Ronald Gerald Smith

Hahah David good call. It does seem very likely that they would have some kind of crazy Miami sunset streaming in through the windows (for better or worse...)

How did you end up lighting it?

The 300 watt pointed down would simulate more of the light created by accent lights found commonly in museums or modern homes - possibly a library but it's a lot more natural if the library has a lot more accent lights in the background possibly pointing to artwork on the walls, maybe some particular shelves, on top of tables, etc. So if you want to light the top of the subject with a 300, then it's probably a good idea to have a lot more 300 watt fixtures pointing at different parts of the background - mount them on the ceiling and point them down. Otherwise, if it's a single 300 pointed down at the subject, that will look kind of weird and unnatural, almost like a single spotlight - I personally don't like that kind of lighting. It might work for a music video where the context is stylistic but in a narrative piece it will be a little distracting from the story. Just like Mike Lary said, it's a good idea to take cues from the lights that already exist inside the environment. You said the space is 'somewhat lit' with flourescents. The libraries that I go to are almost always lit with flourescents. Some of the nicer libraries are lit sort of dimly with natural light from the skylight windows and with incandescent lamp fixtures on desks. 95% of libraries that I encounter are lit with fluorescent fixtures - it's energy saving, bright, and some people say that it increases concentration whereas incandescent lamps relax people. It's a good idea to keep consistent with what is already existing in the library. The lamps in the library will probably have a green tint and will probably be around 3700-4400 degrees kelvin. So it's a good idea to get the 4 bank kinos - drape some diffusion over it, and some cto gel and plus green to match the existing lamps. You can grade the green out in post by adding magenta. You might want to rent a color meter before the shoot and scout out the area to get the precise amount of green or cto you need. Or you can just 'rough' it. You can rig up a kino about 6 feet or so on top of your subject - you will probably use close to the loweset setting and its a good idea to put some kind of diffusion on it - i like to use unbleached muslin and that adds some warm quality to it (it is akin to putting a 1/8 cto on your light). Also, to fill in the shadow areas of the face, you can place a sheet of muslin on the ground near the subject and bounce a light into it - you can use one of your fresnels for this - gel accordingly.

I know that this question is quite vague and subjective but I am curious as to all of your opinions. Let's say a subject is side lit with a nice soft light coming from the window. You can place your fill wherever you want it. What's your favorite place for modeling the skin? Closer to the camera - perhaps directly above it to minimize the appearance of the shadows created by the fill light? perhaps a little shadow under the nose and/or chin is desirable. Or completely opposite the direction of the fill light? A broad large fill source from the ceiling? Of course the placement of fill light depends entirely on the placement of the main key light, but just wanted to know generally what you like to do. Also, a very large fill light seems to be the most natural because it simulates natural fill light in a room. However, in a lot of situations it is hard to bring a 6x6 or 8x8 bounce inside a room especially in a location shoot.

It's nice having 3 or 4 spacelights for a green screen. You place two of them between your talent and the green screen. You place one (or 2) of them between the talent and your camera. Nice, quick, easy lighing - doesn't get much easier.

Thanks J, I'll keep that in mind.

I want to add to the above: I remember reading years ago when I first started learning about videography that people recommend ideal caucasian skin exposure is 70 IRE, which is zone 6 if you were using the zone system. It's probably not the best idea following to that advice because it limits people and limits creativity with exposure but it is just something that I thought was generally accepted mostly by videographers and news people who want to have a target/goal so they are not trying to make some kind of creative exposure decision seconds before it is time to roll a live broadcast.

Very informative. Yes, I know it's contradicting my original post but yes I too believe that less hot lit images tend to be more filmic and a lot of the underexposed work by cinematographers such as Lance Acord looks so beautiful and cinematic to me they glow within themselves somehow. You are very right photoshop seems to be less a useful tool for judging brightness (well looking at the HSV indicator at least) - mainly because a waveform is so much better to judge a larger area of exposure. Yes I think that skin at 90 IRE seems to be hot but it is so common nowadays with things being on the web and needing to be bright and pop out of your screen. I think IRE that high is mostly used for otherwordly or fashion/beauty applications rather than any realistic narrative piece (most of the time). I think 90 IRE is akin to overexposing skin by 2 stops (from my limited knowledge I am assuming that it is), and I think that some cinematographers like to overexpose skin that much especially if the situation/story calls for it. Such as like an interrogation scene where the hot light is pointed at the suspect, or when someone is stuck in a hole for days and then the first sign of light is blinding and the skin almost burns because the light is so bright compared to the darkness inside the hole. I remember reading years ago when I first started learning about videography that people recommend ideal caucasian skin exposure is 70 IRE, which is zone 6 if you were using the zone system.

