Lighting with fire.

J

jghenderson

Well-known member
I'm directing a music video next month. The concept involves fire and I would really love to experiment with lighting as much of the piece with actual fire as possible. I'm thinking it would create a good mood for the piece and also since we are shooting in the middle of the woods, would reduce (but probably not eliminate) the use of a generator.

Only problem is, I have no experience lighting with fire. Aside from the obvious safety concerns (like, not burning the forrest down), what should I keep in mind while dealing with fire? Is there a known distance I should keep the camera/lens away from the flame at all times? Are there any issues that aren't obvious?
 
Do some tests in the back yard first. You have the twin hassles of low light levels from the fire and even lower light levels on what is lit by the fire, and will probably have to change exposure levels depending on which one is the main thing in frame. Some cameras can do this well, others are terrible. An awful lot of fire scenes in movies are faked at least partially, i.e. that flickering firelight on the actors' faces is actually electrical lighting, and often tweaked in post too.
 
I just recently shot a campfire scene, here are some things to think about.... A: Light levels, you are not going to get enough light off a camp fire for proper exposure. B: You are shooting a music video, why would shooting in the woods reduce your chances of using a generator, which you I'll need to power your lights. C: I do not know where you are located, but most of the U.S. is under a burn ban because of the drought.
 
On the last movie I was on they had a piece of special effects equipment called a "flame bar". Essentially a 2 ft long piece of steel pipe with about a dozen or so small holes drilled in it. this was attached to a propane tank and lite, much like it would be in a grill, just with much larger flames. They ended up mence arming it off of a combo stand to get it where it needed to be. Flames were about 2 ft high off of the pipe and provided an exposure of T2 @800 ISO (native for the Alexa) at 180 degree shutter at about 12 ft.

I wouldn't suggest building one unless you are very comfortable with pipe and such, but perhaps you could get a special effects guy to come on board?
 
We have done it with real fire. We had a fire in the shot, but we also had multiple fires burning in 55 gallon oil drums out of frame to raise the overall level to an acceptable degree. The grip tools like flame bars created for this are awesome, but it can be done DIY (very carefully).
 
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