Lighting Car Interiors (page 2)

You don't need to worry about trying to shoot a moving car scene at night. There are easy techniques to create a very believable car scene without moving out of the driveway or garage.

If your budget allows, you can mount the rather expensive but very reliable, cool-temperature and flicker-free Kino Flo Micro-Flo kit on the dash in front of each of your actors and create a very believable lighting on their faces. Or you can buy small fluorescent work lights at the local hardware store and gaffer-tape them to your dash. Once you have white-balanced the camera, you can add gels to the lights to simulate the color of the dash lights for that car model.

For the lights of a passing car, mount two par lamps on a board about three feet across. These become the headlights in the distance. Red gel another set for taillights. Pass a hand-held Lowel Omni light gelled with a blue filter across the car hood at regular intervals to create streetlights. Finally, set up a green-, yellow- and red-gelled par set with switches to make a stoplight. Shining these lights through the windshield onto your talent's face creates very realistic street lighting effects. Edit your "studio" shoot with some good exterior video of the area, and the scene becomes totally believable.

For those one-man-band or low-funded productions, there are other ways to light a car interior. Ever see a "tap light"? How ‘bout a "snake light"? Both of these hardware finds work well in tight places, like adding illumination to the floorboards, or to set in the driver's lap to give a bit more glow to his face. Tap lights are small round battery-operated Plexiglas domes found in linen or hardware stores that you tap to turn on. Snake lights are flashlights that have a flexible handle that a user might wrap around his neck to work hands-free. We used a snake light in a small area to light up the arms and interior of the glove in our Illuminations photo in the November issue. These lights are adjustable and don't throw off a lot of light, but in a pinch (and with zero budget), they can be effective, if you work with them.

Now that you know how to light car interiors, here's a Videomaker challenge: create your own setup, shoot a car-interior scene and send us some video and photos of the setup, and we'll get it on our new social networking site, Videomaker's Lounge. Good luck and happy lighting!

Robert G. Nulph, Ph.D., is an instructor of video and film production at the college level and an independent video/film director.

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