Commercial Cinematography: Owning the Night

Lighting cars at night can be a challenge, especially for commercial cinematography. You want to make a great impression and get the job done right. There are a lot of questions you first need to ask yourself. Namely, what camera and lenses should you choose? Then, how do you light fast-moving shots at night?

This short video lesson gives you some brief insight on how to prep and pull it off in a short amount of time! Here’s a hint, your camera and lenses have much to do with your success. The good news is you don’t necessarily need a RED Gemini to capture night shots. (Although, it’s difficult to match that beautiful Gemini sensor!)

Shane’s cinematography process

In this video, you get a glimpse of Shane’s process for this Acura spot. Pulling from his experience on Need for Speed, there was one camera that stood out from the rest. And that was the Canon C500.

That’s because the Canon C500 energizes the light. In fact, they actually had to turn off streetlights to create more contrast!

Now, you might not always have the same budget as a big-name brand car commercial, but that’s OK!

You can use the principles gleaned from the larger productions and adapt them to smaller productions. For example, you can purchase affordable sodium vapor lights from Home Depot to use as streetlamps. There are always useful workarounds for commercial cinematography that you can apply to your own unique process.