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Lighting for a Bonfire

T

Technogeek5000

I intend to begin my first film which is going to entirely take place around a bonfire at night in the middle of the woods. What has me worried is that based on the scenario, the lighting could become a problem. I'll be using a Canon XA10 to shoot, which I've heard has good low-light capabilities so that should help, but being a noob at the overall filmmaking process, I was hoping for some ideas for settings to pay attention to/manipulate or if I should be using additional lighting sources apart from the fire (and maybe the moon?). Any suggestions are very welcome.
 
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You're definitely going to need more light than just the bon-fire. The good news is that this should be a relatively simple set-up. In order to make it look like the light is coming from the fire, you'll need only a strong key light.

I don't think location will matter much, because the background will be completely pitch-black, except for maybe a random neighbor's porch-light.
 
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China ball attached to a flicker box.

Or really any light attached to a flicker box. China balls are good because you can have it just off camera lighting the actor and it's soft enough that it could easily be coming from the fire.
 
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You don't need a camera with low light capability. You need light. Night shots must be LIT, use flicker dimmer and orange/amber gels for key light from fire, with blue gelled backlight to simulate moon. Real moon isn't enough light to consider. It's all fake. Whole chapter on this in my book "Lighting for Digital Video & Television."
 
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I was thinking about this thread while we were shooting a small campfire last night, and took a quick pic for ya, Technogeek5000. :cool:

hmi650red_zpsb647ada1.jpg


The HMI could be subbed with about 2K-ish and some blue gel. It's providing the backlight for a couple of things, and also ensures that we don't immediately fall off into black... which while more probable in reality, just looks boring. ('cos there's nothing to see). The 650 is bonus fill & fake firelight. We didn't have a flicker-box, but we did have a squeezebox (dimmer), which we used to set the 650 to an appropriate level.
 
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