Creating moonlight on an exterior shot!

[Joshua Hoareau]

Hey all! So I'm shooting a short film soon, and one of our most important scenes takes place out in a field at night time. Now the issue is I'll need to light the scene, so I'm thinking of trying to recreate a moonlight type effect. Can anybody suggest how I could accomplish this.
I currently have an ARRI 150W, 300W, 650W and 1000W lighting kit to work with. My current thought is using the 1000W with some gels to mimic moonlight but I don't really have to much of an idea (pretty new to lighting at night)

Any help on this would be awesome! Thanks.

 

[Dominik Muench]

Hey Joshua,

depending on what shot size you are after, you might be struggling a bit with the 1000w, it certainly wont give you enough illumination and throw to light a massive 14mm wide angle vista....however tighter shots should be fine.
Generally I'd say go with a cool color and bounce the light into something overhead....a big silk or polly board above your shooting area and then angle the 1000w upwards into the bounce. Alternatively...and again...this depends on the size of the area you want to light.....cheap paper china balls (ikea) can give you a nice effect as well.

 

[Eric M Hurt]

I agree with the above. The gels you will need to use will eat a lot of light so your throw will be limited. Also, I feel that it would be doing the poster an injustice not to mention that creating moonlight is a fairly basic skill a cinematographer should know; to that end you may want to continue honing you skills before adding the "cinematographer" tag to your job title, this might come across as rude but that's not the intention, you just don't want to misrepresent yourself

 

[adrian vedder]

Agree with Eric. That's why when people ask me what I do, I reply I pretend to make videos. Saying director or cinematographer puts me in the league of Christopher Nolan or Emmanuel Lubezki... and I feel I'm not quite there yet...

 

[Eric M Hurt]

Agree with Eric. That's why when people ask me what I do, I reply I pretend to make videos. Saying director or cinematographer puts me in the league of Christopher Nolan or Emmanuel Lubezki... and I feel I'm not quite there yet...

We could only ever hope to be grouped with those gentleman!

I'm not saying that everyone who calls themselves a cinematographer or director has to be a big player or shoot big movies. There are a ton of great, working cinematographers and directors out there who know more about lighting and directing then most of us ever will. What I'm saying is that it's becoming more and more common for folks to throw around the title of DP along with other filmmaking titles without the background knowledge and skill. This seems particularly true with "cinematographer", when in fact the job of cinematographer is arguably the most difficult on set, often holding the entire production together when a weak or first time director is doing their best to drive the show into the ground.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Sorry but a 1K with blue gel on it isn't going to light a field at night.... It would light a person in a field, but the field itself would be unlit. At best, if you staged this against a small hill or bush right behind the person's back you can light that as well as the person with those lights.

If moonlight is the only source of light in the scene, I would consider shooting this day-for-night if that's your lighting package. Or shoot the wide shot at magic hour, grad the sky very dark, and light your close-ups with that same soft blue light and live with having a black sky behind their heads a night.

Or get bigger lights and a generator. If you want blue, you're better off with HMI's than gelling tungsten if you need maximum output from the lights.

Or forget having moonlight as the source of light, which would then allow you to justify an unlit background... the scene could be lit as if by a streetlamp, car headlights, etc.

 

[adrian vedder]

We had a similar problem a while back and, as Mr. Mullen suggest, we ended up pretending it was just the street lights. We went in with 4 kinos and an HMI from far behind, and I believe that's it. I realize you don't have kinos, but again, if you play it like it was street light, the warm look it's just fine and you don't drop light because of the gels.

Here's a screen grab which is heavily compressed, but shows the light properly.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10677977/Screen grab.png

 

[Scott Crawley]

This reminds me of an AC interview with Deakins I had read. If I remember correctly, he uses a combination of CTO and straw to mimic sodium vapor. Does anyone else remember the article or edition? Am I remembering this correctly? Reference to Fargo, I think?

We had a similar problem a while back and, as Mr. Mullen suggest, we ended up pretending it was just the street lights. We went in with 4 kinos and an HMI from far behind, and I believe that's it. I realize you don't have kinos, but again, if you play it like it was street light, the warm look it's just fine and you don't drop light because of the gels.

Here's a screen grab which is heavily compressed, but shows the light properly.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10677977/Screen grab.png

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

This reminds me of an AC interview with Deakins I had read. If I remember correctly, he uses a combination of CTO and straw to mimic sodium vapor. Does anyone else remember the article or edition? Am I remembering this correctly?

