Bitten off more than I can chew for a first short?

F

Foggy

Hi Folks,

As many of you will have gathered by now I am currently writing my first short. I am however slightly apprehensive as the narrative demands that 99 percent of the movie will be indoors and at night in relatively dark conditions.

The gear I am using will be a hacked GH2 (flowmotion) with the older kit lens(14-45mm f2.8) and a really nice canon FD 50mm f1.4.

As yet I don't have any lighting gear bar a manfrotto LED panel that sits in the hot shoe mount on top of my GH2,it has 22 LED's at 5600k.

I am worried about lighting the shots as it is something I have never done before.

Am I complicating my first shoot by doing it so dark?

Cheers.
 
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It's possible, you just need to do plenty of tests.

When I test, I capture basic audio in-camera and note the lens, lighting being used, aperture, ISO, white balance setting etc. Do test scenes with your talent or stand-ins (friends/family).

Do lots of tests then watch them back on a large high quality screen.

I have filmed a number of night scenes and my field monitor gave me a false reading. Basically the picture looked lite well enough on it to see what you needed to see whilst still capturing the darkness. But when I viewed the footage on a calibrated monitor and large 60" plasma (very high quality) it was 20% darker and could not be used.

We may have been able to recover the footage in post but we decided to re-shoot to be safe, so we did.

Test. Test. Test.

The advantage of course of having a 'dark' short is that if you pull it off, it should look very cool and bring plenty of atmosphere to your story.
 
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Sounds relatively doable.

I'd probably want to shoot around 2.8, but depends what works for you and the scene/movie.

You have access to much more than the LED!

China balls are the staple of any film set and are dirt cheap. There are some DPs that pride themselves on mainly using china balls to light.
Spend some money on trace paper (or splash out and get some real diffusion gel) and you can start to mould any hard source (be it a bare light bulb, clamp light or anything) into a softer source. Some cheap black fabric and you have something to cut light/neg fill.

A friend of mine had a strip of inexpensive LEDs he used recently for a film. He was helping out another friend who had a scene in a car. They obviously couldn't use any large fixtures and needed something that could run on a battery. They wired up the LEDs to a cheap home dimmer, and then to a battery; put it in a box and cut 'flaps' into the box to make barn doors.
Don't know what the total price would have been, but certainly cost barely anything.

IndiePaul said:
when I viewed the footage on a calibrated monitor and large 60" plasma (very high quality) it was 20% darker and could not be used.
Click to expand...
This may not be the case here, but most TVs have different picture 'modes' which all have slightly different contrast, brightness and gamma settings, and sometimes a slight colour shift. They're normally described with titles like 'Normal,' 'Movie,' 'Bright,' etc.
This might be why something looks different. Keep in mind though that most people leave their TV on the default setting, and most don't even turn off the ugly high refresh rate mode that makes everything look like it was shot at 50fps.
 
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I'll second jax's china ball recommendation. I'd also add these bulbs to the mix:

http://www.alzodigital.com/online_store/light_bulbs_compact_fluorescent_video-lux.htm

The 85w bulb puts out a ton of light but won't light your cheap china ball on fire. The 45w bulbs make good practical replacements with higher output, although you'll want to test as they can be too big for some fixtures - the 27w bulbs should fit most. All of them will fit most cheap clamp lights and are cool enough to use in them with gels.

They all put out nice broad spectrum light, and you can get less noise using these (at 5600k) rather than household incandescents, as well as greater output without blowing a circuit. The main drawback compared to incandescent is that they can't be dimmed. They also aren't a hard light source, so their suitability depends on the look you're going for.
 
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Thanks folks,plenty of reading there! The lights on set(my house!) are the halogen downlighter type so I can't put china balls onto those.I think I will go down to B&Q (like home depot I guess?) and get the stuff to make a home made slider, and maybe look into what I can pick up for lighting. We don't seem to have clamp lights similar to the ones you guys do.Maybe a bulb holder with a long cable and a PVC stand to place it where I want it,that way I can put a china ball on it.

I'm going to have a look around for how to light night scenes too.
 
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What do you mean by night? Do you mean the scenes is for night or you have to film at night? Because you can easily get some trashbags and cover up the windows. It's a hassle but a remedy to having to wait until night time to actually film some scenes.
 
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Filming at night isn't a problem shortboy,the location is my house so no problems with that its actually setting up the lighting that I don't know how to do.


Looks like china balls on a home made light stand is the way to go.
 
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Also, polystyrene is a great (and super cheap) bounce board that you can use to bounce anything. Halogen work lights might work okay, depending on what you want.
 
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Cheers Jax(Just emailed you BTW).I'm not sure exactly what I want as yet,it needs that dark,alone in the house atmosphere but where the audience can still see what is going on.
 
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Your first short, and your biggest worry is how to light it? Ahh, you must be a DP (that's respect, not an insult). :)

You've gotten much great advice here, so I can't add much (especially since lighting ain't my strong suit), but the one thing that comes to mind is that you might make really good use of a dimmer. If you're on a tiny budget, they're too expensive to purchase, but a DIY version can be made on the cheap.
 
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Thanks chaps,you have email Jaz whenever you have a spare minute mate.

I don't know if for my first short I am over doing it,I know its my first film and it's probably not going to be brilliant,but I want to learn a lot from it and the best way to do that in my opinion is to look into every aspect of it properly and at least have the basics covered.When I make mistakes I want to know its through lack of experience not lack of effort or research.
 
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Ok having had a scout around on google,apparently my 5600k light is the temperature of daylight/sunlight? So that will be no good to me as it is,where as moon light is 4100k(despite being sunlight reflected back which has confused me a bit but hey-ho.). My interior light fittings in the house are 2800k halogen bulbs and in some shots they will be on.

I'm not sure whether I now use the in-camera white balance adjustment (how do I adjust it for shooting in moon light?) or change colours in post or make a box light on a stand with 4100k bulbs in it for the moon light scene?
 
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Moonlight is typically presented as blue, it isn't, but that reads well as moonlight in films. You can either gel the lights with a ctb gel, or you can white balance on a orangy surface, those yellow/orange office envelopes work well.

I'd suggest gelling the lights, as then the other lights in the scene won't be changed also.

Moonlight is a different temperature, because the moon only reflects some of the wavelengths it gets from the sun. Reflected light is always changed somewhat by what it's reflecting off (even a mirror).

CraigL
 
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Good luck shooting at night! My last short film had a few night-shoots into the third act of the film and I can tell you now, without experience, it comes as a tough surprise. I guess if you have done / do a few test runs, you'll be much better-suited than we were but it can be tough. The main problem I had was waiting for it to get dark - as in properly dark - because it was during that time in England where daylight lasted later into the day and we would have to work very late into the night, which caused for the scene to take three/four night shoots to complete. The end result, when done properly, is beautiful to have worked on though!
 
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Thanks folks, I am in the envious position of shooting in my own house so I can basically shoot any night I like. Thanks for the advice Craig,maybe I will try the white balance trick and see If I can get away with avoiding shots that mix the 2 light sources.If not I will just make a light box following one of the guides on youtube and find some 4100k bulbs to go in it for now.
 
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