Doing Post Artificial Darkness Scenes with lit areas.

[Wayne Morellini]

I'm interested in doing artificial blackout scenes of a car travelling suburban streets and motorway. As it would be a pocket budget I can't make any special arrangements. But I can afford resolve.

I was thinking I could film normally and in post to adjust the levels by compressing down levels below the headlight level towards blackness of a dim moonlit night then put the headlights on full. But then the issue becomes I would loose the car itself to blackness. I was then thinking of maybe drawing an close area around the car and bring up.the levels in there. But then you are going to get a lit border (and I don't want it to look like it has hot rod a light kit under it). I could try to fill it, but the distance and angle travelled by the car in the footage would be too far (notbsaying I wouldn't try it, especially if I could narrow the beam as it traveled to keep a good level).

Another idea that just occurred to me is to swap out the head light bulbs for blue light ones (or better green, if legal, though blue would have less interference with highway lighting). Use this for car fill too, and then treat it like a green screen scenario to isolate the area which to independently control the levels. But maybe I could use the cars color to isolate a lot of it.

How should I look at doing this? Thanks.

 

[Marc Wielage]

They do this very well nowadays with green screen. If you want to see superb-looking greenscreen car interior work, check out Ray Donovan on Showtime -- that's pretty much the best green screen car work I've ever seen for TV.

If you mean a car drive-by shot, what exactly are you trying to do? This has pretty much been perfected for 80-90 years, as far as I know -- not much has changed except the cameras, the cars, and the roads. If you were trying to avoid blowing out the car headlights, you could in theory either replace the bulbs or go to an ND filter, but most of the time, I think they just let it go. We can always pull highlights down by themselves in final color. I usually do that anyway, just to avoid letting bright highlights get radioactive.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

The simplest low-budget way of doing this would be what is called 'poor man's process.' Basically, you put the picture car in a dark studio or a pitch black open space at night. Then have the actors pretend to drive the car and perform the scene while you film from a tripod from various angles. Set up moving lights around the car to simulate passing street lights, car headlights traveling in the opposite direction, brake lights from the vehicles up ahead. For the headlights in the rear window behind the actors, you can rig up pairs of MR-16 light bulbs, LEDs, parcans, or even bare incandescent bulbs and swing them gently back and forth from fishing line. You can also have someone occasionally push on the hood of the car to create some car movement and even create rain rigs for the windshield which can help obscure the background detail.

If you want, you can combine this method with greenscreen behind the visible windows, though in that case it may be better to shoot your driving plates first so that you can match the set lighting to the plate. At that point, all the VFX shot parameters come into play - matching lenses and camera distance, angle, height; locking down or stabilizing the plate footage, etc. Chroma spill from the greenscreen on the shiny surfaces of the car, windows, and the actors can be issues.

Poor man's process is simpler in that it's all done in-camera. 'Mad Men' used this technique very well quite frequently. It's a fairly cheap and safe method because the car does not have to be moving, and the camera does not have to be rigged to the vehicle.

I think trying to shoot night exterior driving scenes 'for real' on public roads is not a good idea on a low-budget project. I've had to do it quite a bit unfortunately and not only is it unsafe for the actors, crew, and the general public, but it usually doesn't look (or sound) as good as when you have full control over your environment. If that happens to be a process trailer rig with a police escort and rolling lockdowns for the streets, then great. But most low-budget shoots don't have those luxuries. So creating something simple which you can control usually works out best.

I also think that trying to key real headlights in the frame behind the actors by gelling them green or blue simply won't work. The headlights are simply too bright relative to your exposure, so you will have clipped color channels and not get the colors you intend; the lights themselves will be out of focus due to being nearly wide open on the lens and the intensity of the lights will change from moment to moment; the blue or green light emitted by the headlights will spill on your actors and the interior of the car, contaminating your key. If the goal is simply to render them darker on camera, then you can replace them with lower intensity bulbs or put ND gel on the covers - of course, this makes the car no longer street legal and safe to drive. The other thing most people do is light up the actors to balance with the ambient light and let any extreme highlights from passing headlights go. Of course, then they are blinded by the light in their eyes and can't drive safely. You see the problem.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

They do this very well nowadays with green screen. If you want to see superb-looking greenscreen car interior work, check out Ray Donovan on Showtime -- that's pretty much the best green screen car work I've ever seen for TV.

If you mean a car drive-by shot, what exactly are you trying to do? This has pretty much been perfected for 80-90 years, as far as I know -- not much has changed except the cameras, the cars, and the roads. If you were trying to avoid blowing out the car headlights, you could in theory either replace the bulbs or go to an ND filter, but most of the time, I think they just let it go. We can always pull highlights down by themselves in final color. I usually do that anyway, just to avoid letting bright highlights get radioactive.

Thanks Mark but it's not that. It's as described, filming a car in the frame driving around in a blackout but taking out most of the external lighting except the headlights, but leaving some hint of car shape reflections and color as a part moon lit night.

As far as internal shots, I'd lock off the camera in the back to give s few seconds reference orientation footage of the journey. It is pretty much a non acting part that links two locations together.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I could film some of this at twilight instead and brought the levels down, except too much traffic. Most filming will have to be 1am-3am+, actually 2-3am is about the only time there isn't some regular traffic. As well though I could pretend the sunlight was moonlight, then other light sources wouldn't match.

If I had to go poor man I'd cut to an external unlit location in the country, but not as good, you can't reference the city road architecture you are supposed to be traveling from, and suddenly are in the country.

 

[Björn Benckert]

A pair of good plyers and a some screwdrivers will do...

Or simply plate things out so you can composite together something that does not include the lit areas.

 

[Alberto Guglielmi]

I am not really sure I understand fully what you want to do. How about using HDRx in camera to an extreme, and then composite it together with masks, so that your car is exposed the way you want it, but all the other lights are down?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Many street lights and many houses with lighting, so patches of light everywhere including most areas I want to reference. Two other options just occurred to me. Wherever such functionality is available I don't know:

To map light levels and average them out and down outside the headlight level. A mathematical data processing function. Then just dark patch the spots of actual lights on houses etc.

Another mathematical processing function would be to map the light areas in 3D and subtract them. Should be more precise then the one above. But also to indetify areas stationary and not moving relative to other objects as non desirable light and completely automatically remove them. As the only non stationary light source should be the car head lights and reflections from their light, those will be realistically preserved. Even with the simple light map above, the stationary light sources canbe defined as those that move with the scene, and objects in it, over x fames. Again preserving much of the car headlight lighting.

Anything that does this sort of work?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Sorry, Alberto, was still writing during your reply. That sort of thing yes. Haven't done any of this sort of thing before, but can see it mapped in my mind.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Basically, am I on the right track with my.thinking above? And, how do I archieve them is the other question? I should he able to learn and follow from there. This maybe the only complex effect in the whole movie.