There are also gels now that mimic sodium vapor

 

[Steffen Baermann]

Hey there, we did do a full moon shoot for my second short movie in the forest, have to say, we used a lot of more lights and an airstar ballon with 1200 HMI. If you don't want to rent that, then I would ask 2 questions :

1) How sensitive is your camera, as we all know, the RED Camera does like it bright (unless you have a Dragon yet) and you may want to go for a camera like a canon or Sony who handle low light better
2) Which lenses do you have, any Rokinon 1,4 ? around (that helps a lot)
3) Make the light as soft as you can, a friend of mine used to build a very big softbox with the light as much behind as possible.
4) finally, what is the setting you want to light ? Are you narrow on the person ? That is easier, also do not foreget, the background wants some light too, so it all gets a bit of information on the sensor too to avoid grain.



Steffen

 

[Scott Crawley]

There are also gels now that mimic sodium vapor

Thanks Jake

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

Hey all. Probably should have explained it a bit better. These will all be tight shots, so no need to light a whole field. I've got access to a polly board so will give that a try. Doing some tests with it all tonight.
@Erik I've done a lot of lighting before, but honestly have never been in a situation where I've had to recreate moonlight and didn't really google (or learn it prior) so figured I'd just ask on here. I agree there are a lot of people who do call themselves cinematographers and directors and have no clue, but it's always a learning curve with these things.
@David Yeah I was looking into shooting day for night, but there are a few other details (to long to go into on here) that would make it very difficult to pull off. The scene itself is kind of key to there being no light expect the moon (relevant to the story)
@Steffen Unfortunately I don't have the dragon sensor yet. I've got access to a BMCC (no better in light lol) and any kind of DSLR (trying to stay away from them on these shots though). I got access to heaps of low light lenses 1.2 and 1.4 stuff.

I do have a whole bunch (I think 13) PAR light cans sitting in my garage collecting dust that might help light the crap out of the small surrounding area that the actors are in?

 

[Ryan Skeete]

This reminds me of an AC interview with Deakins I had read. If I remember correctly, he uses a combination of CTO and straw to mimic sodium vapor. Does anyone else remember the article or edition? Am I remembering this correctly? Reference to Fargo, I think?

I believe it's CTO plus Straw Tint. Rodrigo Prieto also used that combination on the film Biutiful. I've used this combo in the past and it works wonderfully.

There are also gels now that mimic sodium vapor

Rosco has a gel called Urban Vapor (3152) that does the same thing.
http://youtu.be/o0ACnfdhPks?t=1m18s

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

These are some screenshots from the film 'Signs' which is a perfect example of what I'm trying to achieve. Hopefully this helps.
Shot 3 is pretty much as wide as I plan on shooting.

 

[Robert Hart]

You might get lucky if you look for an abandoned overgrown block near an industrial estate where there is widely separated strong overhead area lighting plus objects you can hide other lesser pinpoints behind. Caryards and rail interchange yards are good candidates for starters. Port facilities can be handy but maybe lots of noise as they may work 24 hours. Broadmeadows near the old ROH wheel factory or Ford plant may be a candidate. If you can stand a long hike by car, Pt. Cook RAAF base might be a candidate, maybe the old Essendon Airport surrounds if it has not yet been infilled by industrial longterm lease development by now. Down in the gully near Fisherman's bend might be a candidate but probably as noisy as hell from the traffic on the big bridge. Google Earth could be your friend in this quest. Shot 3 looks like there was a strong distant light like a 18K HMI at least for the depth of area, for the area background, separate lighting for the actors and the shot maybe graded darker. You don't have those resources. The only other thing I can suggest for your wide shot only, is go out somewhere and make a stills image, time exposure if necessary of an actual location under moonlight, shoot your live action without any area lighting with a high overhead rim light on your actors, soft light onto them and a small hard light to make eyeshine on them and and devise some way of composing the still image and your live action together. For the wide, your camera would have to be locked off and the actors live within the frame. Follows will look un-natural against your background plate. I guess another tricky thing you mioght do is go old-school and shoot a still image of a moonlit environment, then use a projector to reproduce the image on a screen in backdrop and make sure it is in soft focus when your actors play in front of it. With that arrangement you can do small follows if the background image is on a large enough screen. Data projectors have an unfortunate refresh cycle which may show up as a flicker or travelling scan in your background image. Your projector would probably have to be a type with an incandescent bulb and maybe blue filter to take out the warm colour. I am a dumb mug at this business so please heed the advice of others over any suggestions I make. In the following short film, the area light used for the moon area lighting was a rented industrial trailer-generator with four-lamp elevating tower on it with blue gels over the lamps. ------------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOWEICWd5so -------------- The director was going through a gore-fest phase so be warned, it is not pretty and fairly explicit as to depicted knife violence. From memory, the original camera footage with default look applied showed a green spike in the "moonlight" which has been graded out in the final product.

