Lighting advice for car entrance scene?

[Seanik]

The wall opposite the garage door is maybe 50 feet away or more (and it's actually a garage door too) so putting something reflective to bounce off it won't be an option.

Here's a couple of ideas that might help:

- Consider opening that opposite garage door for some "free" daylight to spill into the venue.

- In post, you can take some of the edge off the mixed lighting by desaturating your high lumas (e.g. bright sky, practicals, and specular highlights) as well as your very low luma blacks and some shadows (but be gentle!). Then, find a happy medium with skin tones and work your way through very subtly warming/cooling some of the dominant colors in the shots as needed. You'll have to accept that it won't look *perfect* (don't attempt to do that, in fact), but it could go a long way toward settling down that agitating mixed lighting look. Remember that audiences are much more forgiving than we are, so long as the mixed lighting isn't hitting them over the head.

Looks like fun work! Good luck with everything!

 

[morgan_moore]

Looking at this set of images it looks worse than the first.

I think you need big lights.. or to shoot at dusk

 

[LennyLevy]

Yup shoot at Dusk .
Do some tests & figure out what time of day the light outside will be manageable and still look like daylight then its pretty much a piece of cake. just need to get your interior colors to work with the daylight.
Anything else is a nightmare

 

[firehawk]

Thanks a lot everyone.
Ok it sounds like without massive firepower there's no way to be able to get this shot at whatever random time of the day/year the events will happen.
He wants a nice looking shot to put on the promo video and they dont' have a good entrance drive shot yet. So I am thinking of telling him that we need to plan on shooting one when the event will happen at the right time of the day so we aren't fighting the sun. Overcast, dawn or dusk. That will accomplish getting one good shot.

But that still leaves having to shoot the entrance drive during all those other random times of the day/year. I realize that it's not going to be good but to help it at least what do you suggest?
Open the opposite garage door to let in some sunlight?
Hang as many daylight fixtures as he can pointing down and at the subject?
Paint the ceiling above the car a bright white?
Wet the driveway? (how does that help?)
I'm going to forward him a list based on what you guys say

 

[paulears]

You are asking the impossible from the light out to the light in. The workable solution would be - if it needs to repeat at different times of day a change of shooting angle - a repeated outside shot as the car drives in, and then move the camera to the rear of the audience section where the door way is end on to the frame and the care just appears in the garage, in garage level lighting which will look nice. The contrast range is just too much, without blasting hell out of the inside, which will look horrible and unfriendly for the people. The shot as it is looks nice but is never going to work.