Lighting: saving private Ryan

[Richard El Asmar]

Hello,

 

While watching the making of Saving Private Ryan, I have noticed that sometime they shoot actors by using an extra light (probably HMI - with a diffuser) while some other time they shoot actors with only using the sunlight (with or without a reflector)

 

How do they compensate for the difference of temperature between those different kind of shots?

 

Thank you.

[David Mullen ASC]

HMI's are daylight-balanced (5600K-ish) so it's just a matter of whether you want to add something like 1/4 CTO to match the color of direct sunlight or not, otherwise an ungelled HMI tends to work fine as fill light outside because real shade is cooler in color temp than direct sun and an HMI is between the two in color. Also, some of the movie was shot in overcast weather when the daylight is cooler than direct sunlight is. Depending on the weather, sometimes an ungelled HMI is slightly warmer than overcast daylight and sometimes a bit cooler or just about right. And with the desaturation of the skip-bleach process factored in, a small difference in color temperature is less obvious.