Shooting beneath Orange streetlights ?

R

RayFrisby

Well-known member
Hi I am shooting a short in a months time with the HVX (720/25p ) that involves filming beneath orange streetlamps at early evening and night time. The street is outside a Shell petrol station with strong yellow sinage. I was wondering what are the best ways to insure the camera reproduces a strong; dreamlike orange/yellow glow while maintaining strong blacks. I was thinking of using a 400 kw HMI to pick out the principal actor. Should I gel this with CTO? Any suggestions as to what settings master ped and cine mode I should set would be appreciated or what I should look out for in setting exposure.

Another scene is in a hospital room, day time and early evening. I will be shooting towards a window and would like to insure the exterior is not blown out, should I flood the interior to match the exterior and reduce the contrast or is there a better way? I don't think I can flag the window as its quiet large.
 
You´ll probably need double CTO to balance Sodium lamps with daylight, or maybe 1 and a half. If your HMI is too magenta, you´ll probably need some plusgreen. In a recent short we used tungsten bulbs with 1/2 CTO and it worked okay. Those sodium lamps have a pretty bad CRI, meaning, the only color it will be able to reproduce accurately will be orange. A good idea is to leave the sodium lamps on the background, and light your actors with your gelled lights, so the colors are a little richer.
 
Yeah, unless you are totaly indie and can't afford not too, I would avoid using the sodium lights as keys. Flag em, whatever. Then create some lights for your talent that match the temp. I bet you would not have to use HMI's if you have a good selection of tungsten and time to set it up. You would not have to use as much CTO and your lights would keep more of their punch. Double CTO on a HMI just sounds like a waste, you'll loose so much light you may as well have just started with tungsten, especially with a 400W. I would definately futz with camera settings to get the look you want, save them as a scene file, the 200 has those right? IMHO I would light using the white balance presets, obviously a daylight preset with tungsten lights is going to be very orange, maybe a place to start. If you are shooting at dark I would probably just start with the tungsten preset, but thats me. If you got HMI's to burn, go to town!

Have fun. I am interested to hear what others suggest.
 
Thanks for the posts! Yea this is a no budget personal idea I've wanted to shoot for a while, and I will be pushed for time. The road is a main road and I have a lot of shots to get through. I will prob have only one night to get through them all. I am actually looking at creating an orange or yellow look, as the scene is about reminiscence and memory and contains a single actor and no dialogue. I would like to create a contrast between the headlights of the approaching cars and the yellow streetlights. I dont mind using tungsten, I would prefer it; but I will be shooting a selection of wide establishing shots where I cant light the street, and other shots from a distance of approx 20ft to close and from a moving car to the sidewalk. My main concern is matching these shots. I was wonder what wattage tungsten I am looking at to light an area of 20ft. If I do use Tungnsten should I use gels ?. I know this is an open question and not easy to specify but if anybody has experience lighting under such conditions and can give me the benifit of their experience it would be great.
 
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