shooting in dark vision 2 500T any advice

[ivanski]

Hello !

I need to shoot a sleeping person in bed. The mood of the set should be night with maybe some street light getting through unclosed curtains. The shots will consist mostly of upper part of the body, covered with a quilt, combined with "dolly out" (zoom out) shot of the whole bed.
I have bought Kodak vision2 500T, that i have never used before. I am using Beaulieu 4008 ZM2 an external light meter (SEKONIC) to measure correct exposure for this kind of scene. However, readings of light meter in the mood that I really like are below f1.8 which is the smallest f - stop on the lens I am using.
Shall I get extra light and try to create the mood artificially? Any advice on this s highly appreciated. I am an amateur filmmaker and like many others do everything myself . I am learning the art of film making as I go along.

Thank you very much for any advice

[standard8]

you can have negative film "push processed" which means when the labs process it they leave it in the chemicals a bit longer - you will have to pay extra for this though.

if you push process your film by one stop it will be as if the film is 1000asa instead of 500asa, so you can set your lightmeter to 1000asa. i did this with a 16mm film i shot a few months back and the results where very good. vision 3 film is very good for this type of shooting.

however it is always best to make a test film first you may find that a small light on the subjects face is all you need and it may look ok at 500asa.

[Ektagraphic]

I think standard 8 hit the nail on the head. Meter to the speed that you would like to push the film to. You may want to read through the info on the Kodak website. http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Pr ... /t7218.htm

[moviemat]

I'm not sure you would need to push the film in this situation. It's often more expensive to do and means you have to do it on the whole roll.
Your light meter is telling you how to expose in order to get an averagely exposed picture. So if you are after quite a dark look so it's sometimes normal that you would set your apeture to an 'underexposed' value according to the meter. The important thing in my experience is to remember that telecine operators don't know how you want it to look unless you tell them and will often try to lighten scenes like this resulting in ugly gain grain.

It's down to taste but i think you can get away with a dark scene if something (even if it's quite small relative to the whole frame) in frame is perhaps lighter than natural. so you compensate the lack of brightness for some contrast. In this situation i would find quite a bright soft light to be directed towards the subjct (you don't want it to bounce into the shadows though) and make it orange like a street lamp - you could do this by shooting with the daylight filter 'in' for example (remember to take this into consideration)
Using your light meter to measure reflective reading try to balance the whole frame so the subject or hottest part of the blankets is normal or even a bit under exposed (1.4/1.0), the background and shadows and are 3 or 4 stops under normal exposure and if you can justify something bright in the background - like a crack in a door to a hallway, or a digital radio alarm display or a mirror in the back ground reflecting the streetlight then that might stop it seeming muddy.
I'm no expert by the way I'm just saying how i would try it. There's lots to be learned about this kind of thing on the lighting forum at cinematography.com (i think i remember this exact situation being discussed) My experience with 500t is that you'll be amazed what it will see in the dark i've more often overexposed out of paranoia than not got a picture.
Sorry this is getting to be a long reply - but another thing is that if nothing much is happening in the scene and you wont need to do takes for acting you could aways do 2/3 takes with different apetures or lighting set ups.

Good luck

Mat

[Lambretta]

Hello,
The equivalent shutter angle of the 4008 don´t help in this case of low light.
My advise is to search for a XL camera.
Best regards.

Lambretta

[Nigel]

Don't push the film--You don't need to.

Don't buy an XL camera--You don't need one.

Just sit back and look at the light. Check it out. Look where you can put it to make it do what you need it to. Then make it happen. Either way people will never fault you for being creative with light. They will gripe about how nasty the film looks when you have ultra grain and milky shadows.

This is where a Cinematographer/DP separates from some dork with a Beaulieu 4008.

Good Luck

[Jim Carlile]

Slow down the camera speed. If you cut it in half, you'll get an extra stop of light.

But you'll get decent results at a wide open stop. Remember that a sequence of underexposed frames (if so) are easier to see than one still shot. The context builds up and the audience can make out the action.

[Wade]

Nigel is correct. Play with the shadows. I'm not a DP, but I realize if you shoot a scene at night, but your camera exposes all the mise-en-scene correctly, eg at a 1:1 ratio (key to fill, etc.) it will look like day anyway. For night scenes I think you have to increase the chiaroscuro.** And if you look at any TV show you'll notice night scenes usually have a blue tint. They use blue gels over the lights so they can control the amount of blue for each light. For some reason, psycho-physiologically, viewers relate blue to night. (Even though actual night color spectrum is the same as day.)

**Or if you're daring like Gordon Willis you can let 95% of the scene go underexposed.

W.

[lealar]

Hello !

I need to shoot a sleeping person in bed. The mood of the set should be night with maybe some street light getting through unclosed curtains. The shots will consist mostly of upper part of the body, covered with a quilt, combined with "dolly out" (zoom out) shot of the whole bed.
Thank you very much for any advice

Hi Ivanski:

I shot these using an XL camera with existing light. The film was not pushed. Hope it will give you an idea of this stocks range.

http://vimeo.com/2492724
http://vimeo.com/2895251

[adamgarner]

Hello !

I need to shoot a sleeping person in bed

They must have really upset you.

In my opinion, I think highlights, or backlighting to show the outline of the person. Do you want to show their face?

There's probably a creative way to just show their silouette as opposed to a sit-com-esque blue light.

Adam.

[Nigel]

I don't have issues with throwing some blue light through a cookie onto a window--It has become standard issue and is to be expected in some ways. Lately I have been making more pools with my night scenes. Maybe I'll post a frame grab or two later.

What is silly is not doing anything and 'pushing' your film thinking that will solve the problem.

It seems that more people on this board are apt to give a 'technical' answer rather than a correct one. It's not about cameras and gear. It's the process.

Good Luck