Lighting for Cinematography- Summary and Notes
Lighting for Cinematography – Summary and Notes
a great book on lighting, especially for people who don’t know the first thing about lighting like me. Even tells you other books to read to get better.
Even with the most advanced postproduction coloring software, it is still preferable to begin with a full-range, deeply saturated image—something we used to call a rich negative. That means a picture with a defined contrast, full blacks, clean whites that don’t blow out, and a nice full range of in-between levels throughout. We can usually only accomplish this by judiciously adding some of our own lights.
The human eye is attracted to whatever the brightest thing is in its view. Magicians use this to their advantage all the time.
Good lighting renders an illusion of three-dimensionality to a flat screen, making it feel all the more real and making the viewer feel more present.
the lighting in the image must look “real” or “natural” or at least story-appropriate. Lighting provides logic. The light seems to be coming from natural or logical sources, making us feel we are in real locations.
Dark shadows can create a feeling of loneliness, loss, mystery, or fear, while a bright image can convey happiness. A warm-color, low-angle light can provide a feeling of comfort or romance, while light coming down from directly above can render a feeling of isolation.
“Light is the chisel that sculpts the mood of any image on screen.” —JOSEPH DE GENNARO, INDIE FEATURE DP
“Radiant” means that as light moves it radiates outward. In other words, light spreads in all directions as it travels away from its source. As it spreads, it decreases in intensity. We call this the inverse square law.
doubling the distance from the light reduces the illumination to one quarter of its brightness. We call this the “falloff” of the light.
The closer the light, the smaller the spread and the fewer things in the shot that will be illuminated by it. The farther away the light, the wider the spread of light and the more things in the shot that will be lit.
Light bounces. As a matter of fact, it’s almost impossible to stop it from bouncing. The angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence.
black absorbs light
Sunlight bounces off the sidewalk, off the street, off the side of buildings. It is also important to realize that sunlight bounces off the sky and off of clouds. So outside, light is not just coming directly from the sun and from one direction; it is also bouncing off of a wide variety of things and lighting us from a variety of directions.
White reflects all wavelengths of light, while black absorbs all wavelengths of light and reflects none. How can we use this? We can use black cloth and black “flags” to absorb unwanted light and to cut the bounce, as mentioned earlier.
We see color because the wavelengths of light that combine to make that hue are reflected by the pigment in the object, while the other wavelengths of light (that are in a beam of white light) are absorbed. This is important to remember because if the surface that is bouncing light isn’t white, the light bouncing off of it will not be white either. Green light bounces up off of a green lawn, while the other colors of the rainbow are all absorbed by the grass. This means that if you have an actress in a long, white dress standing in a lush, green, grassy field under bright sunlight, the bottom of her dress might appear a little greenish. And in a close-up, you might see green bounce light under her chin. Green isn’t a very flattering color, especially for an actress’s skin. So you might want to position the actress on a bare spot on the ground that is surrounded by the green grass, and when you go in for the close-up, place something black on the ground to stop the green from reflecting up—or perhaps a white card to reflect white bounce up.
In the film/video industry we color our lights by placing gels over the front of the lighting unit. Many people call this “adding color to the light,” but that is actually incorrect. What a gel actually does is filter out—or absorb—all the other wavelengths of light that are not in the color of the gel, only allowing the wavelengths that compose the color of the gel to pass through it. So, we aren’t adding color; rather, we are subtracting it so that the only color left is the one we see.
anytime we filter a light, we are decreasing the brightness of the light, since we are cutting out (absorbing) some of the light. The richer the color, the more intensity is cut as the more wavelengths of light are absorbed.
Light has four basic attributes that we can have some control over and use when we paint with light: intensity, angle, texture, and color.
The amount of brightness coming out of a light unit is measured in lumens.
In film and video we measure the light illuminating our subject by foot-candles. One foot-candle is the amount of light cast on a subject from a single candle 1 foot away. Technically 1 foot-candle is equal to 1 lumen per square foot.
We can also dim the lights—that is, lower its lumen output by decreasing the electricity flowing into the unit that generates the light. We can also scrim the light by placing a metal screen in front of the unit, which lowers the intensity of the light by blocking some of the light.
In general, the more shadows, the more dramatic a look; the fewer shadows, the less dramatic the look.
If the light strikes subjects straight on, they will appear washed out, their dimensionality will be diminished, and the image will look “flat.” Also, if the shadow falls directly behind the subject, the shadow will become a black rim that can make the subject look wider/larger than he or she is.
When shooting in a location, we must remember that light will very probably be hitting our subject emanating from things other than our lights. Thus, we will need to turn off whatever is producing that light, or block it somehow, or control it to our advantage.
Light from the sun and light from a point source has a hard texture. In other words, it will throw harsh shadows on whatever it hits. The harder the light, the further it “travels” before falling off.
The point is that light can be tightly focused and directed more easily if the light is hard.
soft light bleeds into the shadow areas and wraps around the subject a bit, spreading a small amount of light into the shadows. Thus, it produces a flattering look on the human face. It helps to smooth out wrinkles and blemishes.
we can change hard light into soft light, but as a result, the intensity of the light drops.
Think of the difference between hard and soft light this way: When you place your finger into the stream of water coming out of a hose, it divides on either side of your finger, leaving a dry area behind your finger. That’s what hard light does; it creates a hard-edged shadow behind whatever it strikes.
But when you place your finger in a slow-moving stream, the water curls around your finger, filling in the space behind it. That’s what soft light does.
We can soften hard light with diffusion gels or make it very soft by bouncing it into a white surface. But one thing we cannot do is make soft light harder.
