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What are some good lights for night lighting?

H

harmonica44

I want to shoot a horror chase sequence at night, and found a nice secluded park location. I want to be able to light a scene enough so that an actor can run for three seconds at least, passing through light, before having to cut to another shot and relighting.

I want to be able to shoot at f/11 on a steadicam, with the ISO not too noisy like 800, and the shutter speed at 1/50, giving me that classic more film-like look. I have the Canon T2i.

So is it possible to buy lights that are not too expensive for a microbudget short, say maybe $400 dollars, but it depends on how many I would need. The more brighter, the less I will probably need I am guessing. I was told LED lights and HMI lights before, but the HMIs are too expensive, and not really sure if LED would be what I am looking for, for this type of exposure. I am off to try to 1000 watt halogens next, but not sure if they will be bright enough.

Anything that can work? Thanks.
 
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Okay thanks, but I have tried changing day into night and it doesn't look good. I looked it Andrew Kramer's video for it, but only seems to work halfway, for me, and the image still looks very dim. It doesn't look like night, it just looks like daytime, dimmed down.

Also I want the chase to go from out of the park, into the city streets at night, and if I shoot those day for night as well, I would have to light up every car light and street light in post. That would take a very long time, and matching day for night in the park, with real night shooting, downtown, does not work so well and you can see the difference in the matching.

Any thoughts on this? If I do day for night downtown how do I turn on all the streetlights without having to take months to do it or hire an expert to make it look convincing?

As far eliminating shadows goes, I like the night shadows and it gives a cool cold look to a night scene, so having sun illuminating too much does not look good, at least I don't think.

Also shooting at magic hour is much more expensive since magic hour is literally only an hour. I am working on someone else's movie right now, than want to do my project next. But on this current movie they are shooting for one hour a day, every night which isn't a lot and I think it would be better to shoot at a time, where you get more time into it. Plus magic hour is more expensive cause some days it's cloudy, some days it's not and you have to wait for the weather to match, which can take days, and delays production. At night you can light a scene to look the same whether there are clouds or not in the sky.

I looked into hiring as well, but could not find someone who said that their lights were bright enough in my city so far. I can keep looking.
 
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I was shooting on my SLR for the first time in a long while yesterday (no budget for much else). We were shooting interior day, and I had a few KinoFlos to augment window light etc. and reflectors/blacks to shape the light.

I was shooting ISO 400 (1/50 shutter) and I was sitting around f/2.8 most of the time for the exposure I wanted. That's what I wanted to shoot at. It was an overcast day, so windows were all pretty soft and lighting was consistent (i.e. no bright sun to contend with).

I really only had enough lighting power to augment what was already there. I ended up quite happy with how it looks.

I can tell yu though, that had I attempted to close down to f/11, I would have barely had an image. So, I wish you luck attempting to shoot f/11 in the middle of the night with only small cheap lights.

My suggestion would be: wait til you have the budget for high powered lights, shoot with a larger aperture, shoot day for night, or re-write and change the shots you need.
 
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How wide is the shot/how much needs to be lit? Is it meant to be moonlight, or can there be streetlight? Try utilising the little moon and streetlight around, as well as lighting yourself.

For that little money, you either need to hire something pretty powerful (I would guess minimum 2.5k if you're using fresnels - though I've never tried to light a night scene at f11 o.O), open your aperture a fair bit more than f11, or invest in a bunch of worklights - a cheap way to get a lot of light (but quite hard to control).

If you want to buy, you could even invest in some old theatre lights. They're relatively cheap on eBay, and afaik are usually tungsten balanced.

How are you going to rig said lights? Getting light up high isn't particularly easy, especially if you need several and/or they're big lights. You'll need to rent stands and sandbags - which won't cost a heap, but at your budget point is considerable.

As jax said, shooting at f11 is madness. My DoP on my last shoot was able to follow someone at f4 on a glidecam (and he's not a proper glidecam operator) without much difficulty... It was a slow moving shot, but f11 still seems extreme.

Day for night and/or opening up is way more feasible. Day for night does work well if done properly - you need to do lots of tests to understand how to make it work though.
 
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Okay thanks. I was told car headlights by others but they are too low down, and would like to get the lights higher to creat a streetlight point of view. Unless I am suppose to remove the lights from cars?

I am going for an urban street sort of feel so I thought that orange streetlights would be best. Thinking probably it would be best to use tungsten lights and gel them orange. I can try a wide lens, but worried the chase might look too spread out.

