Lighting a night scene on a coach

Bubblegummonster

Bubblegummonster

Active member
Hey everyone.

I want to shoot a short in a couple of months. I've just watched Barry Greens Lighting for film and television which I must add is excellent and I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't already.

But it's actually got me thinking so much more about lighting now that I've found I have more questions unanswered than answered.

My first question is I need to light the interior of a coach, at night. This brought up a few problems that I could think of.

1. Where would I place the main ambient lights so that they illuminate most of the coach. But don't get in the way of of the crew or cast shadows as say the camera dollies down the aisle.

2. The coach is meant to be moving, so to look natural it would have to have lights moving outside. Would it be best to just place a fresnel or a simple tungsten on a tripod and rotate around every now and then? On a side not I'm not worried about creating a realistic exterior as I'm going to replace most of the windows in post.

3. Would it be a good idea to have some small led strips that I could hang from over the actors to try and reproduce coach lamps in the luggage overheads?

Most of the movie is set on the coach and will be mainly shot veiwing the right hand aisle. so there is room to place lights on the opposite side, but like I mentioned above, I'm worried that this is going to cause a lot of shadow problems.

Any advice, much appreciated.

Edited to add me second question :)
If you had a budget of say around $1600 what lights would you get. Considering a 3 point light set up is usually the most common setup for most situations, would you say it's best to buy three lights, and if so which ones would give the best flexibility all round. Another factor on the decision would be power output. As all my films are going to be indie I'm unlikely to ever have much power other than household.

Pete B
 
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What camera, ASA and aperture are you looking for? Are there lights in the bus, and if so how do they look? I'd like it if the coach had reading lights and you just needed to raise the ambient level. I think I'd do that by placing showcard on the opposite side and bouncing from fresnels or even nooks that are clamped on the seats or overheads. That should give you low shadows to worry about and be out of the way.

Google "poor man's process" for details on how to make it look like your stationary bus is moving.

Three light kit? So many ways to go. A 1K and 2 650W tungsten fresnels are very versatile. I like to work in daylight balance and I'm often in tight places. I'd probably go with two 4-bank flos and one 300W-650W fresnel for a backlight.
 
Hmm I read coach and I thought of a horse-drawn coach!

I suggest watching the movie Collateral since it has tons of lighting inside vehicles. If you watch the "making of" they used EL panels with velcro above and in front of the talent. Gives a more even light than a tungsten and they are much more easy to put in small places. They seem to be expensive and hard to find though.
 
Thanks for the great info Slondon and Svart.

Slondon, I'm not sure what ASA and aperture will be yet, although I'm planning on shooting with an Af100 and hopefully using a Voightlander 50mm f/ .95.

I haven't sourced a coach yet but overhead lighting is something I'd like.

I like your thinking on the 3 light set up. Are Leds comparable to flos or not? I probably wouldn't go higher than a 650w for the tungsten simply because of power consumption and the fact that I don't have access to limitless amounts. Also could you advise a good place to buy, or a good second hand place.

Svart. I like the look of those EL panels, never heard of them before, they seem idea for small places.

Thank you so much for your help
 
I thought of another possible trick.. An LCD backlight.. You could take an old cheap EBAY lcd apart and take out the actual LCD part, just leaving the backlight panel intact. This could get you a small and thin panel light but I'm not sure how bright it would be..
 
Bubblegummonster said:
Thanks for the great info Slondon and Svart.

Slondon, I'm not sure what ASA and aperture will be yet, although I'm planning on shooting with an Af100 and hopefully using a Voightlander 50mm f/ .95.
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That sounds like a very fast combo. I ask, because as a gaffer or cinematographer you have to think all the time about how much light you need to provide -- just to light the scene and particularly to get the f-stop you need for the desired depth of field. In a case like yours you might have been scratching for all the photons you can get but that camera and lens will pull a nice image from low light. Remember the physics, needing just one additional f-stop means you have to double whatever light you've managed to provide.