The three primary colors of light are red, blue, and green. All other colors can be made from a mixture of these three. When these three colors of light are mixed equally, they will render a “full spectrum” white light. Full spectrum basically means all the colors of the rainbow.
These are the subtractive primaries—and they are in actuality magenta, cyan, and yellow.
They are subtractive because each of these pigments subtract (absorb) light wavelengths in order to reflect their hue.
Why is this important to know? Because we use colored gels often and we need to understand how they will react when mixed with other colors. It also relates to how color will reflect off of costumes and set pieces. Let’s say we have an actress in a blood-red dress in the shot. It’s a night scene, so we light the entire scene with blue light. If we used a “true blue” gel, that would mean there is only blue-wavelength light coming through the gel and no red wavelengths of light to be reflected off the red costume. So the costume she is wearing will photograph as gray or black. That would really upset the costume designer, and the director, and probably the actress.
The color of a beam of light is measured in Kelvin degrees.
The lower the number, the warmer or more red/orange the light. The higher the number, the more blue the light.
A candle gives off a reddish-orange light that is rated around 1,900 degrees Kelvin, or 1,900K; a desk lamp around 2,800K; a film light 3,200K; noon sunlight around 5,600K; and light from the blue sky 6,400K.
Why is this important? Just because a light might look white to the human eye, it doesn’t mean it will photograph that way.
When I was a kid I would look outside after sunset and everything would look blue outside. I would run outside so that I could turn blue, but once outside I wasn’t blue. In fact, nothing outside looked blue anymore. But when I looked back inside the house everything inside looked orangish. My brain was looking at the majority of the color of the light and setting what was white and what was skin tone and shifting everything else to make it work. We call this white balancing. Our brains do this naturally and in milliseconds.
In order for us to have any kind of accurate control over changing the color of our lights, we need to know what color they will photograph as to begin with.
We also must keep in mind that with some lights, as they dim, their color temperature changes—it drops, and the light becomes warmer. So placing a blue gel on a light and then dimming it down will not only decrease its intensity but alter its color, making it less blue the more it dims.
An incident meter reads the light hitting a dome on its front—thus reading all the light coming from every direction that would hit the subject’s face.
the camera to get a mixed light reading. A reflected meter reads the light bouncing off the subject and calculates an exposure based on assuming the light is bouncing off something that is 18 percent gray.
In cinematography, almost everyone uses incident meters, but we also use spot meters for special readings and know how to compensate their reading.
An f-stop is a setting for the iris of the lens. The lower the level of light in the scene, the wider the aperture must be to allow more light through the lens to hit the capture medium so it can record an image. The wider the aperture, the lower the f-stop number. The brighter the level of light, the smaller the aperture opening will be to limit the amount of light reaching the capture medium. This becomes a higher f-stop number.
The exact f-stop setting for the lens will depend on the sensitivity of the camera or capture medium (rated in ISO) in combination with the foot-candle reading of the light illuminating the subject.
Each standard f-stop setting listed below is double (or half) the amount of light entering the camera.
These are part of every lighting person’s vocabulary. • f1.4 • f2 • f2.8 • f4 • f5.6 • f8 • f11 • f16 • f22 • f32
3,200K is standard film lighting white, known as “tungsten.” • 5,600K is standard “daylight.”
When we shoot, we want all the light to be the same Kelvin degrees or as close as possible.
When we dim certain kinds of lights, the color temperature drops and the color becomes warmer.
In the morning, note how the light comes into your room. Note the color, angle, texture, and intensity.
DP is the head of the lighting crew and looks to the director to get an understanding of the mood and atmosphere the director wants for the overall film and each scene. Together they may reference past films, photographs, and paintings to start a dialogue about what kind of look and style the visuals of their project might have. The DP will read and reread the script as often as necessary to get a complete understanding of the intention and emotional moments within each scene, as they will help determine the design of the lighting. The lighting is there to help tell the story, to help support each scene’s emotional content.
a production assistant had plugged in a coffee pot—which blew the circuits. Tigre was ready to kill him, but lucky for the PA, Tigre didn’t have the time. He had to trace the old wiring down to between four different fuse boxes on different floors, as everything was mislabeled. Minutes before the cameras arrived, he found the breaker and flipped it back on—after the coffee pot, and the PA, were removed from the location. The shoot went without a hitch. This is a perfect example of why nothing can be plugged in, even to a wall outlet, without the permission of the gaffer. This is also an example as to why lighting people need to know math and basic electricity to do their job—and we will cover both topics later in this chapter.
The second electrician works under the gaffer and is called the best boy.
The rest of the lighting crew are film electricians, widely referred to as “electrics.”
Electrics set up lights, aim and focus them, place gels on them if wanted, run extension cords, and do whatever is asked of them by the gaffer or the best boy. Everyone in lighting starts as an electric, then works his or her way up to best boy, then eventually to gaffer. Many gaffers enjoy staying gaffers. Some become DPs. Some best boys enjoy staying best boys.
It isn’t uncommon in the film business for crew members to move back and forth between these different areas. Gaffers will sometimes hire other gaffers as their best boys or as rigging gaffers or as location gaffers or even as electrics on certain days of a film.
The rigging gaffer presets the lighting as designed by the DP, runs the cables, and sets up workstations where extra cables and lights are stored ready for use. The rigging gaffer will have his or her own rigging best boy and possible rigging electrics. When the shooting crew arrives, the rigging crew usually leaves and goes to the location the shooting crew just left and cleans up for them while the shooting crew films.
