• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

lighting Lighting in "The Visit"

sfoster

Staff Member
Moderator

Is something like this possible for indie filmers or do you need some really really big ass lights?
 
I looked at this earlier, I'm just confused about what you're referring to.

This clip has pretty bad lighting. There's nothing here that you can't do with a couple grand.
 
I looked at this earlier, I'm just confused about what you're referring to.

This clip has pretty bad lighting. There's nothing here that you can't do with a couple grand.
not very helpful without specifics, i think if tried to recreate this it would look like shit
of course ive never even owned a single film light
 
Last edited:
well, can you cite a timestamp? it's 3 minutes, and I assume you're referring to a particular shot. I watched it, expecting something to pop out as obviously good lighting, but never saw anything.
 
looks to me like two really huge lights illuminating the outdoors. one in the back window and one coming through the foreground, but its very nice how everything is perfectly exposed and you can still see the details in the dark areas
 
Last edited:
ok, well, I watched that scene. It's normal for funded movies to use pretty large lights, so it's all relative. a 20,000 watt light would not be unusual and can be rented per day.

When you see a night forest scene in a studio film, they've typically brought these huge lights and literally lit the outdoors. They are similar to the lights you see in sports stadiums, at least in size.

What's seen here could be done with just a couple of mid sized lights.

This is fairly low budget stuff, so you can do this in an indie movie, but not in a zero budget movie, if that answers your question.
 
ok, well, I watched that scene. It's normal for funded movies to use pretty large lights, so it's all relative. a 20,000 watt light would not be unusual and can be rented per day.

When you see a night forest scene in a studio film, they've typically brought these huge lights and literally lit the outdoors. They are similar to the lights you see in sports stadiums, at least in size.

What's seen here could be done with just a couple of mid sized lights.

This is fairly low budget stuff, so you can do this in an indie movie, but not in a zero budget movie, if that answers your question.
So we're talking what lights, like a couple of these?


One thing that can definitely be said about film school is being able to play with lights.
Here I am 8 years into making short films and im still using stupid light bulbs and cant afford anything else, sucks.

Those kid actors want me to make the horror film i wrote but i lighting is so important in horror and its gonna look like shit, idk if its worth my time
 
Last edited:

here's a few night lighting shots that are done well. The smoothness of those outdoor shots just comes from just putting a really big light far away instead of a cheaper light with a shorter range.
 
So we're talking what lights, like a couple of these?


One thing that can definitely be said about film school is being able to play with lights.
Here I am 8 years into making short films and im still using stupid light bulbs and cant afford anything else, sucks.

Those kid actors want me to make the horror film i wrote but i lighting is so important in horror and its gonna look like shit, idk if its worth my time
yeah, though you can just get the 2 color version and calibrate. You'd be able to do a good bit with 2 of these, but you'd need a lot more lighting gear to get a good effect. I have maybe 5 grand in lighting gear, and I can light up to 2 characters talking at a table, if I use every piece in the kits at once. If you watch the lighting walkthrough of "Dances with Wolves" these guys used about 30,000 watts of lights to light a teepee interior. Tech has gotten better, and LED panels can help you out, but bottom line is that it gets expensive and labor intensive to try cinema lighting at home. Also, you'll throw power breakers pretty quickly trying to do the real thing. On film sets they have industrial power hookups. You can do generators if you do all sound in post, but batteries of that size get expensive and run out multiple times during a shooting day. The first time I tried it, we had issues, which is really bad when you have 50 people standing around waiting for you to charge batteries. In that case, we had planned to hybrid with the wall power to give us some mobility, but the buildings electrical was already near max when we got to the set, which was unexpected.
 
Back
Top