diagram: day for night poor man’s process

We were filming a car scene as a day for night inside a studio, so we had to fake all the lighting movement that a person in a car would normally have.

An amaran F22c served as the brake lights from the car in front of us in traffic. A grip, Kai, turned that occasionally from 1-6% to simulate brakes in stop and go traffic.

A Quasar RR100 was positioned as a “key light” as it was the longest, wrappiest light we could use to highlight the talent from the far side without interfering with the brake light gag. Another grip, Teej, would drape duvetyne over this from left to right regularly to simulate passing streetlights.

Thomas, my key grip, was inside the back of the van pushing an Aputure MT Pro tube light in and out to simulate the cars headlights from behind affecting the actors neck and the rear of the headrest.

A bead board stashed away inside the van helped to bounce a little light back into talent from the rear as well.

We used a TV as a backdrop for different driving plates that our DIT, Eric, would edit in resolve to match the scene.

Both our PA’s would rock the car to simulate the bumps you’d normally feel while traveling down the freeway.

The third picture in the carousel shows our “rear car blinding gag” diagram, where we replaced two 4×4 floppies with an Aputure 60x and spotlight that was aimed to cut perfectly into the rear view mirror!

Lastly, we invited our good buddy negative Phil over to wrap everywhere we weren’t shooting so there weren’t any static lights to give away the trick.

dir/prod: Chelsea Isabella
ad: Markus Essien
dp: Gabe Fermin
1st: aaron butwinick
kg: Thomas Charleston
grip: Teej Morgan
grip: Kai Hohnan
sound: Jacques de Curnou
script: Jill Coats
dit: Eric Lopushansky