Some productions will have second unit crews, who will have second unit DPs, camera crews, gaffers, best boys, electrics, grips, props, and so on. These crews often shoot stunts, explosions, and establishing location shots, all shots where the stars aren’t seen or needed.
Grips also work for the DP. They move the camera, move walls, set up scaffolding, operate dollies and cranes, gel windows, and perform other important tasks. They will help rig ways to get the lights where the DP and the gaffer need them. They also do a lot to help control and shape the lighting. They set up butterflies, flags, and nets with grip stands to block and cut light. Some DPs will ask the key grip to work with the gaffer to get things done, while some key grips prefer to take their directions directly from the DP.
Grips do not set, hang, or focus the lights. That is strictly done by the electrics, who are trained for that. Grips have many other things they need to do on set. The distribution of work and allowing people to do what they specialize in is what allows the running of a set to be smooth, fast, and accurate.
The gaffer is the DP’s right hand. In feature films, the DP will tell the gaffer how he or she wants the scene lit, laying out which lights should be placed where. Since the gaffer knows all the equipment and electricity available, he or she might make suggestions based on efficiency of power, equipment, crew, time, and so on. It is always the DP’s final decision, but the DP usually listens to the gaffer. After all, the gaffer’s expertise is one of the reasons that the DP hired him or her.
Often, new DPs who are getting that chance to do something above what they’ve been used to doing will seek out a gaffer with more experience than themselves for that project. After a DP and a gaffer have worked together a few times, the gaffer will come to know how the DP wants things done. This is likely to result in the DP giving the gaffer more responsibility and freedom. They become a team that works smoothly and quickly.
dresser used a 500-watt lamp in the streetlight but wired it with something like speaker cable. The wire gauge was too thin for the amount of electricity being pulled through it, and the wire itself burst into flames. This is why, when working with lights, you need to know about wire gauge, amps, watts, volts, and all sorts of things.
Electricity always flows from negative to positive. The Earth is considered positive, so we should assume that all electricity is trying to find the fastest way it can to get to the ground. Usually, electricity will take the path of least resistance. If a human is a part of that path, it will go through that human—which will usually either burn or kill him or her.
Current is the electrical flow of the electrons (speed) and is measured in amps. • Potential is the difference between the + / – (strength) and is measured in volts. • Usage of electricity, how much is needed to operate something, is measured in watts.
W = A × V. Watts equals amps times volts.
Electricity moves in waves, thus WAV.
The thicker the wire, the more amperage it can accommodate without melting and the lower the AWG number.
If you don’t know the rating of the wire inside the extension cord, just don’t use
#18 = 7 amps • #16 = 12 amps • #14 = 16 amps • #12 = 20 amps • #2 = 90 amps (welding cable) • #00 = 150 amps (really heavy and thick)
The “heavy-duty” extension cords sold at places like Home Depot are either 16 or 14.
When shooting in a real location, the first thing the gaffer must do is find the electrical service box where all the breakers are, which is usually in the basement. If shooting in an office, school, or other public building, find the building electrician or custodian and have the person show you where the electrical boxes are. Often in public buildings there is more than one electrical box, different ones for different sections of the building. Make sure you find out which one is for the area of the building that you are shooting in.
So, how do we determine which outlets in the rooms we will be shooting in correspond to which breakers in the box? The easiest way is to use a circuit breaker locator, sold in many hardware stores for around $40. You plug a small plug into an outlet and then take the locator to the breaker box and run it up and down the breakers until it lights up or beeps. That’s the breaker for that outlet.
To avoid tripping breakers, don’t plug into rooms that share the same wall.
Always run extension cables from the source to the light, then plug them in.
Every light should have excess cable by the base because the chances are high that the light will be moved, if not during the fine-tuning of the lighting for the first shot, definitely when the camera changes angles and the lights need to be moved again.
I have had students who went to Home Depot and rented small 6,000-watt generators and used them for shooting at night in the woods. The thing to plan for is that these small generators are noisy. If you decide to use one of these, make sure you hide it around a corner of a building from where you are shooting. It works well to place it on the opposite side of a truck or a line of thick trees as well.
The gaffer keeps track of how many amps are plugged into which outlet—never exceeding 20 amps, although keeping it under 15 amps is safer, as you might not know what else is on that circuit using power.
Open-faced lights—The open-faced light is a lighting instrument that has a bare lamp with a reflector behind it. This unit emits a bright, hard light that spreads very wide and the falloff is rather fast.
Fresnel lights—The Fresnel lens was invented for lighthouses and adapted for theater lighting units many years ago. The Fresnel lens is a stepped convex lens in the front of the unit that focuses the light, increasing the output and extending the throw of the light. All Fresnel lights can be focused, spot to flood.
Softlights—Softlights are units that either direct all the light into a white reflective surface or through a white diffusion material, with no direct light from the lamp coming out of the unit. The light that emanates is soft; it wraps and falls off very quickly.
PAR, for parabolic anodized reflector, lights are units that utilize a parabolic reflector behind the lamp, similar to a car headlight.
Homemade—Many DPs and gaffers like to make their own lights and bring them on shoots, such as bucket lights, which are white plastic buckets or trash cans that have a porcelain lamp socket rigged in the base. The book Shot in the Dark is all about making inexpensive do-it-yourself lights and dimmers
The DP—director of photography—designs the lighting. • The gaffer implements the lighting by running his or her crew of electrics. • The best boy is the 2nd electric and is in charge of the electricity. • Open-faced lights are lights without lenses that produce hard light that spreads fast.
Fresnel lights have a stepped glass lens that focuses the beam of light narrower and thus travels farther before falling off.
