Some help with lighting & night.

[ChrisHurn]

Hi there!

I am a 16 year old student. I have made two films this year, but I wasn't happy with the quality. I am using a cheaper camcorder, but about to upgrade it to a GS400 (panasonic). I wanted the DVX but unfortunately I don't have the money for it right now. On my next project I want to spend more time on lights. I'm thinking about buying the book "Lighting for Digital Video and Television", it sounds like it's good.

I've been reading a few articles on lighting at night, and there are some great options available, IF you have power. As an example, If I'm in the middle of a forest I don't think I'm going to have any. I'm guessing there are no options for me, unless there are some battery powered lights or something I could get. I want to achieve a 'moonlight/foggy' effect, so I guess I'll be buying a small fog/smoke machine too.

EDIT: What about day for night? On the making of "Big Fish" I saw that they were shooting the darker forest scene during the day. Was the smoke done in post? With my budget (practically nothing, although I could afford to spend a few hundred on a light kit or other things if they're really valuable) do you think this would be possible? how?

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks a lot!

-Chris

 

[Dyrseve989]

Chris, I dont suggest yo spend a grand on the GS400, I beleive you can pay a little more for a Sony vx1000, or a Canon GL2, that have a little better imaging power, and will give yo a more defined, sharper and broader color spectrum then the GS, but that is for you to decide

For your application it looks like you will have to film during the day for your night shots and then use filters after it, go to the cinematography thread and look for "Day For Night" thread, there are two of them, both will be helpful to you, a few posts have links to free FCP filters that you can use, and alot of pointers on how to shoot day for night without making it look fake after applying these filters, good luck, and keep filming

-Matt-

 

[Fitz1980]

Here’s some ideas.

For the smoke you could get a fog machine from Party City or someplace like that. If you want to make the smoke hang low to the ground you need to make the fog colder. A cheap way to do it is take a Styrofoam cooler stick a piece of PVC pipe through it, tape the PVC to the end of the fogger and the fill the cooler with ice. You could also just try to do it as a post production effect.

As for light how far in the woods are you going to be? If you are going to have a car/truck near by you can get a power inverter from radio shack that plugs into your cigarette lighter and run an extension cord to some lights. Since those inverters don’t put out a whole lot of amps for lights go get some florescent lights. The little compact screw in ones and put them in clip lights and use them. Or even better get the little florescent flood lights, that look like floods but have a florescent spiral inside of them. Another idea you might want to look into is those Coleman camping lanterns that are battery powered and have florescent tubes inside of them. I don’t know how the ballasts are or the CRI of those so you’d probably want to experiment with that first.

For a blue effect you can get “full spectrum” or “daylight” ones and set the camera’s white balance to indoors and the light will look blue. Another way to get a blue effect is to white balance on a slightly orange piece of paper, the camera will try to make that white and make everything look blue. The same effect can be achieved by using a little filter gel sample book, hold the gel up to the camera lens and balance to a standard white card.

You might also look into renting a generator from home depot, I had a film teacher who did that for his feature and even cut a deal with them that he‘d get the rate of one hour for the entire night if he picked it up right before closing and returned it right at opening the next day. Problem with one of those is that it’s loud so you better have some extension cords to get it away from your set.

I agree with Dyrseve989 about getting a better camera for a cheaper price. You can get a used Canon GL1 for less than $1500. That way you would be able to shoot in progessive mode. If you got a VX1000 (no progressive mode) there is a way to make the interlaced video look progressive. Google the official site about the making of the film “The Last Broadcast” and read about how they made interlaced VX1000 footage look like progressive film-like footage.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Graeme Nattress's G-film effetcs only costs $100 and it will make 60i footage 24 fps prgressive with the exception of the necessary pulldown interlaced frames, in addition to giving you a whole host of Magic Bullet competitive film effects. To deinterlace in FCP, copy your clip, use the deinterlace filter, past the the intrelaced copy exactly above the interlaced copy and reduce it's opacity to 25%. You do the second step to restore the resolution you loose with the FCP deinterlace, but Graeme's progressive looks better and teh 24 fps motion is comperable to the DVX's and way better than Sony's 24p.

 

[HorseFilms]

You can get powerful rechargeable spot lights for really cheap (like $10-$20). Aim them into white foamcore boards to soften the light slightly. Great portable lighting on an extremely low budget.