Night Shooting

Hairy Lime

Hairy Lime

Well-known member
Okay, so I'm not really sure where this should go, but since I'm the director on the project I'll put it here ... and I'll preface by saying I'm a storyteller with no experience on the technical side of things ... thus my questions.

Shooting a short film soon in which much of the action takes place outdoors in NYC at night. Only ambient light sources will be available. The story has a surreal quality to it overall and we're intercutting some other media into the footage so I'm not overly worried about visual continuity so long as the footage isn't worthless, but I'd like any advice or words of caution you may have.

We've simplified the shoot already by making it silent, dropping the animal from the script, and cutting locations down to a minimum ... probably 4 nighttime exterior locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn.

We'd been planning on using the DVX100/A/B for this shoot, but if there's another camera that'll better serve our purposes, please let me know. Excluding film. Just don't think I can swing the budget on film.

And if anyone in NYC with the camera would be willing to shoot some tests with us on Sunday night, that'd be great.

Many thanks in advance.

ETA: Just realized I made it through the entire post without asking any questions ... so I guess I'm just looking for advice. Thanks!
 
I hope to never touch a camera.

Just posted an ad in the jobs section looking for DP/camera.

My editor/DP is willing to share the DP credit with whoever shoots the DV footage. He'll be handling the other camera.
 
Best to pick natural light sources, unless your using a Generator <--- Best to get a
silent one if your recording audio, or at least put it miles away!!
Jp
 
Hairy Lime said:
I'll preface by saying I'm a storyteller with no experience on the technical side of things ...
Click to expand...

Not sure what formats we're using - that's my partner's area of expertise. I'm just looking for advice on shooting DV at night with ambient city lights - what camera, settings, suggestions, pitfalls, etc.
 
We're not lighting anything ... thus "ambient" ... we're shooting with what we have ... ambient light in NYC. In Times Square that'd be substantial light ... in other places not so much.
 
Thanks, Omar. We've received a nice assortment of camera assistance offers and we're sorting through which we want to test Sunday. I think it'd be difficult to test more than our own camera and one other in a single night so we may schedule several of these kinds of things over the next couple weeks.

I'll be in touch!
 
You might want to consider using the HVX if you can find an op who owns one. But it looks like you've already found some DVX people.
 
I'm confused...Isn't Hairy Lime more concerned about low light sensitivity and perf.? Doesn't the HVX have less low light sensitivity than the DVX? I'm sure in this scenario 'getting the picture' is more important than a great looking picture thats murky black
 
Yeah, we'd already dismissed the HVX due to the low light concerns, but if someone doesn't mind testing one with us, we'd be happy to consider it. I just suspect it'll be a waste of time based on everything we've read.
 
I would always recommend sony's VX2100, pd150, 170 for shooting night scenes cause those cameras need very small ammount of light to achieve great looking images. I have made many night shots with those cameras, but the problem is they shoot only interlaced video and won't go along nicely with the DVX. The picture will be different.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top