Lighting advice

[Jay Keegan]

Hello all,

 

I am in need of some lighting advice. I have to emulate a shot for a cinematography assessment, and I've chosen a shot from the first episode of HBO's True Detective.

 

I am an absolute novice when it comes to lighting, but I'm eager to learn and improve my craft! To me the subject looks softly side-lit and almost backlit, with 3/4 negative fill, but I'm probably way off...

 

How can I achieve this look? I'm hoping to shoot on an overcast day (otherwise a lot of scrim is in order and I deal with the blue sky!), and in terms of lights, I have 2 x Arri 2k and 1k tungsten fresnels, 2 x Filmgear 300w tungsten fresnels and 3 x kino flo diva lites at my disposal.

 

Shooting on Blackmagic 2.5k with Samyang primes.

 

Thanks,

Jay

[Jay Keegan]

I forgot to attach the image...

[Jaron Berman]

If you're shooting outdoors, only the Diva will do anything for you in terms of any kind of power in daylight balance, but even still it would have to be very close (and ugly). Skip lighting and grip the shot - luckily you can do some trickery on the cheap with grip. Outdoors you're not hurting to get light level, no need to add more, it's more controlling what's there - look at the shadows from his collar and facial structure and you can see where the light is coming from (and where it isn't). Figure out where your strongest source has to be and block your shot so you get it for free from the sun. Then shape from there - softening, flagging and bouncing. There's a pretty strong bounce and some kind of negative on here (natural or grip-made). Relatively easy shot if you think about where the sun is, and where the bounce is (you can see the color shift from the bounce, which gives away the color of the bounce itself). Skin can be very reflective and specular, so you can see a lot of clues about the color of instruments, and it can also be very matte and shadow-receiving so you can figure out the direction if you look closely at where the shadows fall and what causes them.

[Baji Angarita]

Agreed. I think you have the source spot on. To emulate this look I wouldn't even wait for an overcast day. I would position my

actor out in an open field so that the sun is directly hitting the side of his face (you may need to wait for the sun to set for this).

Then, depending on how much light I'm getting, I would position a 3/4 silk or a china silk between the subject and the source of the

light. You may need to even out the contrast ratio by position a bounce on the opposite side of your light source.

I think this is the simplest way to achieve this look, aside of course from whatever you manage to do in selecting your camera settings

and whatever you do in post. Send us all some stills when you are finished!