I've got my idea how to do this, but how would you do it? Night to day in one shot.

[Stephen Pruitt]

Here's the scene:

A woman is lying on a couch and falls asleep at night. It is dark. The shot does not break, but now becomes light, with the sun moving across her body. She awakes, and walks out of the shot.

My thought was to put one or two 1.2K HMIs inside the house a homemade variable iris tacked on the front of each one. They are pointed into a reflector and are used just for daylight fill. As the irises are opened up (over, say, 10 seconds), our 6K HMI fresnel, which is outside the window, mounted on a tetter-totter and pointed down into a dark box of some sort, is suddenly raised out of the box and into the window to throw its light across the woman's body. She gets up and walks out of the shot. We break until morning and then film the rest of the scene at a table in actual morning light.

What are your ideas?

It's an important shot, so I want to be able to do it well.

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Joel J. Feigenbaum]

Stephen:
There are many ways to achieve this passage of time/night to day. Did she fall asleep with practicals on? If not, then you will most likely be gelling your moonlight effect in the blue range. Will you have a window in the shot to sell your lighting effect? Or will you be throwing some kind of window effect across your actress on the couch and not see the window?
Either way, you would have your daylight/sunlight source on a dimmer. Throw a warm gel on it. Dial up your sunrise and pan/tilt your sun source to create sunrise.
That would be the simplest technique.
I can show you footage using this technique whenever we get together.
I'm sure some of the great DP's on REDUSER can give you many other ways to pull this off as well.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Geez, why didn't I think of tilting the light? God, what a greenhorn.

:-(

I'm going to try a test of this when my camera gets back from RED.

And I WILL be getting you over here at some point soon.

Thanks, Joel!

Stephen

 

[Peter Hodgins]

What are your ideas?

Put the Actor and camera in position ... tell the actor to go to sleep ... put the camera on time lapse ... everyone go on a one or two hour break for coffee and croissants ... come back ... the shot is done!

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Another great idea. . . but I'm not sure that will give me the exact effect I'm aiming for.

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Leo Ticheli]

I seem to remember doing this several years ago, on a set in the studio.

First, light the set to daylight, with the key a large Fresnel through a window with blinds partly open. This Fresnel is on a dolly and is boomed up and pushed to simulate the sun rising.
Add fill to simulate sunlight through a off camera "window;" this is brought up as the "sun rises" by moving a flag from in front of it.
You should light your "sunlight" scene brightly enough so that it clearly overwhelms the night shot practical lighting, which should be designed to suffice for the "night" scene.
That's pretty much it. Talent falls asleep with the practical illumination, then the "sun" rises, breaks through the blinds and the pattern sweeps over.

Oh, place the "sun" Fresnel as far from the window as possible to get a nice focused shadow.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've done this by putting a 10K tungsten fresnel on a small jib arm, so I could raise it up while dimming it up. I set the color temp of the scene somewhere halfway between 3200K and 5600K so that the light starts out very warm and brightens to a hot, warm-ish color.

Then it's mainly a question of whether to dim-out a moonlight effect, or simply overpower it with the 10K. (or 20K, or 5K PAR, whatever is bright and can be put on a dimmer.)

Yes, you could try this with a large HMI, maybe with metal blinds on it Or of you can put it on a jib arm, you could perhaps build a large gel frame that starts out gelled very orange plus ND, so that as the light rises, it goes through the heavier gel into the clear portion, getting brighter and less orange. But a large tungsten on a dimmer seems easier to me.

You'd be surprised at how nice a bright, powerful tungsten looks shining into a day interior, it's not as orangey as you'd think, being overexposed somewhat, and mixed with cooler soft daylight.

 

[Michael Romano]

Check out "Requiem For A Dream" Behind the scenes. They did an excellent moving time lapse that encompasses and entire day as a woman cleans her house. Its almost more than you need but they talk about all the little issues they encountered regarding moving lights with motors and such.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Thanks very much, guys!!!

I had hoped to do it with an HMI, as we have a number of those 6K Fresnel, 2.5K Par, two 1.2K Pars, but our largest tungsten is a 1K.

I suppose putting a CTO on the 6K would get to the same place, right?

Thanks again for all the suggestions. I really want this shot.



Stephen

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

On a related note, if I balance to 3200K and use tungsten for the rising sun shot, and then balance to 5600K for the rest of the scene (which occurs after she walks out of the shot), I should be able to get the same look, right?

I definitely want to start with a bluish moonlight before the "sun" rises, but I want to use the HMIs blazing through the windows for the breakfast shots which follow.

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Matthew Bennett]

Aaah! Great minds at work.... you'll get your shot now!