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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

If you had to gaff with practicals...

L

Luke Kokinos

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So, I'm working on a suspense feature and I'm having some thoughts for shooting style and gaffing. Unfortunately, the two conflict a little. For the shooting I need to do long tracking shots to get the right effect. Sadly, the film takes place in a motel and we have only the budget to shoot on location. Eight foot ceilings are the silent killer for me. So, I suggested to my gaffer that we go to a home improvement store and buy a load of standard bulbs and testing them with the RED One and see what we like, and when we load in just replace all the bulbs in the fixtures in the location.

I think it could work...But don't have much confidence. I want contrast and all that, and we can set additional practicals in the rooms if we need to. Mostly it's just the problem need to not show light stands and fresnels every time we move the camera, and working in close quarters on location, that happens more often than not. So, do we bite the bullet and light it with real fixtures? Or could the practicals only thing work?
Thanks,
 
I would try to use the hotel windows as much as possible, you can always use praticals as the key. But kickers will help a lot. 8ft ceilings is what you get at location in a hotel. There's always a way to hide a unit.
 
If you are going to use the windows, you can use a mix of water and dish soap and gel the glass. This way you can control the incoming light from daylight.

I don't know how large the windows are, or if some of it is during the day, but, each shoot is different.

Best

- E
 
I am actually on a film now with Lou Diamond Phillips directing and we have 12 days at a Motel. Funny you mention it, I to will be up against the same thing again. The good news is its doable and if your RED ONE IS AN MX than it shouldn't be much of a problem for the camera, as far as the set up, I would go with practicals and either a Kelvin temp balanced LED panel with a dimmer control or my favorite is the China ball with a 100w incandescent bulb and a dimmer control switch!!! that should do it for a decent fill and practicles will fill in perfectly. I would light at an ISO rating of 800 and light to that....may need to play with shutter depending on lens choice
 
Reveal light bulbs are used a lot. They live somewhere between 3200 and 5600 kelvin. The advantage is you still get a warm tungsten fill but it is much closer to the CT of the daylight.
 
All good suggestions above. +1 on the Reveals and windows.

An additional thought Luke. I don't know the tone or time of day of the piece, but if there are practicals in the room you may want to "enhance" them for your tighter shots. Meaning have your scene's lighting established on a wide with the sources, but punch them up with same temp. You'll still get the feeling of the room, but you'll have the ability to control your contrast, ratios, and depth for mids and closeups. Sort of a mix between working with ambient light and artificial sources you bring in. You may have to shoot with a wider aperture on the wides to balance out that look.

One more thought. When you block out the shot and if there's a key moment where there's some heavy dialog or something like that maybe add an additional practical to that area of the room. They make crazy LED and CFL disc lights now you can pretty much mount anywhere with tape even. You can easily fit one or two on a wall or ceiling and have them look natural in a motel/hotel setting.
 
I've been in similar situations, but have had mixed results. Curious to see what you come up with!

For day interiors you can get pretty far with an HMI out the window, through a bit of 1/4 CTO and some light diff, and then use the reveal lights or even 5000K CFLs or whatnot for your practical sources (and as a bit of fill) and that's it. But it's stylized and potentially lower key than you might want. Obviously consider what style you want, how much contrast, whether you want to mix color temperature, etc. first. Rate the key light significantly brighter than the stop you're shooting at and use it as a backlight/offside key that's a stop or two over or so, I guess. That's what I like. Use flags to block the real sun. Or cover the windows with venetian blinds, open them halfway, and shoot at night for day with big HMIs through tracing paper--my least favorite approach, but the most controllable. There's some wacky thing (eyebrows?) they used on the Fighter. Some bounce configuration that emulates daylight well but I don't know what it is.

For night interiors I think you can light with practicals okay. I dig using streaks and tips on the bulbs (PH-211s I think). That way you can paint them darker selectively. You can paint the backs darker so they don't light up the walls too bright but they light the subjects in the room, kind of using them as backlights positioned around the room with the backs of the bulbs painted black. I do this kind of thing so much, or even wrapping gels and gaffer's tape selectively around CFLs, turning the sides of overhead lights black so they work as backlights and top lights rather than toppy floodlights that spill everywhere. But that is SUPER low budget guerrilla style. You can buy practicals and collaborate with art to position the practicals where you'd normally like edge lights to be, like at the corners of the room. If you have lampshades they might blow out; I feel like you'll definitely want to rate no slower than 800 ISO and you might want to use HDR or shoot on a camera with better highlight rolloff, like the Alexa. This kind of lighting works a lot better when you have the highlight latitude to handle the sources and subject in frame at once.

