Hallway

[Miguel Bunster]

Hi,

Any one has info on how Barton Fink and Road to perdition hallways were lit?

I want to lit a hall way and make pools of light but at the same time not make really hard light, mor a soft type of area..

Any suggestions will be great.

Thanks.

Miguel

[Wendell_Greene]

I won't be dogmatic and say this is what he did exactly on "Road To Perdition" because I'm just a peasant among princes here, but I do recall an interview for the film "Civil Action" where the late great DP Conrad Hall said he lit the hallway scenes by spotting a fresnel raised high from behind the camera position and aimed it so that the hot spot would nothing but the far end of the hallway.

 

He'd bring down the edge of the beam to just sublty illuminate the heads of the people walking and since the light is coming from the camera the shadows aren't apparent and he got a very nice fall off on their bodies.

 

Hope that helps.

[David Mullen ASC]

Those films had it easier because those were sets where you can design the hallways with header beams to hide overhead lighting units. They probably created softboxes with duvetine skirts around them to reduce spill.

 

I did something a little less soft in a semi-real, semi-set hallway for "Twin Falls Idaho", using rows of 2K Zips pointed down; the art department had to create some fake header beams (barely visible here) to hide the units to camera:

 

[Glenn Hanns]

Those films had it easier because those were sets where you can design the hallways with header beams to hide overhead lighting units.  They probably created softboxes with duvetine skirts around them to reduce spill.

 

I did something a little less soft in a semi-real, semi-set hallway for "Twin Falls Idaho", using rows of 2K Zips pointed down; the art department had to create some fake header beams (barely visible here) to hide the units to camera:

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hi David,

Nice pic, did you diffuse those zips or where the clean?

G

[David Mullen ASC]

They weren't diffused; they had the eggcrate on them and they were pointed down with only one globe on. I gelled them half-blue because when the door opens, you see a daylight-balanced room, so I wanted the hallway to be half-corrected in comparison.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Hallways are a bit of a nightmare, aren't they?

 

I have three major lighting dislikes:

 

Hallways (existing locations only)

Stairways

Bars

 

The first because it's so hard to hide sources and create interesting looks when you're stuck

in a narrow, low-ceiling corridor. That said, a built hallway or corridor is often the opposite -

very rewarding and fun to light.

 

The second one because lighting them always looks lit. It easily turns into very noir-ish territory with railing shadows on the wall and such. Normally I try to augment what's already there.

 

The third one because I never know what to do. Color feast? Subdued? Hard? Soft? The overused underlight-from-a-single-tube-Kino-under-the-bar-look? Smoke? Clean? Pools? It's a

nightmare - and they never look good. They always look busy to my eye and I dislike

busy-ness.

[David Mullen ASC]

Hallways are the worst of the three because often you see the whole length from floor to ceiling. The hardest are white office hallways with built-in flourescent lighting that are too dim for filming yet there is no way to increase the brightness or hide units, etc.

 

What I have trouble with are lighting rooms or scenes where there are few light sources. Bars, for example, or night clubs -- in real life, people often sit in the dark, avoiding light sources. So it always seems weird to throw light on them.

 

I also hate locations where it is natural for people to be lit by multiple sources, creating multiple shadows.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

The hardest are white office hallways with built-in flourescent lighting that are too dim for filming yet there is no way to increase the brightness or hide units, etc.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And they're always white, aren't they? :)

[Rik Andino]

What I have trouble with are lighting rooms or scenes where there are few light sources.  Bars, for example, or night clubs -- in real life, people often sit in the dark, avoiding light sources.  So it always seems weird to throw light on them.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The woods or the forest at night is extremely hard...

Especially if you're going for something that's not going to look artificial...

Where's the light coming from? :huh: How do you justify it? :blink:

 

Even when it looks good it'll still look a kinda fake

Unless there's some kinda practical like a lamp or flashlight, or headlights.

It's hard to like darkness. :(

 

(Damn did I go overboard with the emoticons?)

Edited February 10, 2005 by Rik Andino

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Forgot the bloody woods - you're right, they're not much fun, either. :blink:

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I hate the practical doorway on location. Like a door that exits the house yet has a huge overhang so you get a blownout background with the actor standing in a dark tunnel and really nowhere to put light on the actor that looks right. I like to avoid houses that have a hallway or small foyer that leads to the door. I like to have it open to a fullsize room on at least one side and have a big open porch.

 

I discovered a good way to light that is to hide an HMI outside just off camera as a backlight for the actor then cover the outside of the door and everything possible with bounce material so it goes back in his face.

[Michael Nash]

Hallways are the worst of the three because often you see the whole length from floor to ceiling. The hardest are white office hallways with built-in flourescent lighting that are too dim for filming yet there is no way to increase the brightness or hide units, etc.

 

What I have trouble with are lighting rooms or scenes where there are few light sources.  Bars, for example, or night clubs -- in real life, people often sit in the dark, avoiding light sources.  So it always seems weird to throw light on them.

 

I also hate locations where it is natural for people to be lit by multiple sources, creating multiple shadows.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hallways are usually the worst because even if you can hide a light, you usually can't hide the cable. Same for stairwells. I try to pick hallways that have a door to the side somewhere so that I can throw in some sidelight to break up the "dead zone." Sometimes in offices with drop ceilings you can pop out a ceiling panel and hide a light up in there, then run the cable through the ceiling and down into an adjacent room.

 

I love lighting bar interiors! I don't mind lighting a space that's supposed to be dark, and I often bring in practicals to play as hot spots in the background even if the ambience is still supposed to be dark. Regarding the characters sitting in the dark, that's when I light them with a soft edge light, usually from both sides, to suggest that the light is coming from somewhere distant. It's not hard to justify some surface sheen on a person's cheek even if it's from a small lamp across the room. But even then I try to motivate some small light source closer by, like a candle on the table or something (the old Dedo-pool on the center of the table is a favorite). You can have it be low-key and slightly underexposed and still feel dark, especially if there's a brighter reference in the BG.

 

And I also love rooms with multiple sources! As long as you can control them (can't always do it in a wide shot), it's the perfect opportunity to justify an edge, key, and fill wherever you need it. If a certain light source doesn't work for your closeup, just tone it down. To me, multiple light sources make it easier to modify the relative output of any given source, without it appearing like too much of a cheat.

 

But then again, I often motivate my lighting by indirect and ambient sources, making it easy to cheat the direction as needed. Motivating light from a specific source can be visually striking and dramatically powerful, but it also kind of pins you into continuity issues. I like the flexibility of using indirect light as key, and then use the more direct and obvious sources as highlights.