Softlights produce a diffused light that wraps but falls off quickly.
PAR lights have a reflector that focuses the light to throw even farther than a Fresnel and has lenses or lamps that are interchangeable to spread the beam.
ERS—ellipsoidal reflector spotlights—are from theater and throw a much brighter and narrower beam than a PAR. They also allow gobos to be slid in that project patterns. They can be defocused and the barrels can be changed, but they do not spot or flood.
Scrims, which are metal screens, can be placed in lights (except ERS lights) to cut the intensity; a single is green and cuts a half stop; a double is red and cuts a full stop.
Barn doors are used to cut the light coming out of a unit (except on ERS lights).
Motivation in lighting means justifying why the lighting is the way it is—its angle, texture, color, and intensity.
“I go into a room and let that room inspire me. I look at what I like and how can I enhance, keep, and control it.” —ELIA LYSSY, DOCUMENTARY CINEMATOGRAPHER
“Three-point lighting is a concept and a great springboard to lighting.” —GUS DOMINGUEZ, TV LIGHTING DIRECTOR/DP
“I’m not big on fill light. But some directors will say it’s too contrasty, so you put a little white board in.” —ELIA LYSSY, DOCUMENTARY CINEMATOGRAPHER
Which side of the subject do we position the ¾ backlight? Generally, the side opposite the key light.
In recent years some cinematographers have decided not to shoot with a backlight. They want to stay true to nature and avoid using them. Often it’s a matter of whether they can justify a backlight—can it be motivated by a seen or even unseen source so that it maintains the illusion of reality?
“It says something to the audience whether or not you use a backlight.” —PETER STEIN, ASC, FEATURE DP
“I only use backlights when motivated by sources in the room. So often the backlight will be quite intense if it’s supposed to be sunlight; otherwise, it will be a soft backlight coming from a window, and the reverse angle opposite the windows won’t be backlit at all.” —DAVID MULLEN, ASC, FEATURE /TV SERIES DP
The simplest thing to remember is that whenever you move the camera, you should plan on moving the lights—maybe not all of them, but almost always most of them.
MOTIVATION—When approaching lighting a scene, begin with establishing the source of the light in the scene.
KEY LIGHT—The brightest light hitting your subjects; it will be positioned to act as if it is light coming from the motivated source.
FILL LIGHT—A diffused light coming from closer to the camera lens and just above eye level that will fill in the shadows produced by the key.
BACKLIGHT—A light posited ¾ back and opposite the key that will provide separation and a kick off the subject’s cheek.
One thing we try to imitate from nature is the fact that the tops of walls are almost always darker than the bottoms.
EYE Light—A small-intensity, dimmable light placed just above the lens to add a twinkle to the eye and flatter facial lines. • KICKER—A side light that adds a kick off the subject’s cheek and shoulder.
WALLS—Keep your subject’s shadows off the wall. Do this by making sure both the subject and furniture the subject uses are away from the wall. Add some kind of treatment to the wall—a slash or a breakup, or at the very least a low-intensity wash, just to acknowledge it’s there. How the background is lit will influence the mood of the scene.
Remember to shoot into the shadow side of the face for better modeling.
Cross key light uses three lights to light two people talking, where one person’s key light serves as the other person’s backlight, and a softlight fill is positioned by the camera.
Position the cross keys on the far side of the subjects from the camera to throw their shadows down and in front.
Make the actors aware of not blocking their partner’s light and throwing a shadow on each other.
Block, light, rehearse, shoot. • Light the end mark first, then the start mark, and then the path. • We perceive movement by seeing a subject move through variations of light and shadow.
The more drastic the change in light levels the subject moves through, the more dramatic.
Lighting needs to accommodate camera moves to avoid camera shadows and lens flare.
A china ball on a pole can move with the camera and actors to keep fill on them.
The more ambient soft light in the scene, the easier for the camera to move around freely.
When shooting outside, we must be aware that the sun is always moving (although in actuality it is the Earth that is moving). The sun never stays in the same part of the sky for even a minute, which means the angle of light outside is continuously changing.
“Your biggest light is the sun, it gives you more latitude if you simply embrace the sunlight.” —GUS DOMINGUEZ, TV LIGHTING DIRECTOR /DP
The easiest way to get good lighting for shooting outside is to shoot with the sun behind the subject.
If we shoot with the sun behind the camera, we will have a number of problems: • The shadow of the camera may be in the shot, either on the ground or on the subject. • The actors will be squinting, since the direct sunlight will blind them. • The lighting will be frontal and flat, hard, and harsh looking. • Both the subject and the background will be the same brightness.
When the sun is behind the subject, we can easily bounce or reflect light from the sun back into the scene and our subject’s face, which will bring the subject’s luminance up higher than the background.
ANYTHING CAN BOUNCE LIGHT
The sun never stops moving, so the angle of the light changes throughout the day. • The color of the light outdoors changes throughout the day.
Shoot with the sun behind the subject when possible.
Bounce cards and reflectors can redirect sunlight to fill in faces.
Butterflies are large silks that can soften or cut the sunlight, but they require careful attention by the grips.
Lights used outdoors must be balanced for 5,600 Kelvin, such as HMIs, plasma, LED, and daylight-lamped fluorescent units.
Shooting in the shade makes using lights more effective.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE • Shoot outside with the sun behind the subject. Use different-size bounce surfaces to see the difference in intensity they create. • Shoot outside with the subject in the shade using a bounce card to reflect light onto the face.