From there, chinese lanterns are amazing. Float two, both on dimmers, maybe with 150w bulbs and skirt them. Then use those as offside keys, motivated by the practicals in the corners. Never shy away from hiding one on the floor if you're okay with a creepy look. Put one near a hotel room's bedside lamp and then skirt the edges to shape it, find "L" shapes in the room where you can hide them. And you can just hang them off stuff, too.

You can always bounce something off the one corner of a ceiling that's never going to be in frame or even construct a book light there (assuming you won't have camera shadows) if you want to add a little fill. But for dramatic material I find lights behind the camera rarely add much anyway.

And this is just me, but if I'm moving fast I always have a pizza box at the ready so I can fill (usually fill raccoon eyes) for CUs without a big relight. Alternately I'll use the silver side of bead board to bounce a nice edge light off sunlight or an HMI coming through a window for the CU/MCU.

Also, you can do wacky stuff if the lights are off at night. 1/2 CTS and 1/2 CTO combo to get a sodium vapor look or a 1/2 CTB 1/2 plus green combo for mercury and put that out the window. I love those looks. Use one as fill, one as key, green vs. orange kind of crazy... pet those gels on fresnels with the lens removed and put some glycerine/water mix on the window like raindrops -- wow! Actually I haven't tried that but I plan to once I get the money.
 
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To clarify. The film takes place at night. And since it will be winter, leaving a fresnel in the snow to fill the window for five hours is a little undoable. We'll probably be shooting with Zeiss T1.5 primes on an MX R1. Something that could help is using smaller fixtures and using them for fill...? There's always a bed or a desk to hide them behind, I suppose, but that will only get us some bounce off the ceiling.
 
Just do what I recommended above then: practicals strategically placed as potential edge lights/offside keys, bulbs tamed with streaks and tips, and then as keys use skirted chinese lanterns (on c-stands or on the floor). Don't over light. Practicals and one or two chinese lanterns will do fine for you; you should even get enough stop to shoot around t2 or t2.8 with no problem. This style requires good highlight handling... the chinese lanterns may play a more prominent role than you'd like if you need them so you don't clip but can still get an exposure.

Arri fresnels are water resistant. I've used them in the rain plenty, not that I'd recommend it If you put something over one to block it you can absolutely use it as a source motivated by a street light even on a rainy night or with snow. There's no reason to if you can use lights in the room, though.
 
They're deceptive, because they're tinted blue, but if I remember right the Reveal bulbs were much warmer than you would think, like 2900. I took color meter readings when they first came out (don't quote me on the numbers, it's been a long time), and they were still very warm.

If you want closer to daylight bulbs get BCAs. Any rental house should have them in stock, they're right around 4800K (though they get warmer as they age) and they're way cheaper the the KinoFlo CFLs.
 
Jeremy 0sbern said:
They're deceptive, because they're tinted blue, but if I remember right the Reveal bulbs were much warmer than you would think, like 2900. I took color meter readings when they first came out (don't quote me on the numbers, it's been a long time), and they were still very warm.

If you want closer to daylight bulbs get BCAs. Any rental house should have them in stock, they're right around 4800K (though they get warmer as they age) and they're way cheaper the the KinoFlo CFLs.
Click to expand...

Thanks! This is great to know. The flip side of BCAs is they are super bright with a mild green cast and they're near-discontinued. But I loved these things for day interiors.

On the cheap, triphosphor CFLs aren't bad. And like $3 each at home depot.
 
get strands of LED christmas lights, wad them up, and use the wads as fill lights in front of camera..
I also suggest aluminum reflectors, classic photoflood 4800K...
http://www.filmtools.com/ebw500wattge.html
and 1/8 or blue and light grid cloth scraps in front of the reflector...
the light grid is not going to catch fire.. and this should look closer to daylght..
probably get 6-10 hours burn time on these EBWs..
 
Workshop clamp lights with normal bulbs or tungsten/daylight CFLs. You would just need to tie and route electrical cables and multi-outlet power strips. Other go-to is china balls placed and dangled strategically. It's easy to find daylight and tungsten balanced CFL bulbs although they may be off slightly by 100-200K or so (ie. 5400K vs. 5500K or 3400K vs. 3200K).
 
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