Night Interior Lighting

[d_lopez]

Hey everyone,

Looking for some advice on an upcoming night interior commercial spot I have. The commercial is for a high end mattress company so it needs to be high key but the director still wants a bit of drama to them.

I’m planning on using warm practicals in the room and that will motivate my key light. The issue I’m running into; in our living room location the director wants to see outside one particular window in the background. The space outside the window is too small to green screen and we have to shoot during the day (It’s a small walkway against a retaining wall).

My two thoughts were – and I’m talking this through with my gaffer – a) adding a blue moonlight gel to the windows (possibly adding to that a level of ND gel as well) and then using heavy diffusion for the natural sunlight (I’m thinking flying a black silk overhead) and tenting the rest with solids to soften the daylight and really bring down the ambience or b) tenting the same area completely, building a book light through heavy diffusion off to the side of the window and using a 1200D or hang 4×4 bounce directly above the window and shoot up into the bounce cards to achieve the effect. I would probably ditch the blue gels on the windows and just go directly to the light.

Does this sound like a plan for a very soft moonlight effect during the day? Open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks!

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