Hello, I am filming a short film on October 16th and desperately need help with information about gaffing. Just to give you a run down of my situation, here it is:

We're filming at a supermarket during the store's closed hours. The owner was nice enough to allow me and my small crew in to film this. That said, we have only one night at making this film the right way so there is a significant amount of pressure on me.

The total runtime of the movie will be between six and seven minutes and we have about 11 hours total to capture this. All our equipment will be rented: An HD camera, a glidecam, various gaffing equipment, a monitor, and sound equipment. In total we're spending about 1500 dollars on this.

However, here's where it gets tricky. I had a director of photography, a guy about 20 years older than me who works professionally on TV shows, movies, etc. I wasn't able to pay him, but he wanted to do it because he believed in the script. However, he recently got hired to do a feature movie and had to drop out. Since all filming will be done between 10pm and 7:30am, it was impossible to find a replacement DP under the short notice who could work these late hours. So now, I need to figure out how to light my own movie!

I have a crew of five people. Me, the director, my producer who is a film school drop out, my sound engineer, my good friend who has made a couple short films in just DV, and a photographer who has never worked on a movie before. We'll have all the proper lighting equipment rented, I'm just not sure any of us know how to actually use it!

Our x-DP took some lighting measurements a few weeks ago when he was still on the project and said that the supermarket was ideally lit, meaning most of the shots won't have to be heavily manipulated. However, we have one shot that takes place outside the supermarket and since it will be night, we'll need to correctly light it. Obviously, there will be a lot of trial and error going on the night of the shoot, but at the same time, our time is limited.

My question then to all of you (just imagine a well-lit supermarket) is how would you go about lighting this movie? I want just a natural look to the film, nothing crazy. I just don't want the audience to look at the movie and say "man this is really under lit" or "man this is really over lit."

I really would appreciate a response from any of the gaffers or DPs who use this forum. Thank you. ?:)? Please be as specific as you can in your responses.