Lighting For Music Video On Beach

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kketzer

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Whats up everyone?
In about a month's time I'll be shooting a music video for a ska/hip hop band on the beach. We plan on shooting with a couple Canon 5D Mark 3s, using several lenses with an f-stop of 2.8 or lower. Everything will be shot at sunset or at night and the only light source will be a bonfire and some tiki torches. I have been given a budget and can afford to rent some professional lights. Any suggestions for what kind of lights and how many we would need? Thanks.
 
What kind of budget? Have money for a good crew?

Sort of depends on how you want to play it. I assume you'll try and key with actual fire instead of doing a flicker gag of some sort, right? I've heard that you can get little propane fueled flame bars that can then be walked around as you would lights on a stand. From there I would assume youd want to light up the background as much as you can. A 4k hmi and a 6500 watt generator might be the best bang for your buck, but if you don't have people who know how to properly use it its sort of worthless.

For some of the wider shots you might want to supplement the fire light a little, so maybe having some 2k's on dimmers gelled to match the fire on standby that probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

One other thing I could think of is just another small hmi, maybe a 1200 or even a 2.5. If its too moody bounce that off of a 12x muslin or ultra bounce for a soft blue fill. You can correct halfway back to tungsten with 1/2 CTO if it's too cold for your taste.

This is all quite a bit and assuming you have quite the budget, since you weren't very specific, I couldnt help but have some fun with it.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. My budget for renting the lighting equipment, not including the generator, is around $200. I don't really have the money for a good crew and will be setting up with one other person. I'm honestly pretty clueless when it comes to lighting, since I have only shot footage using natural light. Any different suggestions? what about using a couple Kino Flos?
 
Kino flos don't have very much output. At night they can definitely be of some use but during the day, even at sunset when it's not quite as bright, they really won't give you anything unless you get them extremely close to the talent. In addition, Kino flos are much more expensive to rent than tungsten, so they're probably not what you should go for.

For the sunset scenes, you could probably get by with some basic reflectors and bounce board (make sure whatever you get is strong, the wind that you'll get on a beach can easily break larger pieces of beadboard). For the night time scenes, a fire probably could give you enough light but if it's in the shot it will be totally blown out without being augmented with some other light source.
 
I presume they're miming? Cheap generators are also noisy generators!

The problem with this question is simply we don't know what you have in your mind as to the look. Gelled torches can do face lights, as can a 4K HMI - but they look a bit different!. If you are after puddles of light and plenty of darkness it's not the same lighting design and budget as wanting to light everything and get rid of the shadows.
 
this all depends on what kind of shots you're looking for.
if youre wanting a bunch of close ups, the need is much less than if youre trying to light the whole scene

also depends on what you consider "sunset"

$200 isnt going to rent you much. depending on the model, it may not even get you "a couple of kino flos"
and outside, for a WIDE shot, anything less than a pair of 4' 4 banks wont do much better than a soft fill.

for $200, what i'd do is rent 2 arri fresnels, a 600 and 1k and a bounce card then with whats left (about $60 if youre lucky) buy a roll of black wrap and a couple gels.

another thing to try is go to the rental house and tell them what youre doing and how much you have and hope they will advise you well. some are friendly about stuff like that, others less so...
 
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If you're going to be limited to mostly just a bonfire and tiki torches, at least push for as many of them as you can - put smaller fires at the outer reaches of the scene where the bonfire starts really falling off.

LED camping lamps are another cheap option, throw a couple inside some china lampshades to make them look prettier and spread them around the place.
 
kketzer said:
Everything will be shot at sunset or at night and the only light source will be a bonfire and some tiki torches. I have been given a budget and can afford to rent some professional lights. Any suggestions for what kind of lights and how many we would need? Thanks.
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My main advice is just this: don't light-starve your camera sensors. Feed your sensors enough light that they can do their job. Else, you'll have video with lots of noise, not much color, and poor saturation. Just sayin' that this is one of those situations where trying to capture the look you want in camera is usually not the best idea. It's usually better to capture a properly exposed image in camera, then make it darker and/or moodier in post. Going from proper exposure to darker image in post is easily doable. Going to opposite way is either impossible or much, much more difficult.

The color temperature of burning wood or candles is very low. Well below tungsten -- around 2000K. To supplement your bonfire and tiki torches then, you might want to start with tungsten fresnels, then add some level of CTO gel in front of them to pull the temperature even lower. This might give you a better chance to boost the light levels without loosing the flickery nature of the natural fires.

Note that if you do this, you'll likely end up starving your camera's blue channel, so it will likely be somewhat noisy. And any blue colors in the scene will turn out to be very dark in the resulting video. Just know it and plan for it.
 
Not sure where you are located, but you might call a local lighting & grip truck owner & see if they would cut you a deal for a couple hours. Let them know you budget, plan all your shots in advance, get in get it done and get out.
 
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