Hi John, looking at your post it does seem to me to be a prehistoric term.... do you think that I used it incorrectly? I'm not an expert and I'm quite greener even more so than a novice. Maybe a more relevant term would be 'luminance level'. Any ideas?

Matt, No such table exists but a fun way to study IRE values is to take screenshots of interesting scenes and pull them up in a editing program like FCP and then looking at the waveform display on the editing program. Also, if you have photoshop you can look at the HSV (HSB) values - V (or B) being value or brightness and they are numbered from 0-100 and represent IRE. I like to take screenshots of just the face or maybe just a cheek or the forehead just to see how they exposed that part of the face. Once you start seeing these still frames through waveform you start to see patterns emerge. In a brighter outdoor settings I find that the main light is around 70 IRE for caucasian skin and lighter skinned asian and latino, maybe around 60 IRE for darker skinned asian and latino and caucasian and lighter skinned african american and about 50 IRE for darker skinned african-american. I find that moonlight the moon hits at around 40-50 IRE and tends to look a bit odd when over 50 IRE. Shadow areas of the face (fill side) on more contrasty scenes are usually around 20-30 IRE, and in some really stylized and over contrasty films it can even be from 0-10 IRE. In some people with very pale skin the main light can even be 90 IRE maybe next to a window or in direct sunlight. In a lot of fashion lighting the main light can even expose skin to 100 IRE and it looks natural and nice but you need a camera that can handle those highlights - I am pretty sure that the original photos were probably not shot at 100 IRE but that it was brought up in post to make it pop more in a magazine or on the internet fashion 'e-zines'. Rim lights and kickers that are 90 IRE are very common because a lot of people like to see a hot bright edge especially in music video settings. \ In 'darker' settings like candle lit dinner I would expose whiter skin at around 50 IRE and make shadow areas around 10 IRE. The same applies for lamp lit scenes during the evening. In moonlight lit scenes I might expose whiter skin around 40-50 IRE, shadows areas around 10 IRE. In daylight scenes where there is direct hard sunlight I might expose for 90 IRE, and shadow areas anywhere from 20 IRE-50 IRE depending on how contrasty you want it to look. I daylight scenes where it is overcast I might expose for 70 IRE and shadow areas would fall somewhere around 50 IRE because there is not much contrast during overcast days but I might add some negative fill using some floppies and bring the shadow side down as low as I can. In daylight interiors where the actor is near a window and there is soft bounced light coming in and the room itself is not lit - I might go contrasty like 90 IRE on the bright side and 30 IRE in the dark side or make it more subtle like 70 IRE key, 30-40 IRE fill. Again these are just broad estimates and it gets boring if you mechanize your exposures but the above should serve as a rough guideline as to how people expose different situations.

Best way to do it (with the lights that you currently have access to) is to get some bounce boards and bounce. Bounce the 300 on a bounce board rigged above the beside lamp and shoot it to wherever you want to expose most. However if you can afford spending some extra bucks, my favorite way to motivate lamps is to place a 150 watt china ball directly above the lamp - I think it's the best way to motivate it because it doesn't cast a shadow of the lamp and also it is soft and omnidirectional thus simulating the spread of the lamp. Also, I would use a bounce to simulate moonlight as well - maybe a showcard above the window or something and hit it with a 650 (or 2 of them) gelled with CTB. I would maybe have ceiling bounce from the 300 gelled with CTB and possibly scrimmed down to give a slight ambient fill for the room. So the moonlight will be exposed at key (50 IRE), the ceiling bounce will be exposed 1 or two stops under (20-30 IRE). If you are not doing moonlight maybe you can substitute the ctb for some kind of reddish orangish sodium vapor gel that is sold by lee or rosco. One of my petpeeves is when I see direct sodium vapor light shining directly from outside and into the house. I imagine if I were the owner of that house I would complain all day to the city saying how annoying it is for that streetlight to be aimed directly into my bedroom! Whereas the sodium vapor bounce simulates the streetlight bouncing off the ground or on the walls and the light eventually making its way through the bedroom window. Also would be a good idea to rent some flags to contain the light to a small important areas and leave some nice dark areas around the important areas.

