Simulating Moonlight

[Mark Collins]

Hey Guys!

So I'm shooting a short film this weekend for a student project, and we're looking to simulate moonlight through some trees to get nice hard shadows of the tree branches and trunks.

My only problem so far has been that we don't have the budget to get a large enough light for what we need to do, so our current plan is to simulate moonlight using 4 1K fresnels. My concern with that is that it's going to give multiple shadows.

The rig we're using, just for reference is basically a piece o 2" aluminum pipe between 2 sky high's, which are then going to be skied to about 15 feet. The distance between the lights and the subjects is probably going to be about 50 to 60 feet.

Any suggestions for a better solution? I was going to try to get a 4K HMI, but it's not in the budget so we have to go with the lights our school has. To give a quick rundown of the gear we were able to get from our equipment room, we have 6 1K's, a Kino Kit, and possibly a 575w HMI.

Thanks Guys!

 

[J. Eric Camp]

Put all of the lights into a bounce or though some gack. That single item will become your new single source. It will work well considering moonlight is soft bounce light in reality. The shadows are hard because everything on earth is much closer to subject than to the light source.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

If he wants hard projected shadows, I wouldn't bounce the light, you need a fairly crisp source to get that effect.

Multiple lights produce multiple shadows, which may or may not be OK, it just depends -- fringing multiple shadows may be fine, but it will lower the contrast because one light may be filling in the shadows of another light.

However, due to the break-up caused by tree canopies, it's OK to have separate pools of moonlight created by separate lights, not really overlapping though.

I'd go with the 575w HMI over a 1K tungsten -- it's almost as bright as a 2K tungsten and it's bluer. A Joker 800 may also work. Hopefully you are using the M-X sensor in the Red because you're asking a lot out of these little lights if you are going to throw them a far distance. And one 575w HMI is only going to work for a small area.

 

[Mark Collins]

The great thing is we're not shooting RED. because of the narrative style, we decided to go film. So, we're shooting on the SR2 with Fuji Eterna Vivid 500T.

We did some testing with 3 1k's at night with some CTB on them, and it did what we wanted it to exposure-wise, but we got triple shadows of everything.

As mentioned, we're going to be throwing the lights about 50 or 60 feet. Would using Opal in psuedo-Chiemra Lantern setup work without losing too much light? Or would that soften it too much?

 

[Philip Allister Anderson]

maybe consider separating the lights enough so that they don't overlap. Create pools as Mr. Mullen suggested. Climb up in the trees and put them in different areas instead of on one plane. If the lights are all pointing in roughly the same direction the gaps will sell as heavy foilage. Use what you got to create the hard shadows and then put something lighting up the background a little to create depth. Also you might consider not CTB'ing the lights. Blue gel steals a ton of light from tungsten heads. Shoot the backlights, and background ungelled to get the most footcandles possible, then, warm up your actors. In printing or the DI have the color-timer shift it more blue.....shoot a color chart or grey card to the key. Good luck

 

[Matt Garrett]

50-60 feet is already asking a lot out of these lights. I'm afraid if you bounced or diffused it more you'll barely notice it.
Why so far away?

 

[Matt W.]

This is a tricky situation because it depends so much on the location. Is it a forest? A field? What's in the background and does it need to be illuminated? What's the mood? What's the field of view of your lens/how much of your background needs to be lit? Moonlight is never naturalistic in film (if it were, the skies would be brighter than the foreground and the overall look closer to day-for-night) so it's a matter of what kind of mood you want to set.

I remember back in David Mullen's thread I asked him about lighting (forest) night exteriors and he offered two methods:

Arguably the best looking method is to have a strong backlight (at key or just under, broken up by foliage/a brachaloris/camo nets) and then soft fill from helium balloons or china lanterns (maybe up to two stops under key, but I'd watch it if shooting with 500T) and generally shoot with half-corrected light (4400K maybe) simulating moonlight. This isn't naturalistic at all but it looks great--and requires a lot of light.