I haven't sourced a coach yet but overhead lighting is something I'd like.

I like your thinking on the 3 light set up. Are Leds comparable to flos or not? I probably wouldn't go higher than a 650w for the tungsten simply because of power consumption and the fact that I don't have access to limitless amounts. Also could you advise a good place to buy, or a good second hand place.
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I have very little experience with LEDs compared to several people here, though I have 2X2 and 1X1 side lit panels, and I mostly use only small, inexpensive luminaires so far, but they are the coming thing. Do some reading here, though, at present there are many problems with cost and especially color fidelity from these discontinuous spectra sources.

I hate to be obvious but eBay is a good source as is Pyramid Films.

Power consumption from tungsten lamps isn't a huge problem, ordinarily. House circuits provide at least 15 amps which you can conveniently equate to 1500 watts. Bigger problems are that they are hot to handle and potentially on the artists, and they have little blue energy so if you gel them to daylight you'll lose almost two stops. But they have stood the test of time and are cheap, versatile and as a continuous spectrum source their light is beautiful. I have most everything to choose from and still use tungsten fresnels frequently.

Svart. I like the look of those EL panels, never heard of them before, they seem idea for small places.

Thank you so much for your help
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Thanks again for the great advice Slondon.

From your advice and Barry_green's DVD it seems that Tunsten is really the only way to go, if you want to get hard light, unless you're hiring or rich and get an HMI.
Would you say that's an accurate overview?

I know this is probably a stupid question but how comes you can't just get daylight tungsten film lights. Or can you but the bulbs still mean that you'd still lose a couple of stops power output?


edited to say, that's an interesting idea Svart, would you say it would be safe?
Thanks again.
 
Yes, just be careful of the high voltage to the CCFL bulbs.

On a whim, I went back to the lab and tore apart a small LCD panel and took out the LCD element, leaving only the backlight. It works but the wiring process is more involved than I thought. You'd need to wire the PWM port(brightness) and the power wiring on the inverter to keep them on. I'll test it tonight when I get home from work and see.

As for tungsten, it's cheap and plentiful but pretty much any tungsten lamp is 2900k or 3200k. You can get higher K values but they are expensive, more rare and have lifetimes in HOURS, not hundreds of hours.

However, another idea I had is that a lot of buses/coaches have overhead lighting, usually halogen/tungsten or now LED. You could rig more small lamps like MR16 or GU10 types and then diffuse them. That way you can get a hard light that looks like a reading lamp but also fill light.

Also look at under-cabinet lights like this: http://www.lowes.com/pd_240229-61448-35803NKL120_4294859090__?productId=3125089&Ntt=keyword+or+item+%23cabinet+light&Ns=p_product_price|0&pl=1&currentURL=%2Fpl_Specialty%2BAccent%2BLighting_4294859090__s%3FNs%3Dp_product_price%7C0%26Ntt%3Dkeyword%2Bor%2Bitem%2B%2523cabinet%2Blight%26page%3D2&facetInfo=

and place them around. They are small and cheap and easily mounted.
 
So I took the little 6.4" LCD home and clamped it to a stand over my head, put a little diffusion on it and snapped a pic of my mug.

P1000324.jpg

The backlights seem to be around 5500K. I balanced the camera to it so that's why the background looks so orange. There is a red lamp to my right.

I was at 800iso and F4 on a GH2.

I'd say not bad for a hack job. I'm actually kinda stunned it worked out so well. I'm thinking of making a few more of these, maybe experimenting with some of larger broken monitors I have.
 
Ha ha, Svart you should start up your own lighting company :) To be honest I don't think I'd feel comfortable taking an LCD apart, and fiddling with the back light to get it to stay on, but it does seem to work really well. Give me a shout when you've started full production of these and they've past saftey regulations :)

Thanks again for your great info and dedication I really appreciate it.


Peter
 
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