Cool, I like your shot sequencing - and I'm sure you already thought of having the transition from dolly follow to OTS in one smooth shot. Judging from the hallway, you will have nice periods of silhouetting and some dramatic toplight as the character moves through the hallway and I don't think too much additional light is necessary. The light on the dolly should work to fill in parts naturally, but I think that using bounce on the ceiling will look quite odd and will only serve to add more toplight while still keeping the face shadowed. Perhaps a 150w scrimmed down, positioned close to the camera (slightly above) and pointed at a 45 degree downward angle at the actress face should provide good fill, but it will produce a harsher light, but that is quite common in 16mm films - with 16mm (that is a lot softer than sharp HD or 4k or 35mm) it it sometimes nice I think to have harsher lights because the shadows tend to define the image and make it sharper . Also if you wanted to go more softer and more naturalistic what would work great is a china ball that you can rig up using grip arms. Like the lanterlock ones that they sell at filmtools: http://www.filmtools.com/lantern-lock-china-ball-system.html Just rig this above the camera (or as close to the camera as possible to provide a nice fill light as the camera moves. Plus it's a lot less cumbersome than a 1k or 2k bounce.

I dunno Phil - there are a million different ways to light that room but I guess this is where the saying becomes realized "cinematography does not exist without a story". Can you let us know the scene inside the conference entails storywise, what time of day, what kind of things you will add art dept-wise?

I understand that you need to light the walls (for the background patterned texture) but I don't think that the furniture or floor would require an extra stop because you are not lighting the floor or furniture are you? Unless it has something to do with the story? From what I can assume it can be more of a secondary thing. I wouldn't spot meter the furniture or the floor but that is just my opinion. Unless you were doing like a closeup of an object on the floor or an object on the table, then that would make furniture/floor exposure more important. As for using the 1k through muslin for dim ambience, maybe you shouldn't be so dead set on having the lamp further away. Having a lamp further away makes the light harder thus making harder shadows and making it more stylistic in that sense - maybe that is what you want but it is something that I might avoid if I was looking for dim ambient light. That might just complicate things and cause unnecessary distracting shadows everywhere. Maybe you can bounce muslin on the ceiling using smaller light to get a nice ambient light level? And use a hazer to spread the light around? And this light I would think should be like 2 stops under max - like around 20 IRE (in video language) I would make sure that the TV light doesn't conflict with the china ball light. Also I wouldn't be so concerned with bringing "the actor up to key". Maybe you can do a soft rimlight with the ball and have the tv light up the actors face? Or maybe if the actor isn't facing the tv maybe the tv could be a soft rim light and the china ball light up the face. Or maybe you don't even need a key and you can just silhouette. I think that trying to make everything look perfect (perfect key, perfect backlight, background light, special effects light from the TV, etc.) make a film look really bland and uninteresting - I think taking out some elements make the shots look better. For TV effect: On the last shoot I used a daylight balanced softbox with a dimmer and I had a grip (who was also an editor by the way) and I just told him to dim the light up and down like he would as if he was cutting a film. There would be some periods of really bright light, some areas where it would pulsate a little bit from light to dark, and there would be sharp periods of really bright light and then a sharp change to just darkness coming from the TV on so on and so forth (sort of like really high-key shots on the tv being intercut with really dark shots - it really helped that he was an editor because it looked really good and I was happy with it. And I have to admit that when the tv set (softbox) was completely dark - during those periods of darkness I thougth they were the prettiest because the actress was silhouetted and mysterious. As for the hallways scene - that is going to be really tough getting an f/4 using 200T stock. I would say that it would be hard getting f/4 even if you were shooting 500T. On the RED it's hard for me to get that high even at 800ISO. As for the 1k or 2k on the fisher dolly, bounced into the ceiling - yes that will look very unnatural. Might pass in a music video, but will be too distracting in the narrative context. If it was a really small light then it would be ok but something like a 1k or 2k would way overpower the kf tubes. I can't really comment on the hallway setup too much because I don't know what you need to see. Do you need to see details in the actors faces? Or will it be enough to just see his general form/outline. Also, what I need to know what kind of shots you are going for... are you doing a dolly lead? Dolly follow? Track alongside? Static lockoff as actor moves from background into foreground? Static lockoff as actor moves from foreground to background?

Is it true that if you put 3 or more wire scrims in the light receptacle that it has the potential of popping the bulb - I just was told that something bad would happen if you put three or more wire scrims in there.....

It would help to know the color of the set because a dark walled set will eat up that 150 and 300w so fast.

