When dealing with ultra-low budget setups like this clamp lamp with a 500 W 3200K flood lamp and aluminum foil "barn doors", it's often difficult to diffuse them properly if they are too bright. Bouncing them off the ceiling can solve this problem, especially if it's a white ceiling.
Another difficult lighting situation we encountered was creating daylight at night. Try as we did, we were unable to get all of our shots in while we had natural light to work with. So I had to get my creative juices flowing! If we had been shooting outdoors, we’d just have been out of luck and had to reschedule the scene for another day. Fortunately we were working indoors and had more options. The scene was one of a family sitting around their table having lunch in the afternoon. Again the time of day we wanted to mimic was important to consider because outdoor lighting (like that pouring through a window in the afternoon) has a decidedly bluish tint to it. So we had to use fluorescent bulbs to achieve the appropriate color. Using incandescent bulbs, which produce an orangish tint, would clearly expose our situation. We were able to light this scene with two aluminum scoop lights ($10 a piece) from Wal-Mart with 500 watt 3200 Kelvin LG&E bulbs ($4 a piece online). We bounced both lights off the ceiling, using one as a key light for broad illumination and the other as a backlight to separate the actors from the background.
5500 K daylight bulbs can provide the illusion of sunlight streaming through windows..
Our final trick was to set up two lights outside the house on the back deck and shine them through partially opened blinds for an afternoon look. The bulbs that worked well for me were 55 watt FL55 spiral fluorescent lamps with a color temperature of 5500 degrees Kelvin/daylight balanced. Don’t be confused by the lower wattage notation. These lamps are powerful! I found these online for $50 a piece.
Screen capture from raw footage recorded for Collide. (Captured with Panasonic DVX100B.)
The third scenario that needed a creative solution was convincingly lighting a scene in which our lead actor was in his car very late at night. Nighttime scenes are particularly tricky because the subject must be exposed adequately, but not with so much light that it looks like you're trying. The key to creating stellar lighting is to make the set look as though you're not trying at all….particularly if you're not aiming for dramatic flare.
Lighting at night in cars is quite difficult, but can be accomplished with some creativity and know-how. (Screen capture from raw footage recorded for Collide. Captured with Panasonic DVX100B.)
For this shot, we made use of some items found on location. After determining the angle that the DP wanted to shoot from, (which will influence many of your decisions) I decided that a lot of external lighting was going to look very unnatural and just plain bad. My DP wanted to shoot through the front windshield, so lighting from the side or front was risky in terms of reflections off the car and glass. The most convincing option was to find some sort of overhead light source.
