As a teen filmmaker with a budget of whatever my friends and I have in our wallets and equipment traditionally used for family gatherings, one of our mortal enemies is lighting (and from what I've read, it's something that even professional filmmakers have a tough time with). We've usually found ways around it with our own little tricks and whatnot, but there's a particular scene we're shooting that's giving us a lot of trouble, and I'm wondering if you guys could help.
This is a horror movie, and it's more on the thriller side, as opposed to a bloody slasher flick. The scene is; the main character is alone in his friend's house, and the power suddenly goes out. Some stuff happens in the house that I won't get into because it isn't relevant, but to make a long story short he ends up outside in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, running for his life. Now, this is filmed at night, and the only environmental lighting is streetlamps and house lights. The street lamps are orange, not bright white or anything, so the lighting is rather dim. Because of the space between lamps, there are very dark portions of the street, and frankly, we can't see our lead in these places (and even under street lamps, the screen is still darker than I'd like at times). A method we've used in the past is having him run in a way that has the flash light he's running with shining on and off his face while he runs, which tends to work very well, but we're going for some different angles here where that just doesn't work.
I'm wondering, what can we do to deal with these lighting problems? We've considered getting a better camera (like one with good exposure settings, since the ones on this camera seem to be nonexistant), but that might be a ways off, since we don't have as much money as we'd like. The only artificial lights we have to work with are a bunch of flashlights, the light on the camera, and this big-ish light that I'm not sure how to describe except as a rip-off of the lights used in real productions...it's on a stand not too high off the ground and it can hold a large-ish lightbulb in it. But even that doesn't work for everything, especially wide shots or places where we don't have any plug-ins handy.
Do you guys know any tricks or any sort of cheap effective lighting we can get our hands on? I'm open to anything at this point, allowing we can afford it.
This is a horror movie, and it's more on the thriller side, as opposed to a bloody slasher flick. The scene is; the main character is alone in his friend's house, and the power suddenly goes out. Some stuff happens in the house that I won't get into because it isn't relevant, but to make a long story short he ends up outside in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, running for his life. Now, this is filmed at night, and the only environmental lighting is streetlamps and house lights. The street lamps are orange, not bright white or anything, so the lighting is rather dim. Because of the space between lamps, there are very dark portions of the street, and frankly, we can't see our lead in these places (and even under street lamps, the screen is still darker than I'd like at times). A method we've used in the past is having him run in a way that has the flash light he's running with shining on and off his face while he runs, which tends to work very well, but we're going for some different angles here where that just doesn't work.
I'm wondering, what can we do to deal with these lighting problems? We've considered getting a better camera (like one with good exposure settings, since the ones on this camera seem to be nonexistant), but that might be a ways off, since we don't have as much money as we'd like. The only artificial lights we have to work with are a bunch of flashlights, the light on the camera, and this big-ish light that I'm not sure how to describe except as a rip-off of the lights used in real productions...it's on a stand not too high off the ground and it can hold a large-ish lightbulb in it. But even that doesn't work for everything, especially wide shots or places where we don't have any plug-ins handy.
Do you guys know any tricks or any sort of cheap effective lighting we can get our hands on? I'm open to anything at this point, allowing we can afford it.