Will shooting in a Bar that has black lights be bad for my DVX?

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David_M_Payne

Well-known member
I'm looking at shooting some scenes in a topless bar that has black lights. I've lined up some of the girls there who are willing to work on this for points. It is pretty dark in there, but I'll be doing my shots in the daytime when the bar is closed, so I’ll have control over what lights are used and how I set up my lights for the scene. I have the basic britek three light set, two 300/600 and one 200 back fill light as well as 6 23W 3500K florescent bulbs that are rated at 100W output. I don't envision a lot of light in there, I want to keep the dark look of it as much as possible. Are there any possible repercussions that I need to be aware of as far as doing any damage to my cameras from the black lights? Do you guys have any other tips that might help me in this environment?

David
 
I've never heard of any problems with shooting blacklights damaging camera. The only problem I could see is if they are florescent having a problem with strobing on camera if they have cheap ballasts.

Also I love lighting bar/club scenes because lighting color balance can kind of go out the window and sticking crazy party gels on lights even adds to the scene without coming off as too over the top.

As for shooting in strip clubs in general I think the biggest problem I could see is mirrors since every strip club I’ve been in has many of them all over the place, makes it hard to hide lights/camera and equipment.
 
Fitz said:
I've never heard of any problems with shooting blacklights damaging camera. The only problem I could see is if they are florescent having a problem with strobing on camera if they have cheap ballasts.

Also I love lighting bar/club scenes because lighting color balance can kind of go out the window and sticking crazy party gels on lights even adds to the scene without coming off as too over the top.

As for shooting in strip clubs in general I think the biggest problem I could see is mirrors since every strip club I’ve been in has many of them all over the place, makes it hard to hide lights/camera and equipment.
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I didn't notice too many mirrors, but I'm going back tomorrow to talk to a few more girls and I'll look at their mirror situation. Good point on the strobing, but this may be one venue that the strobing may be more of an asset than a liability giving that the dancers moves may look more pronounced with the strobing effect.

David
 
Last week I shot in a Theater. It was not exactly a topless thing more about a dance performance. The theater Technician did some nice light, and there was lots of it on the stage which was great. Even the more lowlight scenes were no problem..
But, at a certain point of the show the light was turned to a bright red and my dvx totaly craped out. There was lots of smear and the picture was blured. I have not idea what exact gels they used but the DVX did not like them at all.

Somebody have similar experiences?

Is there a solution for these kind of situations in terms of camera settings? Filter?
I shot in 25p. Or just not possible.. ?
 
Walter_Graff said:
And bring lots of $20s if you want to get good footage :)
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This is Reno Walter, they will give you a good, uh, show for just a few ones! ;)

I've been up front with the girls about my limited funds, and all of them that have agreed to work in the film will do so for points and the experience of doing a film. That has been a pleasant surprise for me by the way. I've gotten six girls names and phone numbers, almost half of the girls I talked to. Now if I could have had that good a record when I was looking for a date!

And Walter, thanks for all of the great info on your web site. Boy I wish you were on the west coast instead of the east!

David
 
nobody mentioned this but test!

when you go back there ask them to put the lights into their normal show mode and shoot some footage, possibly in different modes or white balances and then see how it looks when you get home.

matthew
 
maybe its just me but i've shot a fair amount of stuff with "stage" or theatrical lighting and no matter how many times i try to white balance it almost always comes out better if i use the 3200k preset.

walter? i should have asked you this at the seminar! its always bugged me a litlte bit.

matthew
 
uhrgl said:
Points? What kind of distribution model do you have? You going to video?
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I'm shooting in 16x9 with the Panasonic anamorphic lens on both cameras. After the film is made I plan to enter it in film festivals on DVD. If I can pick up a distributor then I can see going to film with it for the movie theaters, but that is down the road yet. Points is all I have to offer for pay at this point as all my money went into cameras and related equipment.

XCheck said:
Yeah - that, and: Are you looking for a second camera op? :engel017:
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Do you live on the west coast? I had another guy for the second camera, but his girlfriend's mom torpedoed that when she found out that some of the shooting would involve topless dancers. You can always trust up tight religious zealots to freak out when sex is involved, even if no one is getting any.

David
 
matthewd5 said:
nobody mentioned this but test!

when you go back there ask them to put the lights into their normal show mode and shoot some footage, possibly in different modes or white balances and then see how it looks when you get home.

matthew
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matthewd5 said:
maybe its just me but i've shot a fair amount of stuff with "stage" or theatrical lighting and no matter how many times i try to white balance it almost always comes out better if i use the 3200k preset.

walter? i should have asked you this at the seminar! its always bugged me a litlte bit.

matthew
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I'll give that a try, thanks for the tip.

David
 
Another tip!! Make sure the girls are wearing those little tassle things. If not, you might poke an eye out...........
 
You know, you people really need to grow up. Here this guy is trying to make a film that just happens to be in a topless bar and instead of real solid advice all you guys can do is make boob comments.
Good luck David-

Rick

PS If you need places the hang the lights...use the poles David, use the poles.
 
Turbo,

Ive shot a bunch of live live concert footage with the DVX100 and 100A, mostly for local bands in So Cal. Almost every venue down here has the same ridiculous RED lighting. I've noticed that this camera LOVES red, it seems to saturate it more than any other color. Heres what I would try, drop down your saturation (color level) in the scene file, then I would even try to add some blue with the color temp adjustment to cool it down a little. That should make it more of a pale pinkish color. Its not the original red, but its way more pleasing on the eye. This is going to effect the "look" on the rest of your footage, so if the red lighting comes on briefly you might want to make more moderate adjustments, but hopefully that gives you some stuff to play with.
 
As was hinted, and since you're in charge for this (not just documenting what is there), don't have red lights.

Also, the hint about just using the tungsten (3200) setting is right. You *want* to see things change color under the colored lights...otherwise they'd just be using white, right?

Dan
 
About red or blue: if they insist on washing your subject with red light, or blue light, you can pretty much count on your video looking awful. The more pure-red or pure-blue the light, the worse the image will look. This is not a fault of the DVX itself, but of any camera that uses DV compression.

Pure red, or pure blue, is going to cause your camera to show very blurry footage, because the chroma sampling of DV is very low. Whereas with balanced lighting you can have an image that's 720x480 pixels, if you instead use pure red lighting you get an image that's about 160x480! Low-res and blurry. Avoid strong red or strong blue lighting on your subject at all costs.
 
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