Shooting a car interior during the day is like being in a small room with a super low ceiling surrounded 360 degrees by windows. The roof of the car is like a big topper blocking out all that beautiful daylight from the sky. So this is what you're dealing with when we shoot daytime scenes in a car.
Lighting for film and video means managing contrast in the shot, what’s bright and close to white, what’s dark and close to black and all the grays in-between.
And nowhere do we see that better than a daylight car interior. The car roof has taken out all of our overhead daylight while the windows show us the bright day outside.
Contrast Hell
If the car has a sunroof you could open that up. Great if the car is stationary but if it’s being driven down the road it's not ideal. The trees, buildings that you drive by and under can create shapes and shadows on people's faces that can be distracting.
Also, the glass of a sunroof is usually tinted taking away light that we want. You could open it up, but now you’re letting in noise.
Diffusion could work to help deal with the shadows but most sunroofs are over the front seat which doesn't help light people in the back. It can also give too much light to anyone in the front already lit from that wide windshield.
Flex Lights Save the Day
The solution is to add lights to the ceiling of the car. On a shoot that I AD’ed this year DP Colton Becker decided to use flex lights. Flex lights are one brand of thin flexible LED panel lights. He used two 1’ x 1’ they affixed to the car ceiling using T-pins. They’re normally used in crafting but are a great way to hold flex lights in place when fabric is involved, like in the ceiling of a car.
Flex lights come either daylight or bicolor balanced and are powered by different types of batteries. The battery cable can be run down along the partition between the doors to hide them. They work with common onset batteries like v-mount and Sony NPF batteries. Colton shot with an Ursa mini pro which meant he had plenty of v-mount batteries to use.
Because we were shooting in sunny California he set the brightness of the flex lights by eye with the car in daylight. Colton knew they were going to be fighting with bright sunlight outside of the car which can also get bright when It reflects off of things.
But though flex lights are great they just can't match the brightness of the sun. ND gels to the rescue.
Neutral Density Gels
We put neutral density filters on our camera lens to bring the light level down coming into our lens. We can do the same thing with ND gel except selectively, in this case just on the windows. They come in ND .3, .6, and .9. 1, 2, and 3 stop increments.
Colten choice to put ND .9 gels on the windows bringing them down by three stops. This gave him the flatter look he was looking for on this project. He wanted to see the actors' faces given this was a comedy. For a dramatic series, he might use lower ND gels or none at all to allow for a more contrasty look.
ND .9 gel was cut to the shape of the car windows and taped on with gaffers tape, for all the windows, 360 degrees. Even the windshield otherwise the driver would be blown out.
Some DPs may use two layers of ND 6 to get four stops. And no, it won’t give you any issue flapping in the wind as you drive if you tape it on good and tight.
Note, some car windows are already tinted, either in the factory or afterward by the owner. You may need to use ND 6 or 3 or none at all on those windows. Usually, the front side windows and the windshield are not tinted (not legal to tint them in CA). Either way, always shoot tests.
Overall, using ND and Flex lights allowed us to be nimble on these shoots as we were shooting in four different car interiors. This setup helped Colten manage the contrast on our shots.
For those interested Colten shot around f.2.8 with internal ND filters, iso 200/400 with an Ursa Mini Pro Gen 1. He used a sigma 18-35 f 1.8 lens and recorded pro rez 422 1080p
For shots requiring a camera on the dash, he used the Pocket Camera 4k.
The project is called Riding in Cars with Strangers, written and directed by our friend Sanji DeSilva.
Footage from “Riding in Cars with Strangers” written and directed by Sanjana DeSilva https://www.facebook.com/theangryelephantproductions
DP Colten Becker, coltenbeckerdp.com
Actors
Jul lee, Shannon Luccieer, Jones Reeve, James Aaron Oh, Ari Lagomarsino, Jordan Ong