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How to Film cars at night?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jaysfrench
  • Start date Start date
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jaysfrench

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I am working on a short film for a college intro to film class. I am in need of some DP knowledge on how to film good car shots in the darkness of night. The road is long and is straight. It will be shot in HD and on digital. I would like to know how people get good lighting in the car and outside the car.
 
Shoot day for night.

Basically you hope for a REALLY overcast day, and shoot. Or you wait until the sun goes over the horizon but it's still light out and shoot. Then in post you play with the footage to make it look like night.

You could greenscreen if you have the facilities.

Lastly I took 3 18' lengths of led lights and taped them to the dash, and set some of the lengths in their laps and shot that.
 
I wouldn't recommend shooting day for night if you can avoid it. You won't be able to see the sky at all (to sell the effect), and you would have to have some really powerful lights to be able to punch through the extreme under exposure necessary to sell the effect. It kind of depends on the tone your going for, as well as what camera you're shooting with. It's possible you could just use available street lights, plus the lights from the car and get a nice low key look. If your looking for something more elaborate, you need access to more equipment (i.e. high power lights/generator). There isn't really any "secret" way of lighting a car at night. You can either use available light that's on the street plus the light from the car (and other cars), or you can start bringing in your own bigger lights. But you'd probably need at least a few 2k's for it to really matter, probably more though.
 
It's intro to film. Day for night will be fine especially if they can get the shot locked down at the point where there's streetlights and stores with lights on. Northern hemisphere thats like from 4:40 to 5:15 this time of year.
 

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