Can you extend the golden hour?

[Richard Lowther]

How to extend the golden 45 mins?
Hi,
I am shooting a scene that will take at least 1.5 hours to shoot and we want the warm golden hour soft lighting look that only lasts for about 45 mins.
Am I on the right track to emulate the golden hour by doing the following:

1) Use a heavy shade cloth for the first 45 mins or so of our 90 min shoot such as bleached muslin.
2) Use large 12k HMIs with at least half CTO or staw in front of them.
3) shoot all HMIs through lots of defusion
4) Use 12x12 negative black around talent as much as possible to cut down on the bluer ambient light.

Any other input that may help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks

 

[David Battistella]

FLUT



David


On Number 3. I would not diffuse too much. I find the characteristic of that light is harder and low with long shadows cast. I like the idea of warming up the light, but I if you are going to do as you suggest, why not control all (or as much of the light as you can.

SHoot your masters with the best light and then match the coverage to that light with your HMI's.

d

 

[Richard Lowther]

Thanks

 

[Matt W.]

I don't know your budget/how fast you move but this seems unnecessarily complex.

As mentioned before, shoot your masters with the best light and then (once the sun has set, during "blue hour"), augment your CUs as needed to emulate how your masters look. If you run low on time, you may need to frame your CUs tight and cheat the backgrounds. Don't use a polarizer at all and rate fast (800ISO) and shoot near wide open to start so you can drag out the daylight while retaining a cohesive look. This may require starting with some NDs.

The sun is between 1800K and 3500K at golden hour, assuming no clouds. The skylight is very blue (8000K+). So you have a real contrast between soft blue fill and hard orange key (unless it's overcast/hazy, golden hour light is a hard source). HMIs run blue/green so I'd consider saving money and choosing uncorrected tungsten units (if your generators can supply the wattage). The light might look a little more orange than is naturalistic, but not too bad so long as your don't run too much cable (which results in a dimming/orange effect). But, really: take a reading with a color temperature meter at your location of choice (on a clear day, near golden hour) and then choose your lights based on that and then adjust based on how things look the day of. (If it's hazier, maybe light a little less orange and bring in a very light diffusion frame near the talent.)

One other reason not to diffuse the lights is that you want your beams to appear near-parallel, because the sun is at an effectively infinite distance w/r/t shadow angle. So you want sources with lots of punch at long distances. For this reason, I would choose par cans. Pars have softer shadows than fresnels in the first place and also far more throw at great distances than fresnels (and WAY more than any soft source).

On the kind of budgets I work with (i.e. zero), I'd light with a few VNSP pars on c-stands (only like five or six feet off the ground and lined up in a straight line facing perpendicular to how they're lined up, at the furthest distance from the talent that you get the correct amount of light). It's important that they are in a straight line facing perpendicular that line and not grouped together facing different angles to truly emulate how the sun's beams look, even if it seems unintuitive to do this as you're emulating a single source.

You can assume there would be shadows (from trees, buildings, etc.) and thus areas of relative darkness during golden hour, as the sun is so low in the sky, so you can space your lights out so long as one hits the talent and the others light up the background and so use fewer lights and get nice orange "pools" of light. Make sure your talent is positioned to be hit by only one light, though, since overlapping shadows on faces and in focus will be a giveaway that you're faking. This is where a roughly planar background (side of a building, etc.) will be a nice idea for CUs because you only have to light that and not a large area (say, a cornfield, which would require a lot more light to fill realistically) and so get away with using just a few lights. So cheat accordingly, based on time and grip package. Use reflectors all over the place, even in masters (bouncing the sun) if you so choose. Negative fill is dramatic but might be too unkind on your actors' faces and a big reflector close can also serve as a nice eye light for CUs. Bead board is nice and you can use the silver side for wide shots and the white side (much closer to the talent) for CUs.

Full disclosure: I'm not really a professional; I'm just desperately hoping to get into film school and so learning as much as I can beforehand. For this reason, my set-up is very low-budget specific and I've only used these techniques on very low-budget films. I wouldn't even bother to share except I've had to do this kind of thing before (in a more limited way and in fifteen minutes on the day of, with admittedly mediocre results). If you can rent 20k pars or maxibrutes you can probably figure out something better and more flexible following a similar technique.

 

[Ryan Patch]

Matt -

Love your attitude, man. Keep it up and keep shooting, your reel is great (if it's truly only low budget stuff)... where are you located?

Richard -

Dunno if your the director or DP, but even with a lot of fenangeling, you aren't going to make golden hour last for much longer than 45 minutes. Matt's right that you should start wide-open and stop down using NDs to maintain consistency, but that will really buy you maybe 30 more minutes. Once the sun is gone, it's gone and you're going to need to supplement that glow.

My advice, from a director's POV, is cut shots. Have 1-3 shots lined up, begin setup at 3pm, all actors rehearsed and perfectly blocked by an hour before you need to shoot. Just be prepared, and don't be too ambitious.

 

[Matt W.]

Thanks Ryan, I'm located in Boston now (probably why I'm not really working much) but hoping to relocate to LA eventually. My reel is a mix of stuff, no-budget student films and a few micro-budget features--90% dvx and hvx. I've been fortunate to work with some talented people, though, and that matters more than money or gear (though it only gets you so far).

And of course you're right: cutting shots is usually the best answer.

 

[Michael Romano]

In regards to color, I might let the light change as nature does it and then correct the color afterwards. As perviously mentioned, there will be a huge contrast in the sky vs the subjects if you warm them up a lot with gels. Letting the natural light take over will keep that balance the same and place the lions share of the work on your colorist without the need for a sky matte.

 

[Richard Lowther]

Thanks for all the great feed back

 

[Jon Chema]

Matt -

Love your attitude, man. Keep it up and keep shooting, your reel is great (if it's truly only low budget stuff)... where are you located?

Richard -

Dunno if your the director or DP, but even with a lot of fenangeling, you aren't going to make golden hour last for much longer than 45 minutes. Matt's right that you should start wide-open and stop down using NDs to maintain consistency, but that will really buy you maybe 30 more minutes. Once the sun is gone, it's gone and you're going to need to supplement that glow.

My advice, from a director's POV, is cut shots. Have 1-3 shots lined up, begin setup at 3pm, all actors rehearsed and perfectly blocked by an hour before you need to shoot. Just be prepared, and don't be too ambitious.

Agree with ya Ryan. His attitude is great! I'm in a similar situation. Still in school, still working with very low budgets but nevertheless with very good people. This forum is a great tool for everyone- even people who've been in the industry for 30+ years. I think if you don't learn something from it then you need to!