lighting test for psychological horror short

P

peter917

Active member
Here is a lighting scene test, context of scene is emotional and isolated. Sam is reliving a tragic memory while drinking wine alone in the kitchen, power has went out.

I have been reaching out to a few places for feedback and input. The candle is important for a scare in which her dead husband will be silhouetted across from her until he leans in being revealed by the flame light. Some people have told me i need to increase his face exposure, which he is exposed good I just brought the iso down in post from 800 to 320(Shot in blackmagic raw)

First two grabs at brought down to 320 ISO, last photo is at 800 ISO.

p7znl1ay9je41.jpg

gwb2q4ay9je41.jpg

84944340_1507509236070214_8227294650474430464_n.jpg
 
What IRE was your subject exposed at here? To me, just an opinion, these look like underexposed mush, pretty soft and grainy.
What was your key source? You might have a better look if you introduce more sources to just barely put a little texture on that back wall
and bring up your exposure on your talent, then knock it down in your grading.

I've had experience with a director who MADE me deliberately underexpose to obtain this kind of look, I kept pushing back that the proper way to do low key,
"in the dark" kinds of looks is to correctly expose, then bring it down in post, that way you don't have a subject that is soft, grainy and mushy, especially like your CU, which looks really soft and blurry.
It's good you are shooting BM RAW but underexposed is underexposed.

The director wouldn't listen to me, made me deliberately underexpose by looking at the monitor and in post, the final images, frankly, looked like crap and he was mystified why?
It was his project, I did exactly what he forced me to do, but he knew nothing about cinematography and thought what you see on the monitor is what you get.
Underexposure also bleeds out most of the color fidelity from your sensor, you don't have much color to work with so trying to CC and grade it is an exercise in frustration.

Shoot some more tests with more accurate exposure, then try working with the images in your CC program or hire a colorist. Just my opinion, but these look quite underexposed,
even for low key and you'll fight that. So easy to crush your blacks and overall constrast with a correctly exposed image than to try to do it in camera, on set. You're starting with not enough
picture info so you'll have little to manipulate to improve it. Also, take into account that depending on where you hope to exhibit this short, most people will see it on a 4" phone screen with
high ambient light. So this super dark look may simply not be visible at all on a phone screen with high ambient light. Very different if this will only play on the festival circuit in a darkened theater.
Remember, we still exist in a REC709 world and will for a long time.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for your Input, so with my ISO at 800 talent was reading 60 IRE. Windows were a bit higher and everything else with detail fell around 30-40ish. These stills have some high compression from upload as when i look at the raw ones on my desktop things are sharp. So I guess my question is how much higher than 60 IRE do I want to go on my talent? I want the dark look, I was thinking maybe using a 120D and a 360 lantern to just bounce and fill ambient moon light into the room and then also make his rim light brighter as well as that back wall by a hair.

As for my key source, it was a luxli on the fire flicker mode though it was only at like 20%. The windows were two 300Ds with a softbox and his rim which was too dark was a 2 foot quasar.

Here is the scene at 800 ISO before knocking down exposure in post with waveforms.
84544751_206312480504179_3795267208528003072_n.jpg
 
Last edited:
So the stills above are derived from the setup in your edit window? It sounds like you are doing everything I suggested already, it doesn't look as massively underexposed as your stills seem to communicate?
60 IRE isn't a bad exposure for skin for most cameras although I don't know the specifics of BM RAW exposure for your camera have you looked that up? I know each camera seems to have an optimum IRE
for skin tones when shooting RAW, although those are always subject to change. Some cameras, as you know, the RAW responds better to ETTR, while others you don't have to do that. I use the C200 and the
RAW definitely looks cleaner when ETTR.

Perhaps these are just bad compression on your frame caps? How does the footage look? Most importantly, how do you like what you have accomplished? How does it look when played back to you?
In your bottom still, which looks like the best one to me, all I would do is add some more light to the large black hole behind him, camera left on the wall near the curtains and perhaps a little pattern
to define the rim/edge of the table, just a little slash of light from the side or from underneath to give it something?

The stills look kind of soft and mushy to me here, 27" iMac Retina screen but that could just be crappy web/DVXUser/Host compression? If they look good to you on your computer screen, rock on.
 
I'm wondering how you can factor in the playback environment ?

A dark scene shown in a dark theater is going to be a lot more visible than the same scene shown on a large flat-screen in a well lit home living room.
 
Of course, that is the dilemma, I do not want to have the seen bright for that sake alone. I want to stay true to the tone and mood of the scene. In a some what dark room it should look okay but broad daylight not so much. Maybe I try and meet in the middle when grading but I the "lighter version" i posted is way to bright for the mood of the scene.

For example haunting of hill house, I love the show but the lighting for night scenes is so bright.

Haunting-of-Hill-House.jpg
 
Do you remember that episode in the last season of Game of Thrones ( it was a night battle ) where so many home viewers complained that it was way too dark ? ( I thought the same thing watching it on my calibrated TV set )
 
That's something you have be careful of. If some or the majority of your audience literally cannot see what's going on in the scene, then all your efforts are for naught.
Tough these days to know exactly how your scenes will look. I had a film I shot screen up at the Santa Barbara Film Festival a few weeks ago. First time I had seen it
projected and it looked great. The film had a professional CC and grade, although I don't know if the producers had a separate edit made for projection?

I have noticed with most people enabling the Tru Tone and auto brightness on their phones that in some conditions, the phone is dimmed way down to save battery power. In those cases, at least
some of your stills above might be hard to see what's going on. The Haunting of Hill House above, that could probably be viewed anywhere. I would read it more as dawn than the middle
of the night, but it all plays into that willing suspension of disbelief thing too. Is the scene dark enough to read as "night", but bright enough to be seen by your audience?

You might want to assemble a few examples of your scene at different brightness and contrast levels and then evaluate them all in your scenario (theater, living room bright and dark, phone screens?) where you think most of your
audience will be viewing the film. You can't account for every variation, but you can go for the scenario where the majority will view it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top