Shooting a scene in a car is pretty inevitable, which is why you'll want to know how the pros do it. But you may not have the cash that the pros have to do it the way the pros do, which is why you'll want to know how to do it cheap. In this video from Aputure, Cinematographer Julia Swain gives some excellent tips on how to light a car scene when you don't have the big Hollywood budget to do it all big and Hollywood-y.
First things first: you need a place to shoot your car scene, and since you're probably not going to haul a car around on a trailer like they do on big budget productions, you'll have to find some kind of large, open space to shoot in, like a studio or warehouse.
Second is lighting. Swain uses quite a few lights in her demo, which means that, yeah, you might want to shell out some cash to rent a decent lighting kit.
'Drive' (2011)
However, if you're really strapped for cash and want to get a little DIY and creative, you can try rigging up some cheap clamp lights. Just keep in mind that you might have to tweak a few things to solve the additional issues that come up when you go this route.
For example, you might have to account for different color temperatures if you're just pulling a bunch of clamp lights out of your garage that have different kinds of bulbs. Also, bulbs found in most clamp lights aren't the most powerful things in the world, so just make sure that your key is powerful enough to get a proper exposure. Finally, keep in mind that incandescent bulbs tend to flicker on-screen, so you might have to change your frame rate or shutter speed to counteract it.
Do you have any cool, inexpensive tricks for lighting a car scene? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Aputure
