Practical Lightning Effect

[mikemoring]

I'm preparing to shoot a new short film in the next couple months and I'm wondering if anybody has any proven methods to create a lightning lighting effect on set. The scene takes place indoors while a thunderstorm rages on outside. I would like to create the illusion of lightning flashes on set, practically, without any dependancy on post-production. I just don't know exactly what time of lights/gear would be best to create the effect. Any thoughts?

[mikemoring]

... and by "time" I mean "kind." I have no idea how that happened...

[bashenmantv]

You may be able to create the effect with a strobe light and a CTB. Add a reflector behind your camera to reflect on the walls in the shot and it could work. Hope I helped.

[mikemoring]

CTB? (forgive me if this should be totally obvious)

[bashenmantv]

Color Temperature Blue. Ryan has used it and mentioned it in some of his videos. It puts a blue tint on the light. Looks like blue celophane.

[chitoryu12]

CTB and CTO are both common forms of gels, which are basically colored sheets of heat-proof plastic that you fit over a light. There's a lot of different kinds (especially in theatre), but CTB and CTO are the two big ones. CTB is a blue gel that gives the light a blue tint, which makes it look more like light from outside. CTO is orange and gives the light (obviously) an orange tint, which can be placed on a window to make it look like an incandescent bulb is shining the light.

As he said, place a CTB on a strobe and just catch it on the walls. If you want that blinding flash of light, notice how in real lightning the flash is so bright that you can't really tell where it comes from? Just quickly flash the strobe once into the camera to do a "blink and you miss it" whiteout.

[scaramelscod]

Rolling shutter could cause problems with this effect. With my 550d (t2i) when there's a flash of light, usually the top half of the frame is bright before the bottom half and it looks hell dodgy. What camera is being used for this shot?