Sleepy Night Shoot

In Notes From the Set by Rod SantianoLeave a Comment

On Thursday, our “day” started at 6pm and we ended up wrapping around 4:30am—not bad, actually, considering we couldn’t start shooting until 7:30 at our first location and we even had to do a company move at midnight. Regardless, after midnight, there was a lot of napping and yawning going on by the crew. Not by be, of course. Well, maybe a little bit of yawning. LOL

Our first location was a bike shop. We got there at 6pm but couldn’t shoot until the store closed at 7:30. Even then, we couldn’t really shoot until the last customer left the store. In the meantime, we prepared for the first shot which was looking out the windows at the front entrance. Everything was fine; we had our 1200W HMI setup inside for fill through our 4×4 216 frame, the outside was perfectly overexposed and balanced well with our fill. Sunset was at 8:30 so we had until then to get the shot. So I thought. Then our light started going away… FAST. A huge dark cloud decided to roll through our sunlight. I told everyone we have to go NOW or else this is going to be a night scene. We scrambled to get our three shots before we lost all the light. With each take, the light outside got darker and darker until it was almost too late. We got the last shot off before it became unacceptably dark to pass off as a day scene. This is the last shot before it went away. I suppose it still looks good, as long as you don’t compare it to the original setup, which we never got a take of. The fill light ended up being the key light.  Oh well—it still works :)

Once those shots were done, we could move on to the rest of the coverage which we planned to not include any windows. We fitted our KinoFlos with standard Cool White florescent tubes to match the light from the florescent fixtures in the bike shop. I went with 5000ºK for the white balance on the camera because 4100ºK looked too cool and sterile. The extra 900ºK made for a more natural look. Shifting the tint -20 compensated for the green spike of the florescent tubes. I’m so grateful for digital cinematography in these situations because it makes it so much easier to get properly a colored scene.

Right about when we started to shoot, a really painful stomach ache/nausea plagued me. It didn’t go away until about 2 or 3 in the morning. I looked at the footage this morning to make sure I didn’t make any dumb decisions while under the influence of it. Everything looked good still; so I’m glad.

Here are more shots from the day… er… night:

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