The easier method is to sidelight everything at maybe a stop under key at most and kind of line lights up to create pools of light into the background. Or if you have like a building in the background, you can rake that with a smaller light (with the same color temperature) and maybe shoot through a camo net or branchaloris to break up the light.

If you watch my reel at like 1:47 (be forgiving; I have no formal training except one intro to film class) we have a shot (from the hvx200, which is ISO250 and we shot at f2) that's of side-lit woods. The lighting is basically just a 1.2 HMI side-lighting the foreground from like 50 feet away and then another one pointing in the same direction but maybe 50 feet back (roughly perpendicular to the direction of the light) side-lighting the background trees. The fill is from a kino. We only had enough light to shoot uncorrected so it's 5600K light for 3200K white balance, and tinted further blue in post even. The fog is from a $20 fog machine that we ran between takes. We were careful to try and shoot so that when we went in for close ups the HMIs would not be in frame and yet they would be roughly offside keys (we chose the axis accordingly), which we then augmented and filled using smaller units (fresnels with CTB and kinoflos).

Another issue is: how thick is your foliage? The footage in my reel was shot after the leaves had fallen so the trees left nice shadows, but shooting in thick foliage or through trees with really any leaves can leave you with almost nothing but black, especially if you're deep in the woods. Wetting down leaves can introduce some nice specular highlights, though.

Also: it's generally better to shoot through a camo net than through woods because woods are just so thick--so only go as deep as you need to.

I would DEFINITELY take the 575w HMI and shoot uncorrected (or just like 1/3 CTO at most). And you can use a couple 1ks (with CTB to match) for additional background lights or whatever and 4800K 500w china lanterns for fill near the talent. It's really location contingent! And, as stated above, you'd have to be shooting wide open (like t2) and underexposing to get anywhere near enough light out of any of those units for very wide shots (but for tighter and more telephoto shots you can maybe frame out just the section of the woods you need lit). You could always rent a 2.5k (or two 1.2ks) and a mambo for the day. They're cheaper than the film you're using by a lot, I'm sure.

 

[Philip Allister Anderson]

So, based on my Set Electricians Handbook, A 1K fresnel at full flood will produce 15,000fc. You push that out to 25 feet and you're only getting 24 foot candles. That will give you an exposure of f2.8 on 500T. Keep in mind that's one light so you can do better by adding more lights. If you have to throw from 60ft you are gonna be underexposed on the back light, even with the four 1k's you have. If you have a drama dept at your school check to see if they have some ellipsoidals. a 1k ellipsoidal will throw pretty far and might help get the reach you need. you can paint the woods with the 1k's you have and use the ellip to backlight the talent. This is all speculation about the location of course. Or just rock Day for Night and claim artistic choice later .

 

[Mark Collins]

So, here's what we finally ended up doing:

Our location fell through a few days before the shoot, and we ended up shooting another motel with a much smaller area that we needed to light, one that was much closer to where we could light.

We set up a 575w HMI fresnel behind a tree and sparked it. It definitely did the trick, giving us that cool blue look as well as the footcandles we needed to expose.

We're going back again tonight to the location to finish shooting, where we're going to be simulating moonlight through the window of the hotel room. Basically we're setting up the HMI again, further back though to get nice crisp shadows, and then we'll probably end up putting several nets in front of the light to reduce intensity.

As much as I'd like to use 1K's for this because we can put them closer to our location, they fall off way to quickly.

 

[mikelangelo11]

Moonlight is reflected sunlight, so Full CTB is usually what you would want to try. Try balancing your camera between tungsten and daylight so tungsten looks a bit amber and the CTB (color temperature blue) looks a bit blue. You could put half CTB in front of a light and balance to a white card lit by that. When you put the full CTB up, that light will look blue and ungelled tungsten will look amber...

 

[Mark Collins]

We used tungsten film (Eterna Vivid 500T) and it did exactly what we wanted it to with the lights. All of them had CTB on them and gave us that nice pale moonlight look.