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Lighting An Office/Night Scene
Hello All,
First official post! So I am shooting an office scene during the day time in a conference room with 2 windows. I want it to be after hours at night and have moonlight spill through. Right now I have plus green on Kinos to match the color temp of our house fluorescents in the actual office.
Does anyone have any ideas in achieving this look for the moon light to seep in and have that color?
Also any good ways to block daytime coming in?Thanks!
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8 Replies
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Is the office at ground level? That would make things much easier: you’d use dark blue gel over the windows, perhaps from outside, using taped-on or screwed-on wooden frames, and tinge the (low) interior light with a bit of blue, leaving small “practical” lights at their more warm normal color temperature. A fogger or “hazer” machine makes the beams of fake moonlight from the windows more palpable in the air. Turn off half of the overheads.
If you’re several stories up, I’d suggest you cover the window glass sections in keyable blue or green adhesive vinyl or art/photog paper. Add the “moonlight” and even the volumetric shafts in post. A blue gelled spot shining thru a Kookaloris onto the wall near/opposite a window, sells the idea of incoming moonlight. Usually a venetian blind pattern gobo/cookie will work for an office.
I would also use a DSLR to take detailed stills of each of the windows for use in compositing an exterior view in post.
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Hey Mark,
Thanks so much for the response! It is actually ground level. 1 things though.
I’m working wit tungsten 650’s for the window moonlight to shootout through the windows. My color temp is at about 4200 right to balance the fluorescent. Would that look weird through the blue gel?
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How exactly are you going to use your tungstens through the windows as practical moonlight if you are shooting during the day?
Also, if you have “nighttime” look to your lighting plot, do you want all your interior flos blazing? Sure, many people do keep all office lights on at night, but it doesn’t evoke a nighttime “mood” if you are tying to set one with the lighting, and definitely wouldn’t be conducive to any moonlight streaming in.
It might not be practical because of your particular crew/talent/location availability, but sounds like this scene would be infinitely easier to stage at night, if possible.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Yeah Terry Makes sense. Just wondering if gels on the tungsten would help. I see your point.
Do you have any tips on creating a more night feel? I have Kinos and Arris with gels to play with. It is comedy so I didn’t want to make it too moody.
Cheers
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Can you find a scene from a movie or TV show or something that has an environment/lighting/mood that is similar to what you are trying to achieve and post a still of it?
If so then it would be easy to tell you how to effect that lighting plot.
If not, it’s a bit hard to guess as I think we are getting some conflicting info from you as to what you want to do and how you are planning to do it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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If you are on the ground floor and can access the windows from outside, you could just make a frame or shallow box out of foam core, the same size as the window opening, and then attach midnight blue gel to that frame, put that gel frame on the outside of the window, to filter the incoming sunlight so that it “reads” as moonlight. To get the light to come in at an angle, the box would also be somewhat angled… think of barn doors on a light, but reversed, sorta. If it’s am overcast day, floodlights or spotlights with midnight blue gel can shine in thru the window… I recommend in that case you use a light diffusion on the glass, even waxed paper would do.
Like Todd says, if all the interior lights are on, you have no reference to the time of day without a window in the shot, but many offices go to low-power consumption mode overnight, with half or fewer of the overhead flos turned on, creating pools of light and dark. If you combine that with an overall blue cast on the white walls, and a more pronounced blue pattern along the walls near the windows, the contrast of the blue light in a tungsten-balanced room with just a few tungsten-color temp desk lamps, is going to “sell” the “night shift” idea. Leaving a clock set for midnight in the shot somewhere will also help.
You’re going to deliberately have two different color temperature sources going on: flashlights, desk lamps, stuff like that, will be a tungsten source, around 3200 Kelvin. The blue of night will be your base light. When lighting people, you will skip 3-point key-fill-back, and use only a key or only a back, to increase the contrast.
Or ignore me, read this:
https://www.cinematography.net/edited-pages/MOONLIGH.HTM
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Other tricks:
You can white balance on a yellow card to hype the blue.
There are many color-correction plug-ins now that will automatically give you a day for night look on exteriors and a noir-ish look for interiors. You can do it in post, but it helps if some of it is done “practical” on the set, “in-camera”.
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Moonlight is not really blue, it is daylight bounced off a grey bounce card. Seeing out the window is more of an issue of controlling your contrast ratio and color balance.
A duvatine hung to cover the window, or build a black out box outside the window to keep interior lights from falling on the black out. Then use desktop practical on squeezers on the desks both in foreground and background. reduce overhead lighting by a certain amount to achieve a look that is different from INT DAY OFFICE.
Blackout/Boxing windows
Interior Office Night
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=interior+office+night&FORM=HDRSC2An alternative would be to heavily ND the window, set exposure so that the exterior looks Day for night, and then light the office to match.
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