarter panel.
Click to expand...

do you think the light source from the passenger's side is bounced off of large white boards or directed at the car through some sort of diffuser?

How would you normally mute unwanted reflections in the car's doors? black cloth/boards?
 
Ken Hull said:
I remember reading (years ago) about a big-budget nationwide car commercial. The DP had a few bolts of white cloth, which he suspended above and alongside the car, stretching from front to rear. The cloth was back lit, maybe by the sun or maybe with lights (I can't recall). Apparently, using long streaks of white light is the best way to show off the contours of the car.

- Ken
Click to expand...

yes i read that somewhere as well. and for best effect, the white cloth has to be well stretched without wrinkles.
 
A fast trick for the side lighting of a car... and I have done this several times is to take a full, four foot, roll of diffusion - place the roll on a c-stand arm - mount on a stand or plate with the roll perpendicular to the ground. Then unroll the diffusion, the full length of the car and tightly secure to another stand. This whole rig should be 6 to 10 feet from the car.
Now you can light, gently through the diffusion. I have also done the same thing with 5 foot rolls of butcher paper and used it for bounce.

If you are careful with the diffusion you can easily roll it back up and use it again and again.

Of course if you are outside and it is windy you are out of luck. You will need a much more secure rig like a 10X20.
 
i worked on a car commercial a while back. we had something like 3 12x12 (or 18x18...?) silks on rolling stands with a lot of 4x4 floppies. and that didn't make it easy, it made it just possible to get clean shots.
 
Paul Hudson said:
A fast trick for the side lighting of a car... and I have done this several times is to take a full, four foot, roll of diffusion - place the roll on a c-stand arm - mount on a stand or plate with the roll perpendicular to the ground. Then unroll the diffusion, the full length of the car and tightly secure to another stand. This whole rig should be 6 to 10 feet from the car.
Now you can light, gently through the diffusion. I have also done the same thing with 5 foot rolls of butcher paper and used it for bounce.

If you are careful with the diffusion you can easily roll it back up and use it again and again.

Of course if you are outside and it is windy you are out of luck. You will need a much more secure rig like a 10X20.
Click to expand...

thanks for the tips Paul, very helpful!

would you light the car windows differently than the doors? i.e., would you bounce light off of butcher paper to reflect on the windows, and put another light source through diffusion to light up the doors? or would they both be lit from the same light source?

if you notice in the video i posted above, at 0:55, the doors look quite muted. which i think makes for a nice contrast with how the windows are lit.
 
I have put together hundreds of car commercials, and I know this doesn't help with your lighting question... But in my experience as of late, most of the newer high end looking single car shots have been 3D app generated, and the majority of the running footage is now shot on digital rather than film to save money since new footage and body shots are required with every redesign, and budgets keep shrinking.

Good Luck!

Dave
 
The light on the windows is primarily from overheard. The windows curve in toward the sky. I would think it either a slightly overcast day or they have flown a 20X20 or 20X30 from an overhead crane. They used a very, very broad bounce source for the side.
 
j416j said:
do you think the light source from the passenger's side is bounced off of large white boards or directed at the car through some sort of diffuser?

How would you normally mute unwanted reflections in the car's doors? black cloth/boards?
Click to expand...

I think they are using light through silks, like MPB says. I love Paul's suggestion and have definitely put that in my mental trick bag for future use.

I have never shot a car commercial, but I have been on set where they were (Here in Detroit it is hard not to get on the set of a car commercial) during a short gig I had doing art department support. One of the coolest set-ups I ever saw was where they had a huge translight (Back lit transparency) of a city scape above the car and poured light through that. I know the gaffer on the gig (Who has a lot of experience shooting cars) and I asked him about it. He came back with something I will never forget. He said, "You can't light a car... You have to light what you see reflected in the car". I used that piece of advice just after that to shoot a low budget fictional narrative scene in a residential garage where a car was parked. All of our efforts to light the car looked like crap. We then just light the interior of the garage that we could see reflected in the car, put some very soft light on the talent, and it looked much better.

So, I am not sure that eliminating reflections from the car surface is totally is feasible. In the case of the car shot that you posted. I think the reflections that look like the possible light sources are just fine and whoever lit and shoot the commercial were also fine with it. Those reflections give the surface shape and definition. Like any shiny object, shaping the reflections is the key and that is about angle of view and placement of elements in the scene.
 
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Lighting cars is a ***** or super fun depending on your budget... Small = *****, good budget = fun with tons of toys.

Most of the above comments are spot on. Large soft light. I've gotten away with 6x6 to light small portions of cars but for anything larger 12x12 or 20x20.

Here is low budgeter where we didn't have what it takes to do it right:
http://patrykrebisz.com/c_mercedes1.html

So we had to cover up all the reflections with tons of in-camera flares.
 
great tips guys.

to sum up, here are the few low budget tips that I'm going to apply or experiment with:


  • will shoot just before sunset for soft natural light.
  • for overhead: large stretched white cloth (white bed sheets probably).
  • for the side of the car: direct light through a diffusion roll (or bed sheets). I dont think we'll have the budget to hire lights bright enough to bounce off of white boards.
  • for wheel rims: direct diffused light on each rim to brighten them up a bit.
  • for unwanted reflections of trees and buildings on the car doors: will try hanging a wide black cloth.
 
4x4 reflectors are pretty cheap to rent...get some of those and use the smooth shiney side to shoot light through your diffusion. U can create a wall of light using those. cheap and useful. However u will be working with the sun....so work fast.
 
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