Monday 18 May 2009

Lighting for dark!?

A question was raised on cinematography.com:

"So I encountered an interesting situation in a short I shot this weekend. I'm curious how others would have attacked the problem. A woman goes to bed and is attacked during the night. The script specifically says that there are no lights on. The scene must be shot during the day necessitating window blackout and thus no possibility of seeing city lights out the windows."

Now this question is directly relevant to our film, where a scene takes place as Hazell wakes up after hearing a noise outside - obviously at night.

A few replies we posted and most contained the same resolution:

"My approach would be threefold:
1. Creating overall Fill for the room: I'd probably put 2K Mighties through softboxes wrapped around them- then have them rake the ceiling- assuming that the ceiling would not be seen. This should create an overall fill in the room. The editor can take it down in post if too much is seen.
2. Production Design and Wardrobe: Work with my production designer and Wardrobe people- Light colored walls for background and light colored wardrobe on the actors that is darker than the wall in their background.
3. Eyelight/backlight: For Eyelight- A soft source that the actor's pupil would reflect. For Backlight- nothing fancy, just enough to give some separation.

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