simple lighting set-ups

[David Mullen ASC]

I thought we could talk about really simple lighting set-ups. Here's one of a diner scene in "Jackpot" lit with one single lamp -- a 1200 watt HMI PAR backlighting everyone, with a white card on one side to bounce it back into the faces of the actors. The background people are just lit by the spill from the HMI on the ceiling, etc. This was shot in 24P HD and this is from the DVD (letterboxed from 16x9 to 2.35).

 

 

 

 

[Laurent Andrieux]

looks like the cu on the black guy is a bit "under" compared to the wide shot, is it the color timing ?

[Leon Rodriguez]

Good one David. It works just as it is. Did the shot remain static, off of sticks? If the frame edges are fixed then another bounce card for the 'Garrett Morris' character would have been nice. Even a gold foil for his skin tone. A net on the blown out section of the hats might have added contrast balance. A knee tweak might have done the same thing but that's a subjective call. Would it finish in digital or go back to cellioid?

[DavidSloan]

looks like the cu on the black guy is a bit "under" compared to the wide shot, is it the color timing ?

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It seems like the hotspot isn't as severe as in the wide...nothing major though. I wonder if there were any adjustments made for the CUs.

[Laurent Andrieux]

nothing major though. 

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For sure, But I just noticed that the whole image is a bit more dense than on the wide shot (background), and the character is dark skin. I wonder why this shot is a bit under, as the basic "rule" would have been to overlight him a bit compared to the wide shot (what I might have done). I like the fact that David didn't do that and it works ! (proving I would have been wrong) but was it volonteerly under print compared to the wide shot (I rekon it's only half a stop or so) ?

 

It's just because I'm always worrying about how to "relight" a CU a bit after one has done the wide shot (you know, the "eye light" etc.)

 

and I'm always worried about dark skins, how should one light them up a bit or not etc. It's already such a hard work dealing with the color of these skins (god don't make him green, but don't go magenta either...) that I am having nightmares when I do...

[Rob Belics]

The cowboy had the side of his face flagged in the reverse angle, correct?

[Laurent Andrieux]

The cowboy had the side of his face flagged in the reverse angle, correct?

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That's pretty clever... What happened ?

[Michael Nash]

You guys are seeing things! ;)

 

The density on Garret Morris' face is the same on both the wide and tight (see attached image). Some of the apparent change in density is an optical illusion due to the background. There's more light-colored material in frame in the wide shot. Also, the blue plaid shirt is next to his face. In the CU, the camera angle is a tighter eyeline and puts the darker wood next to his face. When given the same background (bottom half of attached image), you can see the density on the face is the same ("density" being a relative term here, since it was shot digitally!).

 

 

The tighter camera angle also changes the reflection of the rimlight on the hat and face, as do the actor's head movements. But it is of course possible that David "slowed down" the rim for the CU. And these pics are from a color-corrected master, so adjustments could have been made between shots there as well.

 

The shadow on John Gries' face is obviously from the brim of his cowboy hat. You can see that the backlight is at a slightly high angle, because it reaches down onto the lapel of his jacket. The brim of the hat would naturally cast a shadow on his face with the light at that angle.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Very, very interesting explanation, Mr Nash, I'm conviced ! That goes to prove it's unfortunatly not so usefull to see still photos and not the "rolling" film ! So I now will consider these posted pictures give a good idea of the "mood" of the lightings, and are not efficient enough to really discuss the lightings...

 

I think I should apologize to Mr Mullen for the unpertinent remarks I've made, myself, sorry about that and thanks again, Michael

[David Mullen ASC]

You have to take into account that this movie was shot in 15 days total, with often two locations per day, so I had to work fast. I doubt I changed anything on the tighter angle on Garret other than moving more to the left to make the backlight more of a backlight. But when someone is lit by the bounce of his own backlight, simple things like how far they lean can change their exposure. For example, in Jon Gries' CU, you can see his own head shadow on the bounce card lighting his face.

 

Also, I tend to underexpose faces that are heavily backlit because it looks more natural to me that their faces look like they are in the shade. If the face is exposed "at key" then the heavy backlight makes everything overall look overlit. There are exceptions of course, like when I want an angelic look.

 

As for netting down the clipping on the hat, yes, I could have done that although I'd risk cutting the exposure on the face since how bright the face is is proportional to how hot the backlight is, being the same light. But some careful netting could have been done to the edge of the light.

