Could you not try and provide another onscreen source of lighting. The party lights will look good but won't provide too much light. Is there not a way too include a gas light or fire.

There was a similar post about this not too long ago - http://filmmaking.net/discussion/forums/go/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10757

Rob - UK

Here's what I wrote for another similar question regarding shooting at night:

Well, like with any set, your lighting should be motivated by something that is either in frame or "could be" just out of frame. For the most part, the night is NOT lit up by moonlight, even when it is full. If your characters are out in the woods far from electric lights, then your lighting could be motivated by some kind of fire (campfires, mob torches, flashlights, car lights). If your characters are "in town," then you could motivate the lighting from streetlamps or cars or window lights.

Lighting at night begins to look obnoxiously fake when blue is overused. Night really doesn't look like that, even in full moonlight, so there is no reason to light it that way.

If there is absolutely NO motivating practical source for light and all you do have is moonlight (as a motivator), then consider using a bluish light to rim as a backlight, but key with a more natural "white" light as you would in the daytime.

Of course, if you are that far out in the wilderness that you need to light characters at night, your bigger issue will be lighting the entire set behind the actors. The challenge becomes lighting LARGE areas which is difficult for anyone, even when they have a studio budget to work with. That's one reason why Day-for-Night is used... pure economics. You could rent a MUSCO truck and light up a very large area (for about $5,000/day), but it would be from only one direction, so you'd have to fill from the other side of the set with something else while keying your actors with smaller units.

And whatever you light your actors with in the foreground, the LEVELS have to match whatever the footcandle levels are in the background or else your exposure (on the key) will render the background too dark.

With this issue of exposure ratio, you're dealing with A) the background light level that you may or may not be able to affect depending on your budget B) your key level on actors that has to be close to whatever the background level is and C) the ability of your camera/lens to record an exposure at low light levels without introducing unacceptable amounts of grain (film) or noise (video).

Shooting at night is a tricky thing with a lot of variables to think about.

You might try posting this question over at cinematography.com or on the discussion lists at cinematography.net for more thoughts and opinions.

As to YOUR specific situation, your party lights are merely set decorations that shouldn't be part of your overall lighting scheme for an exposure. The gist for this type of scene is that you need an overall ambient light level, at least enough to get an overall exposure and then you'd add lighting for effect, like backlights to rim your people and a higher level "key" so that it doesn't all look flat. Of course, on a limited budget, getting enough light in the places you need it FROM the places you'd have to aim it from with sources that are big enough is likely out of the question. You have the right idea to shoot at twilight so that your ambient levels are high enough for an exposure, but as you noted, magic-hour only lasts for a short time.

The bottom line is that shooting at night can be tough, particularly if you have wide shots and you want to see deep into the background. You mention 3 softboxes but that's not enough information. What's important is the specific wattage that is shining inside them. Honestly, for a night scene with wide shots, anything less than 2K firing through a softbox (Chimera) just won't be enough. Ideally, you'd have something like a 5K or 10K bounce (into a 20x bounce/grid) to light up the area with another large bounce filling in the other side. And that's just the foreground. If you want to see into the background, that's another large source firing into the trees.. nothing less than a 20K, or a large floating "balloon light," or a MUSCO truck.

Since you likely DON'T have all of that, you'll have to light up the background with whatever you've got then balance the foreground exposures to the background. This likely means that your camera will really be digging deep to get an exposure which usually means introducing a lot of grain into the picture.

Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
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http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
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