What can be done with a 60 watt lightbulb, two flashlights, and a truck headlight

Gideon Oakes

Gideon Oakes

Member
Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd share a short that I shot for a 24 hour film contest. My team and I had 24 hours to write, shoot, edit, and master our film, so please excuse the hokeyness of the plot. What I wanted to show off was the lighting. While most of it is really dark (I was going for almost no visibility at times), the lighting won the highest technical marks for us.

The amazing part about it (as the title suggests) is that the entire thing was lit with one 60 watt bulb, two flashlights, and the headlight from my truck. We were in an abandoned house with no power, so we ran cords from my power inverter in my truck for power.

It was a fun project, and I hope you all can enjoy it as well. Only some of the music is original, but I never sold it to anyone (nor did the film fest charge admission), and I don't think I'm breaking any copyright laws by posting it here.

So without further ado, I present "Lights Out". Comments are welcome, but try to keep the "your plot and sound suck" to a minimum, as these are already duly noted. :thumbsup:

Click Here for the Film

Thanks,

Gideon Oakes
Buffalo Rock Productions
http://www.buffalorockproductions.com
 
Your plot and sound sucks... just kidding.

Considering what you had to work with, I think you did a great job. It looks pretty good.
 
asylumproductions said:
What was this shot on?
Click to expand...

I shot it on my DVX-100a, what else? ;-)

Oh, and I forgot to talk about one of the light sources. In the interior car scene, I have Kim lit with one of the reading lights as key, and the other bouncing off of something for fill. When she turns on the overhead light, Mel (the driver) flipped the switch on the dome light, which provided very ample light to the whole car. Well, ample light for the DVX. It's amazing in lolux situations.

I'm proud to say, I think I only gained up one scene to +6 dB, and that was the very last one, when I was in a big hurry. We shot mostly chronologically that night, and by the time the last shot came around, the dawn was about to break, and I was flying to get the shot before then. If you look over the killer's shoulder in the last frames, you can see the sky, which isn't black. So that's the other one we lit with my truck headlight. We used something for diffusion, I don't remember what, perhaps a light jacket. The other scene where my truck makes its appearance is the breakdown scene, where Amy "turns on her flashlight". If you watch closely, she moves the flashlight before the light source goes away. I didn't catch that one until after the festival. Oops. I don't think anyone else did, though.

Anyway, it was a fun shoot. Anytime you get to stay up all night in an abandoned/probably-haunted house and shoot a movie, it's a fun time. Total budget was $20 for burgers for the cast (who doubled as the crew in their off camera time). That's a plus about using college girls, they don't eat much. ;-)
 
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