Lighting a Moon lit forest scene

demoboy

demoboy

Well-known member
I'm looking to light a forest scene to mimic a full moon. I guess I'll have to rent out a high crane and rig something like this and fog it up. It's very low budget so to rent lights for a max 1000 bucks including a generator what's the most minimal kit to balance close ups and key lights. Thanks. The following is an example attached. Or any other advice on the cheap to get a nice full master shot would help. Camera will be a C100

Moonlit.jpg
 
You might want to consider using a Nila SL for the source. Only has 500W draw and 6K output. That way you can use a small generator like Honda s2000. if you pick the daylight version it will be blue by default, fully dimmable. It should come under your budget.
 
emretufekci said:
You might want to consider using a Nila SL for the source. Only has 500W draw and 6K output. That way you can use a small generator like Honda s2000. if you pick the daylight version it will be blue by default, fully dimmable. It should come under your budget.
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The photometrics of the SL100 might leave you scratching your head once you compare it to an actual 2500w HMI

Since we do not know your location, my advice would be to call your local rental house to see what they actually stock.
 
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Sorry I am a little confused, is the SL100 a different light than the Nila SL? I use the Nila frequently but I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same product.

Cheers,
 
Hah, yeah the SL100 photometrics look more like those of a Joker 800... Maybe a 1600w if you give Nila the benefit of the doubt and assume they measure beam angle more conservatively or maybe have a somewhat different beam shape/falloff that is to their disadvantage. In either case, maybe it's possible it compares to a 2500W HMI Fresnel in certain situations but that's definitely a stretch.
 
Bern Caughey said:
On a tight budget you might just try filming Day for Night.
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I too would look at this - shooting during the day is just so much easier, from a production perspective. That said, you'd need some post-production folks with experience in processing day for night - it's not easy to do well.
 
You mean like throwing one of those plugins in AE ? Do you have any links off Youtube to see somewhat the examples. I have seen plugins before, but the thing is I really want my source to resonate off to like a moon, not so much spread evenly. thnaks
 
emretufekci said:
Sorry I am a little confused, is the SL100 a different light than the Nila SL? I use the Nila frequently but I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same product.

Cheers,
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Perhaps the old Nila SL is discontinued as it is not on their website anymore? Now there is just the SL100 and SL25. The SL100 seems to be nearly the same as Arina as well but looks like the SL is geared more toward remote DMX operation vs the Arina with dimmer knob on the unit etc.
 
You won't get the look you referenced with day for night... Day for night seems more appropriate for a lower contrast night look. Unless perhaps the woods are super dense and dark maybe?
 
nyvz said:
You won't get the look you referenced with day for night... Day for night seems more appropriate for a lower contrast night look. Unless perhaps the woods are super dense and dark maybe?
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I was going to say, unless the sun is in the 'right' place... for a few minutes... this look isn't easy to achieve in a dayfornight setting. Ok... maybe with a mirror on a pole and moving in some way as the sun moves might sort of work for a while...

But I think perhaps one of those industrial lights one sees on road work, aka 'light tower', although it may not be as cheap as dirt, may be cheaper than trying to rig up a 'film' light with enough power.

I checked out a Sunbelt rental offering and it seemed like it was about $115 for the day, or $300 for the week, and the outoupt 4K W.
 
For a thousand bucks, there are several ways you could approach this that can give you good results, but I don't think any of them will give you convincing direct moonlight. It's easy to get caught up in the idea that you have to mimic reality when you light a scene. You can get away with quite a bit of rule bending though. One fairly cheap method I've seen for adding depth is to have a bunch of strategically placed redheads uplighting trees from the ground.
 
Some good options here. A production I was on rented a light tower but it has multiple lights on it which probably wouldn't work for this type of shot where you would have the source of light behind a tree so it looks like a single source. Maybe throwing up a big piece of diffusion in front of it would make the light tower look like a single source. The hard part would be keeping the diffusion source from looking like a big square in the shot. It kind of looks like in the picture you have that the fog/ haze/ smoke in the background is diffusing the light by itself. There are no hard shadows from the trees. You can also notice that the big tree on the left has light on the backside of it and some of the trees and plants in the middle. I can't tell if there is a soft source coming from above or if there some bounce going on. Also you can see the fog well in the background is also lit. That area looks farther away than the light source. Maybe it is being partly lit from the bounce of the fog in front of the light. It could be a light right behind the source light that you see. There could be a light right behind it pointing backward to get the far background lit to match what you see in the foreground.

For my crew we would use a HMI on top of the tallest stand that we have, like a mombo combo.

Just some thoughts. It sounds like I'm rambling but I'm just trying to figure out the shot you posted.
 
demoboy said:
It's very low budget so to rent lights for a max 1000 bucks including a generator
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Is your location already set in stone? Why not find some trees near a place where you can run power from an outlet and save the hassle and expense of a genny? You don't need a whole forest for the shot; often, wooded neighborhoods have enough trees to sell the shot. Or, a home more out in the country might.
 
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