Any tips for shooting fire?

[Jim Hoffman]

How do YOU go about setting exposures for different scenes incorporating big fire and/or explosions. Situations where you have no flame tests because you are destroying the set and or props with the effect. If you get one shot to nail exposure what tips do you have? I've got 2 cameras to use so I can get some backup there. Digital seems tough because of the clipping. Also I believe the purple flares can be a bit of an issue in a darker scene.

Suggestions?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Fire is very tough. I worked on and off on Lost for the first four seasons, and even from 35mm negative, getting a good balance on fire at night, trying to avoid letting the highlights clip and yet retain a solid exposure for the actors, was a huge challenge every week. DP John Bartley was a master of getting this right in the shows he shot (and is still shooting for the final season).

My best advice would be: use more fill than normal, expose for the highlights, and plan to crush the mids and blacks in the final color correction. Adding contrast later in post is easy, but you can never get highlight detail back once it's blown out.

I would try a limited test with maybe a small piece of the set and do it as a test with real fire, maybe with one exposure on one camera and at least a half-stop lower on the second camera, using the histograms as an early warning detector.

I had a similar situation on the Billy Friedkin film Bug, where the climax of the film involved a tremendous explosion and massive fire, covered with (I think) five cameras. The bad news was, the fire quickly got out of control and burned about twice as big and bright as everybody expected, and the local fire department had to come in to put it out. The good news is, the film had enough dynamic range that we were able to drop the level back down in the D.I. and retain all the detail and subtleties in the highlights.

If this had been digital, and wound up overexposed a couple of stops, it would have been a disaster. But the end results looked fine, simply because of the nature of film.

I would strongly advise that you upgrade to the MX chip, because the extra exposure range will definitely help you. And consider breaking down the coverage so that, in the event the wide shots get out of control, you can always go back later and get medium shots and reaction shots to help provide cutaways and more options for editing.