Lighting Breakdown

[Rafael Farga]

Hello fellow members, I´m a director who´s going to experiment as director of photography for a project. I´ll try to achieve the look of this video beautifuly directed by Laura Sicouri Could you help with a lighting breakdown of the scenes? Plus wich angular lense do you think he's using? Thanks in advance.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

If you want an opinion from a non DP,  you can have mine. It's free!

Let me take your last question first. You're asking about focal length. I don't think it matters specifically which focal length (or AOV) it is. It just matters if it's wide enough to achieve this look. I'd say it was stopped down, at least a few stops.

I'll only comment on the three frame grabs for now, unless you would like my opinion on more of the video. I can say for sure that small interiors are hard to light, because the light source is never far away enough.

Frame 1: the windows are diffused, and big-ish lights are blasting through them. Or, instead, they are not diffused, but there are large floppies behind them, and lights are bounced off of them. But, there seems to be an edge light coming from camera left, although maybe not - the windows might be enough here. On set, you would have to judge that. There is a mirror on the wall at camera right, which might be enough to give some illumination from that direction.

Frame 2: tough one for me. The practicals are obvious. As is the light in the background, source obscured, coming from camera right towards the woman in the pink cardigan. The red lights above are low power, and the reflections are apparently an artefact of the semi-brushed metal slats. See the girl with the denim jacket? I have no idea what is lighting her. I can't tell where that light is. Is it behind one of the metal slats, perhaps?

Frame 3: similar to frame 1. But there is obviously light coming from behind the camera. Maybe a pair of 4x4's, one on either side. Lights could be behind those, or in front, bounced. Is there a top source here? Probably not. There are windows to the right of frame, as well as in the background.

[Dom Jaeger]

It’s trying to emulate phone camera video, so lots of depth of field and wide angle, but there are (at least) two very different lenses there. One is less than 90 degrees, maybe 16mm on S35, fairly rectilinear. The other is highly distorted, almost fish-eye like a Go Pro or something, maybe as wide as 10 or 12mm on S35. 

There’s already a lot of depth of field with such wide angles, but probably stopped down as well.

The spinning shot at ground level is likely a probe/snorkel lens with rotating prism feature, like a Frazier or T-Rex or Cinemagic Revolution. They tend to have very deep depth of field as well.