Lighting a face with a cigarette

K

Killawa

Active member
In a scene i am shooting, the protagonist gets into the driver seat of a car at night , the front seat is lit by the overhanging street lamp while the back seat is completely black. Then a guy lights up a cigarette to reveal his face in the back seat. I desperately need some tips on how to pull this off. Im no Uwe Boll, but i can imagine that a lighter and a lit cigarette isn't enough to provide the proper amount of light. Thanks
 
My first thought is - shoot a test and see what you're dealing with.
From there - you may want to think about overlighting the scene a bit (if you can) and darkening in post, which will hopefully give you the lattitude needed show his face when you need to without adding a ton of noise.
 
I think a 150 would be overkill. Id just tuck a led down below the seat in front of the actor. Color it to what you feel is right. If you can remotly dim good, if not hide a grip down in the floor board to dim the light. Give it a little flicker to help sell the reality. Good luck.
 
you might not be lighting the scene enough. So even the small amount of light youll get from a cig, or LED would be insufficient. I would suggest adding light to your scene, and using that 150 fesnel on a dimmer to light his face even brighter. If you want a darker image, add light and dial down your camera iris. Dont shoot with lack of light. the CCD's need an image to pick up.
 
I'd imagine you'd need some careful flagging as well whch could be tough when you use an LED light array. I would imagine that a cigarette would only illuminate a small portion of the man's face.
 
Yea, I'm gonna do it a few different ways in multiple takes. We are shooting in a garage so everything is controllable. Ill throw some screen grabs up for you guys to pick them apart after the shoot.
 
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Put a small incandescent light bulb in a can and stick it behind whichever headrest the guy in back is facing... if you have to then paint the can flat black. The dimmer suggestion is a good one... have somebody ramp up the dimmer with the lighter and ramp it back down again.

If you are balancing to 3200k then you'll want an orange light... if you're balancing the cam to 5600k then you'll want a yellow one. For either situation you could use a gel to adjust the color from a regular white bulb or you can buy "party bulbs" in orange or yellow. This bulb should be 25w or less. Any can that fits will work... and if you can't do that then make a snoot of blackwrap.

Dimmers for low power applications are cheap and easy... but if you don't already have some of the Harbor Freight Router Speed Controllers... then you should get 2 or 3. I'm pretty sure we all have them at this point. They work very well as incandescent dimmers for lights up to 1500w (obviously you don't need that for THIS application, but you should have some in your bag anyway and since you gotta' buy a dimmer why not get a good tool now?)... normal 1500w dimmers are over $100 each. This thing is a great little secret of the DVXuser community.
 
that dimmer looks like the britek of dimmers. Anytime i see a fuse i get scared lol. Mind you, i solved that problem by wrapping the fuse with aluminum foil. heh.
 
You will definitely see the moment of lighting up with the face being illuminated. At the same time (lighting up) I would bring up some localized ambiance... by dimming up some 250W fresnel into a cardboard.
 
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