Shooting in moonlight - lighting tips

[heloise]

Hi,

At the next full moon I am shooting some exterior mid and close-up shots of a person and a (unspecified) creature.

Taking into consideration the moonlight, how much extra light will I need will I have to throw at the artiste's face for it to look good and how would I get that lovely silvery effect? I have access to a couple of blondes (Arri 2k's I think). I will be shooting on K40 due to cost (and graininess) considerations but hope that the strength of the lights will compensate for the slow speed of the film.

I would very much appreciate any advice, for although I have worked on many professional shoots as a camera assistant I was always too busy to pick up any lighting tips.

Many thanks,

Heloise

[christoph]

At the next full moon I am shooting some exterior mid and close-up shots of a person and a (unspecified) creature.

Taking into consideration the moonlight, how much extra light will I need will I have to throw at the artiste's face for it to look good and how would I get that lovely silvery effect? I have access to a couple of blondes (Arri 2k's I think). I will be shooting on K40 due to cost (and graininess) considerations but hope that the strength of the lights will compensate for the slow speed of the film.

unfortunately, the moonlight will not help you even a teeny-weeny bit... zero.. nada.. nothing... trust me, you could just as well be shooting in a black room.
it's sad but true.

i was once shooting moonlight scenes with tri-x (200ASA) with 10 secs exposure each frame and the scenes still looked very dark.

so this will leave you with your 2kw for all you have to see in the scene..
as for the silvery look, if this could be written down in a few words, we'd see a lot more well lit moonlight scenes ;) it's quite hard to pull off.
still, you should have enough light for closeups, two 2kw will go a long way for that... you'll pobably want to have your keylight as a backlight to keep a lot of the picture in the dark.. then use the second lamp to bounce it off a foam board for a very low light fill. i'd keep the key light about 1 stop under correct exposure, the fill 2 stops under or so.. but it's really a question of taste how dark or how bright you want it.
any wider shots get problematic very fast if you want to see the scenery, basically i would keep everything in a backlight situation and keep the lights as far away as possible.. the falloff of the light intensity looks artificial if you don't take care.

it's really quite difficult... michael ballaus once said to us, the lighting situation he hates most is moonlight in the woods ;)

++ christoph ++