“Never rely on mother nature; she will always disappoint you.” —RAY BRIBIESCA, 60 MINUTES CAMERAMAN
Windows in the shot add depth and dimension, as well as an illusion of reality.
“The best windows are the ones you block out—then you become the sun.” —GUS DOMINGUEZ, TV LIGHTING DIRECTOR /DP
Never plan on using actual direct sunlight. A friend of mine was planning a shoot for a festival short with a shot of a child sitting in an empty attic. He scouted his location a month in advance and wrote down exactly when the sun came through the attic window just right, hitting the center of the floor and how long it stayed there. When he came back a month later to shoot, the sun no longer was coming in the window at that angle, didn’t hit the same spot, and disappeared sooner. The reason? The sun is never back in the same spot in the sky within the same year. The Earth revolves around the sun, which means each day, the sun moves a slightly different path through the sky. A month is a big difference.
Lighting a person through a window is not the preferred method. As you can see from the photo, a lot of light still ends up on the window itself.
Light coming in through windows is a mixture of textures, angles, and colors.
It is always better to shoot in a room with windows when no direct sunlight is coming through them.
Shining lights in through a window is a common standard practice that provides a constant sun as well as exposure, motivation, modeling, depth, and an illusion of reality.
The human eye can actually see really well in very little light. So radically underexposing or making a scene dark is unnatural and not at all what the human eye sees.
Unless you are in a cave, there is always light.
At night, almost all light is hard. Streetlights produce hard light. Porch lights produce hard light.
City streets are full of light. Streetlights and store windows provide a tremendous variety of colors, angles, and intensities. If you are going to shoot a scene on a city street, pick a street that has a few store windows that leave their lights on all night.
If you have a person or a couple walking down a city street toward the camera, the fastest and simplest way to light the scene is with a china ball on a pole.
“Contrast and dark, unlit areas. And choice or source. Make the refrigerator light the source and the kitchen seems suddenly dark.” —BILL O’LEARY, GAFFER, MAJOR FEATURE
DP Peter Stein recommends that when shooting a night scene it helps to, at some time during the scene, show a dark window in the shot. He feels this helps to establish that it’s night outside and not just a dark room.
Night scenes are not dark. They are contrasty. Use a hard-edged bright rim light to help achieve this look. Slightly overexpose the rim and slightly underexpose the face. • Always light the background to provide depth and an illusion of reality.
Provide a “white reference” to help create a feeling that the viewer’s eyes have adjusted to the dark and can now see into the shadows—both for exteriors and interiors.
Use blue gel to add the feeling of moonlight, but be selective as to how blue you make the light.
China balls can provide an easy moving fill light for moving shots outdoors.
Wet down the street to provide glare and a nocturnal feeling.
Add colored out-of-focus points of light in the background to provide depth.
Show darkened windows to quickly reveal it’s nighttime.
To color our lights, we place gels on them. Gels are subtractive—that is, they filter the unwanted color wavelengths and allow the desired color to travel through the transparency.
“Color may be used for symbolic effect, though it is best if this is motivated by a light source in the scene.” —DAVID MULLEN, ASC, FEATURE /TV SERIES
The more subtle the colored light, the more natural and realistic the image.
Shoot a scene with lots of colors. Have someone sitting at night by a desk lamp. Add a little warmth to the light imitating your desk lamp, and add a little cool gel to the fill. If you can, do this setup with a window behind the subject, and add moonlight and streetlight in through the window. Add backlights with the same color gels as the lights through the window. Does one color dominate the other? Can you move the backlights so that both can register on the subject? If you can’t do the setup with a window, place a lamp in the background or in an open doorway with light in the other room, to motivate a backlight but give it a color. • Now shoot the exact same scene, but just remove all the color gels. Compare how the two images feel—lit exactly the same but one with color and one without.
low key lighting—which means high contrast and dark shadows.
Some people get confused and think low key means low light. It doesn’t. It means that there is a wide range between light and dark within the shot, and very often very little middle ground. Low key lighting is dramatic and in practice used extensively in mysteries, horror, and sci-fi.
The opposite look is high key—which means a more even level of light and less contrast. Some people get confused and think this means bright. It doesn’t. It means that the shadows aren’t all that dark, and that the majority of the scene is lit in a mid range, rather than very bright and very dark.
“I like a certain amount of contrast—it gives the image some depth and drama—but I don’t work towards any particular key-to-fill ratio.” —DAVID MULLEN, ASC, TV SERIES/FEATURE DP
“I light by eye, then take a picture to see what the contrast looks like. But I would look at the meter also. Generally the subject will always be brighter than the background—unless for some reason you don’t want that, such as against a window, which should always be brighter.” —PETER STEIN, ASC, FEATURE DP
“When I shoot on digital, I tend to underexpose. I expose for the highlights because you can bring up the image.” —ELIA LYSSY, DOCUMENTARY/LOW-BUDGET FEATURE DP
Rembrandt lighting is a style of lighting a single person, in still photography for portraits and in videography as an interview.
“For beauty shots you might want the leading lady to have a beautiful backlight all the time.” —PETER STEIN, ASC, FEATURE DP
High key is not overexposed; rather, it is low-contrast lighting with a wide range of levels of light.
Low key is not underexposed; rather, it is high-contrast lighting with bright elements and dark shadows, and not much in between.
Contrast ratio measures the foot-candles or f-stops between the key and the fill side of the subject. The higher the contrast, the greater the dramatic feeling. The lower the contrast, the more gentle, content, or happy the feeling.
Most DPs light by eye, and then meter later. Some just use the production monitor.