What lens was used in this chase at 2:51 into it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrkerh77MYY

Is that a wide lens? What about the close up of Bond's face at 3:07? That's probably a 50mm at least though.

Basically I want to shoot a chase stalking scene, through the park and back onto the city street, but want enough room to keep both the villain and the victim in focus, when they fight... Or keep one in focus when he runs. Another thing is people. It's hard to shoot during the day, cause there are a lot of people around before dark. It can be done if we wait a while for them to pass and go a lot but not sure how much they would leave a fake knife fight and chase being shot, alone.
 
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I looked it Andrew Kramer's video for it, but only seems to work halfway, for me, and the image still looks very dim. It doesn't look like night, it just looks like daytime, dimmed down.
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You're doing it wrong.

how do I turn on all the streetlights without having to take months to do it or hire an expert to make it look convincing?
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It's all part of the grade. Slightly more advanced, but still part of the grade.

Also shooting at magic hour is much more expensive since magic hour is literally only an hour.
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bahumbug. So it's more expensive to shoot with natural lighting than to hire lights? It's one sequence. Have a plan to shoot it within 1 hour and execute it. You can also shoot in the morning. It's all about diffused light. Hell, shoot while it's overcast but the weather is a little harder to control.

If your color grader is good enough, shoot at any time during the day.

If not day for night, HMI's are your next best option.

Failing that, go back and do a rewrite.

Good luck with your project.
 
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Dear H44,

for the past 3 years we all have been encouraging and advising you.
At least 50% of your questions seem to be about shooting at night.

I have 3 tips and 1 question:

1) Look where you can rent dedo lights.
They are very expensive but give the most light per Watt. (i.e. they have a 575W light that yields as much light as an 5kW Arri).

2) Write something in daylight and make that first!!!!!!!
The number of questions about shooting at night is an indication you aren't ready to shoot at night. You keep looking for a magical solution that isn't there.
Why do I tell you this?
Because you'll need the experience before you spend so much effort, time (of yourself and others) and money on shooting at night, only to make some mistakes due to lack of experience in more easy circumstances.

3) Gelling tungsten to orange means you will lose a lot as light, so you'll need more powerfull lights. (Gelling always means losing power.)

4) Did you already test ISO400 at f11 at home at night? How did it turn out?
 
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Okay thanks. Perhaps I don't need to gel the lights as long as I turn the color temperature up in the camera.

When you say tested at home do you mean under natural house lighting, or with tunsgten lights? I did 500 watt tungsten at f5.6, and that was enough light. I haven't bought any 1000 watt yet.

Well I will keep trying to pull day for night off in post. I am working on someone else's movie right now, and they are doing day for night. If that one turns out well and the day for night works, I have a better idea I hope. I will keep trying for that.
 
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harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks. I was told car headlights by others but they are too low down, and would like to get the lights higher to creat a streetlight point of view. Unless I am suppose to remove the lights from cars?
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Well, okay Mr. Kubrick, get MGM to cut you another check.

------

You'd have a cool post-prod story about getting as all your friends to show up with their (parents) cars and light up an entire block for cupcakes, but alas you're looking to open your pocketbook, Hollywood style.
 
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harmonica44 said:
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When you say tested at home do you mean under natural house lighting, or with tunsgten lights? I did 500 watt tungsten at f5.6, and that was enough light. I haven't bought any 1000 watt yet.

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I mean testing at home: in the dark only using the light you would like to use with the settings you intend to use.

Did you check the distance of the 500 watt light?
Did you test what it does when it's further away? (The square root law of light!)
Did you test how much light you lose when you gel it?

I suggested testing at home, because there you have electricity and it never rains ;)
 
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harmonica44 said:
What lens was used in this chase at 2:51 into it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrkerh77MYY

Is that a wide lens? What about the close up of Bond's face at 3:07? That's probably a 50mm at least though.
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It's looking like something around the 24mm range to me, possibly even a bit wider. Assuming the actor's about 10' away, and that they're shooting around f/4.0ish, there's 11'6" of depth. Easy to keep things in focus, let alone the fact that they would have had camera assistants.
I'm not sure if it's meant to be nighttime, but that don't look like nighttime to me ;)

The CU of Bond at 3:07 is rear projection, so neither he nor the camera are moving. They've lit him to match the background, and would be attempting to shoot at the same stop as they were on location.

It's like old school green screen.
 
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