 

However, I'm not adverse to some clipping -- I like small areas of burned-out white (small is key) to add some specular highlights to the image. You risk making the image look too "corrected" when you fix all the problems in it (anyway, at least that's how I justify all the mistakes I make!)

[David Mullen ASC]

Speaking of clipping, I'll put some examples of deliberate overexposure in HD. The beginning of "Jackpot" in the script intercut a scene of John Gries sitting in a car at night playing a tape over and over again (in prep for a karaoke contest) with flashbacks of his unhappy domestic life. Those flashbacks were mostly lit with a single 1200 watt HMI backlight (with the camera set to 3200K preset). In the closer shot of him in the chair, I snuck a white card in to bounce some of the backlight into his face slightly. In contrast, he is orange-lit in the car (it's a very gelled movie for night scenes.) The first bar he walks into has red Chinese Lanterns. However, in the editing, 2/3's of the movie became a flashback while he sat in the car and the scenes were rearranged so the red bar is halfway in the movie now. These shots were intercut so there wasn't a need to match each setting to the last time we saw it. Plus I color-corrected the whole feature in six hours (!) and could only make broad adjustments to entire scenes, not much shot-to-shot corrections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But this should give you a sense of the color schemes. I intentionally made the flashbacks a little harsh and clippy to make them seem more surreal.

[Justin Hayward]

I like the reflection of his hands in his glasses. I?ve only tried this with film. Twice actually. One was too hot and one was too dark (I was paranoid from the former and underexposed the latter). It?s really hard to judge reflections, especially in glasses. There are so many different kinds (with different sunglasses and all). I really have no idea how to meter it, so I do it by eye. But, this hasn?t worked out so far.

 

Really nice stuff. I think backlights or edge lights (or whatever) are the only acceptable time to let video/HD clip like that.

[DavidSloan]

These are really interesting frames...I definitely see that you have your own style of framing. How much input do the director's you've worked with had concerning the frames?

 

I can also really see the Storaro influence...I never noticed how much of a Storaro disciple you really are until these last few posts. I have to go back and rent your movies, again.

[Kevin Zanit]

David, speaking of exposing reflections:

 

In Northfork, there is the scene where Irwin is standing at a grave with the reflective picture frame (I think thats what it was, I have not watched the movie in a while) and Flower walks into the reflection. How did you meter that shot? It was dead on.

[David Mullen ASC]

You can see from the wider shot that there's a reflection.

 

 

On the tighter shot, I pumped up some HMI lighting on him and opened up the lens one stop to see into the shadow more.

 

 

What would have been even better would have been to float a double net over the headstone so that the reflection was brighter, or shoot that shot with the headstone backlit and him front-lit (but that would have looked less good in the wider shots.)

 

On the "Jackpot" shot, I did a wider shot, thru the slot of a tape deck, and while shooting I was looking for bad reflections in his glasses when I noticed I could see his hands. So I took his key light and moved in behind his head and spotted it on his hands to make the reflection bright (his face is just lit by the bounce from his hand.) Being video, I didn't need to meter it to figure out the exposure. "Northfork" was shot in film however.

 

There is another reflection shot in "Northfork" that was even harder:

 

 

Here I had to put ND.90, I believe, on the glass with water & a squeegee, only to discover how pebbly the gel was when I got close to the glass, but I figured it looked like old, ripply glass. I had a 1200 watt HMI PAR pointed right at the actor's face and black right behind him to hide the camera. I realized the exposure was really the same as if I went outside in the sunlight with an ND.9 on the camera so I made a good guess as to how bright the light on his face had to be for balance (very bright! I probably should have used an ND.12 on the glass...) So I balanced by eye and exposed for the view out the window (even though the focus was on the reflection.)

 

Often I find the video assist image to be a good judge because if it looks balanced on a crappy b&w tap with video's poor latitude, it probably is balanced on the negative with its wider latitude.

[David Mullen ASC]

Another reflection shot:

 

 

I did this small indie feature years ago about a guy obsessed with his reflection in the chrome dome of a trash can ("The Last Big Thing") because the distortions reminded him of Munch's "The Scream". I learned a couple of things about shooting into a chrome dome. (1) No matter how telephoto your camera lens is, the shot always looks wide-angle. (2) The camera is always reflected in the center of the dome no matter where you move to, so prepare to hide yourself.

