Moonlight Interior Help

[Jeremiah_M]

Hello Sir Roger!

First of all, thank you for providing this forum. I have learned immensely from it, as well as from your work.

A scenario I recently came up against that stumped me was a night-time interior in a small house where we had to film in the day for logistical reasons. We had to block out all the windows, but I wanted to try to get some kind of moonlight shafts coming through, and we could not really figure out a good way of creating that effect in the situation. We built a tent outside the window to block the light, but because of that, we could not move the lights very far back. A panel light didn’t give the effect of beams at all, and point lights we had were either too narrow or made unnatural-looking shadows due to the placement.

I have been trying to figure a way to achieve a more natural effect in that scenario, but it seems to me that moving the lights farther away may be the only answer. Maybe a panel light that is “harder”, or perhaps bouncing a super strong fresnel into a bounce could work? I want to do some testing but also wanted to see if you had any wisdom to share.

Thank you!

-Jeremiah

Topic

[dmullenasc]

Unfortunately you’ve run into the major issue with tenting a location for filming night scenes during the day — when you need to put your lamps far away and high enough to get a good moonlight effect.  Obviously the first solution — besides going back to shooting those shots at night with no tent — is to build the tent as large as possible!

Another possibility is to shoot day for night, perhaps even just blacking out the view through the windows with a wall of black but shooting light from over the top of the wall. You’d have to avoid the real sun coming through if you wanted more control, or use the sun as the moon. But inside you’d have a hard time balancing with dim sources like flashlights and candles… (and heavy ND gel on windows creates its own issues/problems.)

You could see if a mirror mounted at the top of the tent, if it is tall enough, could be used to bounce a source on the ground to get a better beam. You could also try using Lekos as your moonlight since they need less space to create a beam.

[Roger Deakins]

You need a sharper light than a panel. An open face lamp or a Fresnel would give a sharper beam and if you have restrictions of space you could consider using a mirror and bouncing the source to extend the distance. You could even used two mirrors. The second might need to be larger depending on the width of the beam you need.

[Author]

Replies