Night shooting

MalcolmOng

MalcolmOng

Veteran
Hi guys, I'm gonna be doing a night shoot soon for a short film, and it's gonna be a a chase/action sequence. Now how should I go about shooting this? I know that for fast paced action sequences I should shoot with a shutter speed of 1/90th or 1/120th. But wouldn't it be too dark for that? Where we're shooting there will be streetlights and stuff but I'm afraid it may not provide enough illumination. This is pretty much a zero budget short film, so extra lights and generators are pretty much out of the question. I will probably be getting a couple of battery powered flourescent lights, but does anyone have any suggestions on what settings to use to get the best picture at night? How about day for night shooting? Any experiences with night shooting or day for night?

Thanks alot, Mal
 
Forget fast shutter as it will kill your nonexisting light input to your camera... Street light(tungsten) will not mix well with flourescent lights and your white balance will be way off. Try to get battery powered cheap 40-100watt on camera lights and get somebody to hold for you(2), you can create a nice set up as long as you stay close to the action...
 
Hey Malcolm,
Day for night is a bit tricky... You'll need a blue filter for your lens, or set up your white balance by using a warm(orange) card, try not to shoot the sky, go under expose(2-3 stop) on the subject.
Btw, street lights are not tungsten as i told you earlier , some sort of mercury...which is tough to white balance...
Also if you are shooting at night without light, do not use your gain more than 6db, it will make blacks murky, grainy...In your camera setup, use the 7.5 IRE for blacks... Pump up the master pedestal to 5 or 6, but do not overdo... Hope it helps...
 
well for the source light they might use a 5K light, but most often it's a 10K. for example one night exterior scene from ET...they used 4, that's right 4, 10Ks in a box referred to as a flying moon...hoisted on a crane.

it'll be as bright as they can get to light the scene - gel/diffuse and then use a 1K to fill. some gaffers throw practicals around to give the scene more depth and cover street lamps when they can or if they need to with black cloth and just in case you didn't know...they wet the streets to reflect more light and add more depth.
 
do you have any lights? even worklights? if you can get a light that's putting out above 1K lumens...then you only need a few of them. you might have a zero dollar budget, but i really hope that doesn't mean you can't afford $9 worklights. :) and who needs a generator. you can get a car battery, a power inverter and light your worklights...need a 750W inverter for a 500W light.

but as for day for night...shoot during the magic hour right after sunset when the street lights come on. you'll still have some daylight to play with, but it is fleeting...lasts about 15 to 20 minutes...of course you could pick up in the morning "magic hour" but again it too is fleeting.

if you shoot middle of the day then you need to avoid shooting the sky and beware of long shadows.
 
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