Glamour lighting is a hot hair light and even facial exposure provided by butterfly lighting, which is a single bright softlight above and in front of the face.
In order to read well on camera, fog and steam are best backlit.
Like fog, smoke needs to be backlit to appear on camera.
Unlike fire, candles produce a more steady glow without the pops and flare-ups.
In order to read on camera, rain needs to be backlit by hard light.
Prop snow can be made from a variety of things from small pieces of Styrofoam to laundry detergent. Prop people also often rent snow machines that spray white foam in the air so that it falls gently in frame. Snow needs to be front-lit. If we backlight it, it will look black and dark on camera—and come off looking more like soot than snow.
Water reflects hard light in a random dabbled manner.
The common practice for achieving the water ripple lighting effect is to place a lot of small mirrors in the bottom of a kiddie pool, and then cover them with water. Shine one or two hard lights down into the pool, aiming them so that the light reflects up into the acting area.
The effect of lightning flashes can be achieved either on set or in postproduction with editing.
Lights from police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances do not blink on and off. They flash and move back and forth. Sometimes the prop department will bring in an actual police light unit, but these need to be powered off car batteries. So more often if a scene calls for the light from an emergency vehicle to wash across the frame or come in through a window, it is left to the lighting department to rig some sort of police light gag.
Now that TVs and computers have moving color images, some gaffers use three tiny lights, such as GAM Stik-ups, in a line; place red, blue, and green gels on them; then dim them up and down. Unlike the fire effect, shadows from screen lights don’t move so erratically—unless the subject changes the channel or flips to a new website screen, in which case the light should make a fast change. The same effect is done for subjects watching movies in a theater, except the light should be a wider variety of colors. If you have the time and funds, there are multicolored LED lights that can be programmed to create this effect.
Any scene with people driving a car at night requires the subject to be lit by the dashboard light. Our eyes can see in this dim light, but it barely reads, if at all, on camera. So it is standard practice to rig some kind of small softlight unit either against the dashboard itself or resting on the actor’s lap and aimed up. Rosco LitePads are thin, flat, lightweight softlight panels that can be easily gaffer-taped or otherwise rigged to the dashboard. Mini Kino Flo fluorescent units come in 9 -inch or 12-inch sizes and are also lightweight. Both of these can run off 12-volt batteries or be plugged into the car cigarette lighter. Other small battery-operated LED units are available, but keep in mind that LEDs produce hard light and multiple shadows, so they may not read as believable dashboard lights. They would need to be gelled with diffusion, which would cut the intensity and spread the light too much.
In the real world, only the driver is actually lit by the dashboard light. But in scenes with two people in a car at night, the director and the viewer want to see everyone equally well. While we could just rig a second unit under the dashboard on the passenger side, this will look a little unnatural on camera. All that needs to be done to sell that the passenger is being lit by the dashboard is to place his or her light as close to the driver’s light as possible, and then aim it at the passenger. This very slight angle in directionality of the softlight will read subliminally in the viewer’s mind that the passenger is being lit by the same dashboard light as the driver and help support the illusion of reality.
In scenes where the subject is driving a car at night, the majority of the time the car is in a studio or garage, being rocked by the grips as the lighting crew moves lights past the car to simulate it moving. The reason is obvious: it’s easier for everyone. The actors don’t have to worry about actually steering the car, the producer doesn’t have to pay to close down a street, the sound person can get clean sound with no motor noise, the DP can easily light it and set the camera wherever desired, and the director, AD, and script supervisor can all be right there. It’s usually so dark outside the windows of a car that you can’t see anything anyway, so why not make it easy?
Many car, train, plane, and other interior transportation shots are often done with green screen outside the windows. This just makes everything easier, especially the lighting.
Backlight fog, smoke, and rain.
Front light snow.
Firelight has multiple hard sources, so use at least two slightly different-colored lights that flicker.
Candles are single hard sources that do not flicker unless there is a breeze.
Water effects are created by light reflecting off multiple mirrors under moving water (in a kiddie pool).
There are some lighting units that project these special effects, such as scene projectors and the BriteShot Luminator RGBAW.
Many night interior car driving shots are done without the car actually moving—the lights move instead.
Green screen requires that the screen be evenly lit, that no shadows from the subject hit the green screen, and that the subject is well rimmed, optimally with ½ or full Minus Green gel.
When lighting subjects in front of a green screen, it is best to match the lighting of the image that will appear in the green screen later—the same angle, texture, color, and intensity.
Reflective-surfaced objects need something white to reflect, such as white cards.
Shoot a poor man’s process shot of someone driving at night. You will need several people to help you—one to rock the car, one to do the passing car headlights/taillights sweep, and one to be the headlights of the car in the background. If you have a high-boy stand, add the passing streetlight. • Shoot a daytime poor man’s process shot by tenting the windows with a sheet or silk and then moving branches past the lights as the car “drives.”
Interview lighting is basically a return to the three-point lighting formula—key, fill, and backlight.
This also brings up the three B’s of interviews, which all need special attention: • Bags • Bald • Blond
As we discussed above, the trick with deep-set eyes and bags is to get as much soft light into the eyes as possible without creating an upward nose shadow or an awkward look.
Bald heads and the temples of someone with a receding hairline have a tendency to reflect the backlight.
Blond hair explodes in backlight. It reflects so much light it can sometimes look like it’s glowing and the top of the head can often overexpose. For subjects who are blond, the backlight needs to be dimmed considerably.
always rim the shoulders. It works even if you can’t light the hair because they’re blond or bald.” —RAY BRIBIESCA, CAMERAMAN, 60 MINUTES
A common problem in interview lighting is dealing with a subject who is wearing glasses. Depending on the manufacturer, the lenses of some glasses will reflect the lights, which will become very distracting in the shot.