 

So this insert in "Northfork" would have been done with my longest scope lens (either the 200mm end of the zoom or a 600mm telephoto I was carrying). The camera was at the opposite end of this small room behind a black panel (which you can see in the shot.) The kettle was on a stove under a window and so was backlit but the reflection was front-lit. In one shot, you see Nolte enter the room in the far background and walk up to the kettle to pick it up. In this earlier one, he's setting the kettle down.

 

I can't remember how I exposed for this but in this case, it was either with a spot meter or I simply measured the light directly on Nolte and opened up one stop for a better reflection.

[Alvin Pingol]

Hi David, thanks for putting up all of these great examples! This is a great thread to learn from, especially if you learn from visuals, like myself.

 

A question regarding this shot; Is the non-linear-looking burnout to white, in the glasses, a result of how video (HD in this case) treats overexposure? It reminds me of that candle shot in the 16mm vs. HD thread...

[David Mullen ASC]

Probably the triple whammy of knee compression, ITU-709 Color Matrix (which boosts the red chroma among other things), and knee saturation (which restores saturation to overexposed areas), not helped by the 8-bit recording, which can cause some banding.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Not to second-guess Mr. M, but there's three distinct areas to that bleaching artifact. Any additional red matrix that's going on will change the point at which the bands appear but it's a pretty standard situation. The white area is where all three ADCs have hit maximum. Then there's two bands of yellow followed by orange, which is where the DCC chroma recovery has pulled out some colour detail - it'll be going from yellow to orange at the point where the auto knee stops playing with exposure and drops the green channel back to a point where the DCC chroma can see the detail. Beyond that you're back into more or less linear imaging, give or take whatever other DSP is going on. Without DCC and chroma matrixing, you'd get white or an awful flickering yellow glare across that entire area; but I find that white/yellow/orange/ banding pretty ugly too.

 

That's a really excellent example of what people bitch and piss about in video. I don't think it's that awful.

 

Phil

Edited January 3, 2005 by Phil Rhodes

[Alvin Pingol]

Thanks. ^_^

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

To continue on with David's simple lighting setups theme, I'll show you one from the digital feature I'm currently shooting called "Main Street."

 

In this setup we see the character make a phone call. She walks into frame right picks up a phone, we pan left with her, then she hops on a couch. This is a night interior but we had to shoot it during the day. I stylized it a bit by just putting ND and double CTB over the window that is at the first of the shot. I used two tweenies as edge lights and their spill picks up pieces of the room. One in the doorway in the shot and the other in a bathroom that isn't seen to the left. I then added a 20" China ball with a BCA bulb dimmed way down as fill. The daylight bulb helps to compensate for the redness you get while dimming. This was shot on the 3200K pre-set on the DVX-100A. There is also a practical lamp seen in the shot and it has a compact flourescent bulb in it. It was already there and the shade was a dark color so I didn't do anything to it.

 

Here is the first of the shot with the window:

 

 

Here is the shot after the pan left:

 

 

Here is a plot of the lighting:

 

Edited January 6, 2005 by J. Lamar King

[David Mullen ASC]

Nice work!

 

Sometimes when I've got a small daytime window like that and I want a fast way to create night, I'll put a black flag (like a 4'x4' floppy) right outside the window, just backed away enough to get some 5500K spill onto the edges of the glass -- by bringing the flag closer or farther from the glass, you can control how bright the blue-ish leak on the glass gets.

[Mike Williamson]

Thanks J., great looking stills! The lighting diagram is helpful by the way, thanks for adding that too. I assume these stills are direct from the camera tapes? How have you liked shooting with the DVX-100?

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

Thanks J., great looking stills!  The lighting diagram is helpful by the way, thanks for adding that too.  I assume these stills are direct from the camera tapes?  How have you liked shooting with the DVX-100?

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The stills were grabbed from my NLE after dumping some of the footage to my hard drive. I like working with the DVX-100, it is what it is though. It definitely lacks the resolution and color depth of film.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I thought I would post a frame grab of the guy on the other end of the phone conversation as it's a simple light setup. It's also one all cinematogarphers will have to do many times during their career, fake light from a practical lamp. This setup was also shot during the day but it is a night interior. I allowed some window light to spill in on the top of the back wall behind the flag for a bit of gradation. This time I used a 3200K ECA bulb in the china ball for warmer fill and there is a tube of 1/2 CTB wrapped around a 40 watt bulb in the practcal lamp to knock off the redness.

 

Here is the frame grab:

 

 

Here is a plot of the lighting: