Night Lighting Outdoors

[FCP42]

I've come up with a pretty effective way to light scenes indoors at night, however, the outdoor shots are still giving me trouble.

In the scene, the character is running through the woods at night, with a cabin not far behind her. Originally, I thought I could use the windows as light sources, but I don't know how I'd power lights out in the woods.

Then, of course, there is day-for-night, but I'm reluctant to do that because in the past it's looked cheesy for me. I don't know, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Does anybody have a solution?

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Does the cabin not have any power? Typically the answer then would be to get a small generator, you can rent them from most home-improvement stores. With LED panels you can likely get away with lightweight batteries too, depending on how long you need the light.

 

[FCP42]

It does have power, but what I'm saying is that I don't think it would be enough to light the whole scene on it's own. I'd have to use other lights. And thanks, I'll probably use a small generator...do they make much noise (enough to interfere with the audio)?

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Yes, they do. You'll probably need to keep the generator well away from the mics, and in a quiet setting it's likely it'll be very difficult to keep the noise from being audible.

But what meant about power in the cabin is if there's somewhere to plug in additional lights, not relying on the cabin's light. If that's the case maybe you just need some long extension cords - depending on the kind of wattage you're planning to use light-wise. I wouldn't go much over 650watts on a single household circuit, might be able to get away with 1000 but I've tripped circuits several times at that level.

 

[jax_rox]

Be careful with long cable runs as you will get line loss. It's potentially a good bet though, short of renting a generator.

Night lighting is sold via the use of backlight. I've used HMIs to simulate moonlight, or other lights for street lamps, but such plans require a lot more power than you seem to have available to you.

Backlighting is your friend.

 

[lightcameraction]

For absolutely no budget you can either go with day for night ,which done right can look pretty good .

Other thing is to just get one of these small LEDs on your camera . And then maybe the main character could run with a flashlight in his hand ? Looking back and constantly flashing it at the camera , it might give the illusion that its a bit brighter and they would probably won't notice the noise you'll be getting that much .

But if you're more on the professional round get a generator and light it .

 

[jax_rox]

The thing with an on-camera LED is there's no motivation for it (I mean, other than the fact that there's a camera there, but generally in narrative fiction we want to create the illusion of no camera). A flashlight wouldn't motivate the light, as flashlights light what's in front of you, not yourself.