Waist deep car scene1/17/2024 ![]() ![]() This is done with a 400 watt HPS cobra head from Home Depot that is a 3/4 toplight, a 3” x 12” Rosco Pad taped to the dashboard with 1/2 plus green on it to emulate the dashboard of a 70’s Gran Torino and that was it. Aaron Paul is in his car we slowly zoom into his eyes all sound drops out. Let’s take the start of the race for example. The lighting plot for these shots was very simple, but the selection of roads became very complex and so important. We opted to exploit the C500’s sensitive sensor and give Scotty his vision, which was lighting 4.5 miles of street racing with lights from Home Depot, Georgia Water and Power street lights and no lights on huge cranes. On 35mm film, this would have been possible only with a budget over 120 million dollars and adding 20 extra days to the schedule. We had to be able to drive these cars at night for miles in all different lighting conditions, from the outskirts to the town square. On Need for Speed, director Scotty Waugh wanted ultimate freedom. Just beautiful and beauty in a way that fits the story! This is what I am going to go into with this post, how to make something feel real, but not RAW, or not stylized. That is one way, but how do we make it a beautiful reality? In a nutshell, this is my style as a Director of Photography - taking something that looks ordinary if you just turned your camera on it and make it unique, different, beautiful. How do you do this with grace and elegance? You could turn your camera on and crank your ISO up and document your actors. Now we have incredibly sensitive camera sensors that enable us as artists to capture all the light out there and expose an image in the vehicle. It was a circus act flying down the streets of LA. When that closed box light was heading back, the other crew would pull the light from the front to the back on the other truss that was right next to it. We knew that the light would be reflected into the front windshield so the grips made a cut out for the light so that it looked like a Cobra Head street light shape. It is not a wire that gets electrified like a tungsten source. They have to fire a gas that then illuminates. You cannot turn high pressure sodium lights off and on. So one light would move on this truss and when it got to its end mark, a door would close on it and we would then pull it back to the front. Obviously, the light can only move one direction to simulate speed and moving forward. It was an advanced box truss system that moved high pressure sodium light fixtures back and forth over their heads to illuminate the interior. ![]() Getting back to the rig, we put the Bronco on the process trailer and designed a goal post rig that was suspended over the truck. Those extra two stops make all the difference. Film, five stops in the under and eight in the over. C500, seven stops in the under and five in the over. Now with a Canon 5D or a Canon C500 jacked to 2000 ISO, this would be no problem because these cameras love the low light. We had a sequence in the film where Kirsten Dunst and Jay Hernandez start to fall in love in the back seat of an old Ford Bronco driving down the streets of downtown LA at night. On Crazy/Beautiful, Director John Stockwell wanted all of the movie to feel real, like we were right there documenting it as it happened. The actors fake like they are driving around town, when in actuality, they are being pulled behind an insert Camera Car, which has a generator on board for your lights, cameras and staff so that they can view. The process trailer is a trailer that you put your picture car on. I created elaborate rigs on Crazy/Beautiful and Waist Deep to mimic this light. With 500 ISO being your most light sensitive film emulsion, you were left with an underexposed image and those streetlights not really keying your talent. “Let’s break it down”īack in the days of film, I always wanted to deliver what actually happened in a car to the naked eye, the outside light streaming into the car from street lights, passing headlights of a car, or parking lots and shops. With the invention of cameras that see into the night, it has given me what I have always tried to mimic, which is bringing the outside light into the vehicle and have it really expose your passengers. Lighting car interiors at night has always been a challenge. Now I want to go into how I light, what choices I make with specific units, and why one lighting tool is selected over another. ![]() I have gone in depth on all the camera choices that I made on Need for Speed I have shown you many tests of multiple digital sensors and have shown you how to immerse an audience. ![]()
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