I'm doing an opening for a thriller for my Media Studies coursework - we're gunning for full marks and lighting is a huge weakness for us at the moment.

Our camera is a basic Panasonic MiniDV camera with 1ccd lens and no exposure control. We're limited to this, replacing it isn't an option.

We've already done one run-through of the film last weekend with one Fresnel 500w spot and some basic house spotlights around the house - we found it almost impossible to get it to look like night without the camera coming out too grainy - something I can't do much about with the lack of camera settings. Improving the light helped but it totally removed the dark effect and the room just ended up looking badly lit and very unprofessional.

We've slightly improved our set up for this film, we've got some blue gels to stick on the lights and we've got another 500w spot. Also available to us is a huge piece of white card which works really well as a diffuser and any desklamps we can find around the house.

How should we light it though? We need to compensate for the poor camcorder and the general look we're going for is a stream of moonlight crossing the room, hitting various items on the floor as the camera travels around the room.

Thanks in advance for your help 🙂

to add on -

The camera work is pretty simple panning across items on shelves, stars on the ceiling, photoframes on the table, pictures strewn across the floor etc. Below I've included a link to an image of the room layout.