“Mornings and evenings are the only times reality shoots inside the apartments—so the lighting is balanced for morning sun and late night with mixed 32 and 56 lamps. Morning sun is warmer, so adding the mixed color temp light helps cool it down so it can mix with what is seen outside the windows. The outside still goes a little blue, but it’s acceptable in reality TV. At night, everything outside the windows is no longer tungsten—the street lights, signs etc. are all LEDs or other colors.” —GUS DOMINGUEZ, TV LIGHTING DIRECTOR/DP
Always use soft light for both key and fill for interviews.
In documentaries and reality TV, have the interviewee turn into the key to shoot into the fill side and add some modeling to the face.
In corporate video, have the subject turn into the fill to allow his or her brighter side toward the camera. It is also almost always high key. • For interviews, keep the key light as close to eye level as possible, but without blinding the subject.
Add a small, below-eye-level, low-intensity softlight to fill in bags under the eyes.
For bald men and blond-haired subjects, aim the backlight into the subject’s shoulders, and barn-door light off the top of their heads.
Always add some light to the background—usually through a cookie or broken up somehow.
For subjects with glasses, move key and fill to the sides to avoid reflections.
For a TV newsmagazine, the correspondent is usually lit flat and flattering.
In documentary, bounce lights into ceilings to bring up the ambient light, and always have the lights on before the subject enters.
Reality TV lighting is adding soft light to fill in under the eyes and bring up the overall exposure—making faces look better than they would under the existing light.
Inspiration can come from things totally unconnected to the time period of the story as well. It can be a feeling or an atmosphere—almost anything.
using the terminology can help form a shorthand language between the DP and the director, just as high key and low key does.
The Dutch Masters Look This look is inspired by the work of such master painters as Vermeer and Rembrandt and the other Dutch Masters who painted near windows to let in bright, soft light. The northern part of Europe is famous for its fog, overcast skies, and long days where the sun barely rises above the horizon, thus sending sunlight bouncing off the clouds in the sky and providing a bright, soft, diffused light coming in through the window at a treetop-low angle. Buildings were made with large windows, either very wide or floor-to-ceiling high to allow in as much natural light as possible. So this style of lighting is large, bright, soft sources with very little backlight and somewhat midrange contrast ratios. It can be seen in most costume dramas; exceptional examples include Barry Lyndon (1975), Amadeus (1984),
Film noir is a term started by French film critics to describe a certain genre of American films that were made during World War II that didn’t make it to France until after the war ended. These were pessimistic, lower-budget, mystery genre “B” movies made by the studios often based on the pulp fiction of the 1940s, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1942), This Gun for Hire (1942), and Laura (1944). The cinematographers of these films had short shooting schedules, but were also allowed to do things that the higher-budget main title films weren’t allowed to do—such as allow their stars to be half in darkness—mainly because no one at the studio really paid much attention to them. These were the second freebie movies shown in double features, and used actors, writers, directors, and cameramen who were under contract, so they couldn’t say no.
Natural Realism Trying to go as far from the old Hollywood studio look as possible, natural realism in cinematography really grew out of the work of such DPs as Laszlo Kovacs on Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), and Vilmos Zsigmond on Deliverance (1972) and The Long Goodbye (1973—Photo 14.14). Not coming from the Hollywood studio system, and shooting on real locations rather than sets, these two revolutionary cinematographers strove to make their images as natural as possible. Their lighting was to imitate on film the image the human eye would naturally see, rather than the more glamorous images Hollywood produced. They found beauty in motivated lighting and delicate lighting ratios. The idea was to subtly lull the viewer into the world of the film.
what characterizes this look is hard to pinpoint, but could be said to be a heavy reliance on the concepts of motivated lighting, key lighting from the sides, extensive use of soft light, and a natural logic to the lighting ratios.
The “Home Video” and “Unlit” Look This look is a more recent style and appears often in “found footage” movies, basically started by The Blair Witch Project (1999), shot by the late Neal Fredericks, and continued with such films as Paranormal Activity (2007), but also applied to some serious dramas such as Margot at the Wedding (2007) and Frances Ha (2012). These are usually typified by shaky handheld camera work and what appears to be available light. At times, the DPs will go out of their way to make the lighting actually look bad in order to sell the “home video” look.
On Zero Dark Thirty (2013), DP Greig Fraser took a similar approach when trying to achieve the moonless night, no-light look during the compound raid scene. He used 48 Kino Flo lamps suspended by cranes above the entire outside area. All this can be done on a much smaller, less expensive scale. Hardware stores, such as Home Depot, sell “shop” 4-foot strip fluorescent units with a plug on them. You can get them in two- and four-bulb units and in various sizes, such as T8 and T4, for $20 to $40 each, as well as a variety of under-cabinet lights. All of these can be easily rigged above acting areas. Lamped with 4,000K bulbs wrapped with ½ Minus Green gel will produce a soft top light for very little expense. This lighting allows the actors and the camera(s) to move around freely and allows the image to look “unlit.”
Other things that might typify this lighting look would be wide contrast ratios within the shot with some things burning out and others deeply underexposed, as well as a lack of backlight or separation from the background. Downlight from real ceiling fixtures (often augmented by additional sources such as those just mentioned or with bounced light), as well as replacing the location’s household lights with higher-intensity lamps, generally becomes the motivation and method of lighting.
