Lighting a Night Exterior Scene with Shane Hurlbut ASC | DIY Moonlight

How do you light Night Exteriors? What is your first stroke, what are some DIY solutions you can use, what bounce sources do you fly, what lights make the best moonlight sources, what do you set your camera’s color temp at to deliver silver grey moonlight?
These questions are all answered in our Lighting Night Exteriors Course.
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[@GeordieMilne]

I have worked on film sets for 20+ years in many roles. Shane, the way you walk around directing and setting up is absolute magic!

[@629fzq]

fantastic. so I still have no idea how to do the light over a night scene.

[@kevinsoundmixer]

Backlight = moonlight vibe, fog machine adds atmosphere, bead boards make a "line" of key light, adjusting the camera white balance to 4200° and bingo.

[@PjPerez]

This looks good (the little bit of "finished" we saw at the end), but one of the things that often bothers me about night exteriors is a lot of unmotivated lighting. Shots that look technically beautiful but make no sense practically. Really curious how to balance verisimilitude and aesthetics (and of course, the reality of a camera's low-light capture threshold).

[@vinnieRice]

They don't have to make sense practically. Movie lighting is generally impressionistic and in service to the story. As long as there is a general motivation, i.e. the 'movie concept' of moonlight is enough for audiences to accept it (or at least enough to suspend disbelief) and move to with their real interest, the actors. Real lighting doesn't get softer the closer you get to an actor but in every movie it does! It's only nerds like us that notice.

[@StillMovingMedia]

That is a huge challenge, the only times I’ve really seen true motivation in night scenes in woods is when fire, torches, headlights or alien space craft are involved for most things the visual language of filmmaking gives enough to grab onto with a soft key and a backlight to help establish the setting. I suppose this partly comes down to writing as well, if there isn’t a supporting narrative reason to have a practical source of the illumination then we’re left to just rely on the cinematic language people understand.

[@frasertomsfilm]

@@vinnieRice I agree, but I also don't like 'over-lit' stuff, night time it's ok not to see everything that's part of the mysteriousness of it. I don't have the course, but the last frame where she's close to camera looks too much lighting for me if this was a movie. If this is a commercial or a network TV show - sure...so it also depends what you're watching (obviously) but like the first poster, I really do gravitate more towards things that are practically motivated vs 'beauty'

[@BadKarma714]

Shane you are my favorite Director of photography terminator salvation was the best seriously I love what you did in that movie

[@bensonq]

Great to see Jorge in this video!! Taught me so much while I was still a film school student.

[@azfilmmaking6734]

Great tutorial as always. Are you renting all this things and hiring all these people just for tutorials?

[@asyrafjalil3506]

He'll probably make money back through the course

[@StillMovingMedia]

Often refer back to this episode 👌

[@iABabyCuh]

So sick 🔥🔥🔥

[@kiyotoshisato]

Great tutorial!

[@brucetrappleton6984]

Actually the first thing you set when lighting an exterior night, is your street lights, practical lights (like street signs, window stores, cars passing by, etc, if you are in an urban setting). Second, you establish your background light. And then, in accordance to the 2 variables mentioned above, you set your moonlight. Most likely it will be either a backlight, a 3/4 backlight or at the most, an overhead. The point is to set the moonlight in such a way that still will allow for deep shadows. Then you evaluate if you need a key light as well and some sort of fill.

[@filmmakers_academy]

Thanks for offering your take on how you light night exteriors, there isn't one way to do it, that's the beauty of filmmaking.

[@JJandTV123]

I think what he’s going for in the video is a scene where there’s no street light (in the forest)

[@antdx316]

They weren't adding all those Other lights into this scene. This was only for moonlight in the woods. If you start adding things that wouldn't exist in a particular activity, you will increase the efforts unnecessarily resulting in issues of not doing it right by bringing way too much equipment and mental stress.

[@BuildABergGroup]

This look like the woods though. 🤕

[@brucetrappleton6984]

@@BuildABergGroup it may or may not be. However, your exterior nights will be as a large majority of then, urban settings.

[@theOfficialOludare]

Badass!

[@matthewlivingston3168]

What's the importance of salt and pepper? I always see condors with 20k tungsten and and 18k hmi for moonlight set ups. Also hundreds of titan tubes in salt and pepper settings on a huge rigs for night exteriors set ups?

[@dcweldon]

There's a few applications. 1) Having the options so you can quickly go between 3200K (20K Tungsten) to 6000K (18K HMI) by turning one on or off if things change in the look. 2) Panning lights to hit different areas of a scene so you can sculpt some color contrast. It's not about creating a 4000K range color temp when using both tungsten & HMI, you could easily use either type of source and just gel them to the correct color temp. It's all about what that lamp is hitting and what the desired color temp for that little slice in the frame that you may see.

[@clintclarkson1325]

do you have a link to these sports fixtures?

[@dcweldon]

This is the best place to look for them: www.attitudelighting.com/equipment/urban-practical-1500w-mh-metal-halide-spot/

[@JoeyTheMonkk]

Good video, straight to the point

[@MikePriceLife]

Even this BTS instructional video is cinematic

[@buzzcrushtrendkill]

Way too over lit for moonlight. Don't be afraid of the dark. Look at Dean Cundey's lighting in Halloween 1978, lots of blackness. Very realistic.

[@NatesFilmTutorials]

Where's Monet?

[@theclosing2454]

crazy this is the guy christian bale flipped out on

[@antdx316]

wow, the area went from ugly to amazing

[@cmh6690]

Non expliqué = inutile.