Nightime outdoors - "pink" tinted street lights...

[Stephen Schleicher]

I believe matt is referring to your portable light kit. Instead of throwing off white light, the correcting gel will make it look more "pink".

Then if you white balance, everything will be white including your sodium vapor lights. You would probably also need to cover the windows of the stores.

I think the concensus among most people that have responded is that you should leave the sodium vapor lights alone. I think they look appropriate for you case scene. You are in a city, people expect there to be street lights and most of us live in cities where we have the orange/pink glow of sodium vapor and have become accustomed to seeing them.

I would focus on lighting your subject with your available light to get your subject lit just the way you want.

To relate a story to you...

Several years ago, I was working on a noir project where the detective was picked up by police while outside at night. Most of the people working on the production thought this would be a tough shoot to do because they were worried about having to rig alot of extra lights. I said "Bah", we'll use natural street lights. By lighting the subject only with sidewalk lamps and overhead streetlights, the shot looked EXCELLENT. The only thing that would have made the shot better would to have watered down the streets to get light reflections.

If you can use colored fills or mount your light kit in places to create pools of light for your subject to run through, then I think you will be fine. The extra background light only adds to the overall look to your piece.

Cheers
Stephen Schleicher
www.mindspring.com/~schleicher

[Matt Irwin]

Stephen- I couldn't have said it better myself.

I as well would leave the streetlights off-balance, though it really just depends on the look you want. Your footage is looking good. I would just focus on moving away from the on-camera light. Instead of lighting from the front, light from the side or back. Stephen's suggestion of using pools of light is an excellent call, I've also done stuff like that and have been very pleased.

If you are really pressed for cash and you need a decent soft source for cross key (or whatever), maybe think about halogen work lights (not the best, but very affordable) bounced into a 4x8 of styrofoam. Of course, there are many ways to do just about anything, so just experiment and you'll find a method that works.

[Matthew de Jongh]

i actually have a fairly decent assortment of small lights, two lowel lights and two mini frezzi's

i just need to be more creative in how i use them.

using the lowel's in this location is harder because of lack of power but i'm going to try using some large ups's to power the lowel's.

tonight i'm going to go out and try the suggestions out and see what else i can come up with especially in the pools of light department!

the footage i posted was the first artificial lighting i had ever used so i'm still just experimenting.

matthew

[Matt Irwin]

I'd like to hear how the UPS works. Just make sure you only turn the lights on while you're rolling though. I know that a car or boat battery with a power inverter works very well. I've run a 400w HMI on a car battery and got about 1 hour total run time.

As far as you lighting technique goes, the best thing to do is experiment and make a lot of mistakes :) It's only uphill from here. Happy shooting!