It's nice having warmer lights, but that's the whole reason why I buy 2800K bulbs for that particular reason. But if I am buying a 3200K bulb, I kind of expect it to match my other tungsten lights. Also, going from 2800K to 3200k is -44 mired shift according to lee calculator. Even with a 1/4 ctb you still wouldn't get the preferred temperature - you'd still be -9 mired short. And plus 1/4 ctb kills half a stop! I use smaller lights most of the time for power situations so I can't afford to lose even half a stop. I know that I am nitpicking but I am sick of having to turn the saturation levels down just because of these bulbs!! Arg! Anyways it's nice to see varying viewpoints on this matter and I am learning a lot from all your comments.

Thanks John, that makes a lot of sense and both comforting and unnerving to know that this is a common thing. Now, the question is, is there any way that I can go about getting to that 3200K (or marketed color temperature) with a lamp above 500 watts? Maybe with better stingers? It's just been annoying recently because the bulbs that I bought (that are supposed to be 3200K but are more like 2800) are obviously warmer than the mole 1k, 650, and mini mole at the studio where I shoot. I believe that those mole lights are very very close to 3200K because I get consistent whites and good skin tone/saturation levels, whereas the bulbs that I bought (USHIO 500W-1000W) show a very very warm image and make my talent looks like orange people. Might it be something with the Mogul base bulbs? Are they prone to such drop in color temperature? Should I stay away from USHIO as a brand or mogul base bulbs in general? Thank you all and forgive me if I am being redundant - I just want to get to the bottom of this.

Hi John, you're explanation does make sense. It does kind make me wonder though why some bulbs are closer to the advertised temperature than others. For example, the ECA 250w 3200K Tungsten bulb is metered at 3100K, which is only 100 degrees K off, whereas the other lights are around 300K or more off.

I am wondering if it takes tungsten bulbs (mogul bulbs and household bulbs) some time after they have been turned on to display accurate color temperature. I am using a color meter to measure the Kelvin of these bulbs. I bought all of these bulbs at film tools. Here are the findings of my tests: 500 watts (USHIO JT120V-500WB Globe) test bulb A Bare bulb - 2880-2810 (2850) Bare bulb is off by 350K. I added some diffusion with the chimera video pro small size. chimera single interior screen (interior baffle) - 2780-2750 (2760) chimera single interior screen and outer screen screen - 2730-2690 (2700) chimera single interior screen, outer screen with CTB - 4450-4300 (4400) (1G CC) some magenta Ushio PH-212 150W Bulb (for china ball, household socket) Bare bulb - 2850-2740 (2800) advertised as 3050. - bare bulb is off by 250 K. Ushio JT120V 1000WB - supposed to be 3050L. Bare bulb 2850 - 2790 (2830) - Off by 230K. These bulbs have seen some moderate use - I shot a short film using these bulbs, but they should still have some life to them. Do these bulbs get warmer over use? And do they dramatically shift color temperature like that? Like 200-300 degrees K? Also, maybe I am doing the test wrong and I should let the bulbs be on for like around 10 minutes and then meter it. What do you think? If I leave the bulb on for about 10-15 minutes will they have cooled down in degrees Kelvin? What is your expeerience?

Please explain what you mean by dark bedroom and lit bedroom. By dark do you mean that there are no lamps turned on inside the room and the room is lit mostly by moonlight or streetlight? And by lit do you mean there are lamps turned on or do you mean that there is sun coming through the room.

Please be careful not to light the room 'dark'. Making a room look dark doesn't necessarily mean that you underexpose anything. Well, you should expose the main light so that it is around 40-50 ire (expose to meter reading or 1/2 stop under) And possibly keep your frame contrasty and use minimal fill lights.

Eileen thank you for that breakdown- it's very helpful to me and i'm sure it'll provide a great resource for other students as well.

I have just bought the Sekonic Prodigi C-500 and have been walking around the house with it. I have been examining it under flourescents and I am seeing the CC index "1M" which is basically telling me that there is some green and that I might want to add 2.5CC Filter correction number of green. Also I have been seeing the "1M" even when there are no flourescents and I am just walking around inside the house with coffee color walls and dark brown floors in normal daylight I wanted to know your opinions - would 1M really matter? Would it be enough to cause you to start correcting green with gels or on-camera filters? How about 2M? If not, then where would you really start to correct the green? I know that this is somewhat subjective but I wanted to know what the general opinion was about this.

If I were to invest in lights, I would skip the cheaper indie kits that are sold on the web and would invest in some good Mole tungsten lights for your studio. They are really tough and well built. (2) 4ft x 4ft Foam Core (1) Mole Baby 1k (can downbulb to 750, 500) (2) Mole Tweenie 650 (can downbulb to 500, 300) (3) Mini Mole 250 (can downbulb to 200, 150, 100) C-stands, light stands, bags, foam core holder, stingers.