lighting for an interior night scene?

Question

I'm working on a student piece, and one scene is this late-night interior in a city apartment. the only "light source" (if you will) that's "inside" the characters' space is static on an old TV. Being in a city, there's the light from outside the apartment- street lights, headlights, general city-late-at-night activity to consider (there's an upstage left window in the set design). So the question is what color gels should we use to get this look? (Rosco numbers, if you know them, please!) We're working with some old Par cans for backlight, and a mix of sourse 4s and old Altman 360s (I'm not sure which version- they're pushing 30 years old, though) for front and sides. Thanks!

Answer 1

Don't think of this as hard fast advice, but rather as a starting point:

If you have enough gear, start off with a downlight wash of something like R80 or R83

Reinforce the "light" from the TV with something like R60

Reinforce the light from the windows with a warmer tone like R17 or R18 (somewhat reminiscent of sodium type outdoor lights), but don't let this slop all over the place, play it against something cool outside the window. If you have enough gear you might want to try sending something cool like R60 or R62 thru the window at a steep angle (moonlight) and send the R17 or 18 in at a lower angle, (light from streetlights, etc).

Add some front fill with something neutral like R53-R57, and maybe a little R68

Like I said, just a starting point. You'll probably want to tweak things to better reflect the play itself (ie comedy, drama, etc).

Answer 2

My lighting teacher once used a revolving light inside a tv (obviously it was facing away from the audience) for the effect.
For the lighting have you considered using a gobo, you could get the effect of light spilling in from outside through the window. Regarding the colour of the gels, we were looking at some for a night scene in my class and I'm not sure of the number, but a steel blue that doesn't have too much saturation of colour would be best, if it is too dark you won't be able to see the characters adequately.