The documentary look isn’t the same as the home video look. No documentary filmmaker would ever wants his or her film to look that amateurish. As discussed in a previous chapter, documentary cameramen try to shoot using available light, but position their subjects in the best light possible and often use bounce cards and a few small lights.
documentary cameramen do strive to make the image look appealing, generally by positioning the subject in the best natural light at the right time.
The documentary look can be achieved by bouncing lights into walls and ceilings out of frame and replacing the location’s household lights with higher-intensity lamps, but also striving to use natural and available light to add modeling, depth, and backlight to the subject. It is generally a more soft, low-contrast look.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE Find a painting with great lighting. It’s best to select one with only one or two people and a rather simple setting that you can easily re-create. Shoot a still of it. Now imitate the scene, including the lighting, framing, color, and so on. Shoot the shot that matches the painting, then make the painting come alive. Shoot two more angles and carry out the lighting.
Play now—who cares if it’s underexposed? Do it now. You can’t experiment with other people’s money. If I had had to light the exact same thing today, I would light it differently. Cameramen are storytellers—it has to be part of the story whether it’s the framing or the lighting; it has to further the story. It’s good to know the rules, but in the world I work in, it doesn’t matter how many sit-down interviews I’ve done; it’s always something new. So I’ve learned to never come in with a plan on exactly how to light it. Instead, I come in and see the room. —Elia Lyssy, documentary and low-budget feature DP
The more you think about it, the better you get; the more experience you have, the better you get—so shoot as many varied types of films to get experience to see what works and doesn’t work. Experience is a great teacher. And don’t be afraid to take chances. —Peter Stein ASC, feature film DP (Local 600)
Just look at light. The more you look at what light does in nature, the more you’ll see it. Notice just the little touches of light. The difference between ho-hum and [lighting] that blows you away will be a tiny addition or subtraction that makes the scene pop. The only way to find those things is to look at light. —Tigre McMullan, gaffer/LD (Local 52)
Setting a mood without setting a mood—without being obvious. —Tigre
Lighting the background is one of the factors in creating a mood. I don’t believe in three-point lighting. I believe in four-point lighting—key, fill, back, and background. To create the mood, you need to light different planes of the set separately. —Peter
There’s plenty of dark comedies—such as the Coen brothers, so high key for comedy and low key for drama doesn’t apply as much anymore. I don’t mind contrast when I shoot digital.
becomes too self-conscious of the cinematography. If you are in the city, there is no blue light—everything is glowing orange from the mercury vapor. But if you are in the country, it would be cooler. I would use ½ blue or ¾ blue and put a ¾ or ½ CTO on the inside lights, so that the moonlight is a little cooler, rather than “blue.” I would use CTB instead of theatrical blues. —Elia
Other than color, how else do you make the scene appear nighttime? More contrast. Areas of total shadow and areas of a white reference. Less fill light. In the frame, have one area exposed correctly and the others underexposed. —Elia A lack of light in the background; reduce fill, but not eliminate it. You still need a little fill; otherwise, it feels dishonest. —Tigre Contrast and dark, unlit areas. And choice of source. If headlights are the brightest and motivational source in a scene, then it appears to be night. Or make the refrigerator light the source, and the kitchen seems suddenly dark. —Bill
There are only two reasons to add color to the light in a scene: either for technical correction or for aesthetic effect.
I try to give my director at least a 280-degree field of view, to minimize the number of lighting re-sets to get through a typical scene. This may require hanging instruments in the ceiling to avoid light stands encroaching on the set, but that extra effort is well worth the payoff. The director experiences less delay between setups, and the actors are better able to stay in character to give a more consistent performance on camera. This is the essence of moviemaking. Artful lighting of a mediocre scene is a waste of aesthetics. —Joe
I keep a mental tool box of images I’ve seen—something on TV or art or even a streetlamp. I can’t wait to use that later. —Gus
Watch movies—lots of movies. —Ray
APPS There are a number of apps for digital devices such as smart phones and digital tablets that are useful for lighting. Most, if not all, are available in both iOS and Android versions. Following are the ones I’ve found to be the most useful: • Barbizon—Lists lamps, electrical data, color information, and so on • Cine Meter—RGB waveform monitor, false-color picture, and shutter-priority reflected light meter; using the camera in your device • CineCalc—Separated into Camera Depth of Field and Lighting Unit Throw calculators • Pocket Light Meter—A digital reflected light meter using the camera in your device • Gel Swatch Library—Catalogue of gels made by Rosco, Lee, Apollo, and GAM • iGobo—Catalogue of gobos made by Apollo • myGobo—Catalogue of gobos made by Rosco • theGripApp—Covers knots, grip gear, dollies, cranes, and so on • Light Calc Lite—Calculates lighting throw and falloff • set Lighting—Catalogues of lighting manufacturers, lamps, and lighting tools • StageHand—Catalogue of Rosco, Apollo, and Lee gels • Sun Tracker—Tracks the sun • Sun Seeker—Tracks and predicts the sun’s path • SkyView—Tracks the stars and the sun • TechScout—Lighting gear ordering app
Painting with Light by John Alcott—A classic by a master of lighting from the golden days of Hollywood
Film Lighting by Kris Malkiewicz, Simon & Schuster—Covers lighting and cinematography by compiling interviews with big-time feature film DPs • Reflections: Twenty-one Cinematographers at Work, edited by Benjamin Bergery, ASC Press—Interviews with big-time feature film DPs • New Cinematographers by Alexander Ballinger, HarperCollins publishing—Interviews with big-time feature film DPs • Shot in the Dark by Jay Holben, Course Technology—A creative do-it-yourself guide to making your own lights and basic lighting