 

[Hal Long]

Joshua, the first two pics seem highly achievable with your lighting package. The third may be more problematic and require a day for night shot. It's a big area you've indicated out the door. The first two (if you have foliage or corn as in the pics) could be done with a 1K with 1/2 CTB (or your pick of night blue) as a side or back light on the foliage. The important thing is to keep it off the front of your background. Think silhouette. You might also try putting that 1K + CTB through a silver reflector. With the light on a cardilini on a stand leg, shoot it up into the reflector. This gives a nice spread for moonlight. For the key on your talent, I'd look at a 650 off a white beaded bounce board. A shiny board or 2nd silver reflector would also help you add a little fill and get your talent's eyes to pop.

If you can time a shot similar to the 3rd at magic hour, you might be able to pull it off with your package, especially if the sun will set behind or in a back light on the background. You might also consider warming up the tungsten sources so the setting sun will read cooler than key.

Good luck!

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

@Robert Hart I think I'm going to go for the mobile light tower! Pretty cheap to rent in Melbourne and says it can light up to 6 acres! Question is I'm presuming those light would generate a heap of heat. How could I put gels on them without them melting or you reckon gels should be fine as you guys did that on yours?

 

[Xavier Henselmann]

Night gel

Night gel

1/4 blue or 1/2 blue(ctb)&1/4 cyan or steel blue , that's how we do it on The Mentalist

 

[Robert Hart]

From memory, they used fairly large gel sheets and hung them out from the lamps somewhat to achieve distance from the heat and permit airflow. The tower had four lamps on it. It was a four-cylinder diesel engine that one usually associates with 20Kva to 30Kva gensets. If you are recording critical location sound, be aware these are not silent pack generators in the film-industry class and there will be some mechanical resonance relayed off the trailer structure. That said, they are pretty good these days. You might need to scout your location for several sites to park your generator according to which way the wind is blowing and park it downwind. The fans most commonly blow outwards through a grille. Some of the following comment will not concern you as you will be using a tower on a trailer but worth mentioning for safety reasons for others who may use other machines. The groundlevel exhaust on some sled-mounted gensets also exits in that same direction as the fan airflow. Be aware that ground-level exhausts may set fire to anything they are near so make sure there is no flammable junk occupying space around the exhaust if it is on a separate trailer. If it is on the ground, clear a firebreak and be watchful for sparks when the generator enters its load state as this is when they most frequently occur. The trailer lighting towers I think have a vertical exhaust stack with a flap on it. These also represent a spark hazard when they first enter their load state after start-up. Write yourself a fire plan. It is that time of the year. It will be helpful both for noise and cooling of the generator for the fan-end of the generator to be pointed away downwind. Check with a sheet of paper to see which way the generator blows as the grilles on some of the Chinese Ricardo powered gensets are identical in and out. They had no problem with flicker with the lighting tower they used. It might be prudent to have your rental vendor confirm the generator is accurate to 50Hz. Those with electronic governors will be accurate and preferred. Some of the Chinese gensets will have a mechanical governor. When in good condition they are stable enough to avoid lamp flicker but the rpm under load may need to be checked. You can check this during the day using a video camera in 25P ( for Australia ) with 1/250th second shutter, a good strong small light and a white timing mark painted on the fan pulley. White-out or Tippex is good as it dries off quickly. White gaffa tape tends to come off. Be careful to check the power frequency of the lighting tower. It should be 1500rpm ( 50Hz ) for Australia but may not be if it is a lighting tower for standalone work never to be hooked into an Australian mains system. In that event it may be 1800rpm ( 60Hz ) which may strobe or flicker the camera image. In that event and if there are no other choices, you might need to shoot at 24P with a shutter speed slow enough to consistently cross into two power cycles for each frame. Please again heed the better advice of others on this topic. I shot this short clip last year. I found it was helpful when fine-tuning to add some flat panel washers between the knurled thumbnuts and the seat surfaces they impinge upon otherwise the movement is a bit gritty. One spring washer between the knurled thumbnut and the flat washer seems sufficient for secure lock-off after adjustment. I did not put a spring washer in on the loaded side. This spoils the adjustment as it pulls down flat during the lock-off. If you are nervous, run a bead of sealastic across the two thumbnuts and the bracket after adjustment. Keep it off the actual threads on the adjustment rod. ------------ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaZDu1Nrc90

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

@Robert Just want to thankyou heaps with your suggestion! I ended up renting a tower light and it worked perfectly!