Jimmy DeMarco

Firsct scene - practical is on a dimmer so it doesn't blow out. The lamp shade diffuses the light while the highlights are still retained on the wall behind. There's a single source overhead the talent with cyan gel on it as key light. There's probably a solid behind the curtain as well to completely kill any outside fill. I think the reflection in her glasses is just practical light coming from the hallway, or possibly the lamp relecting off a mirror. Second scene - Camera lens is very wide open to blow out the background and create a shallow depth of field. I don't think they did anything else for lighting. If anything they just bounced a little light back. They might have used a pro mist filter or something to soften the image more. My best theory.

Make sure you have some diffusion for those 2ks. 250 (half white) will probably do you fine but I'd keep some 216 (full white) on hand as well. Otherwise you might see some hot spots on the cyc. That Briese light will be your best friend. If you have some 1/3 diff for the umbrella that would help to smooth out any rough spots left from those 2ks as well as kill some shadow off of your talent. I don't know if ISO 100 is realistic but you should get a pretty decent exposure from the 5k. I think situations like this are ideal for tungsten lighting. LEDs generally don't have enough output and there's really no need to daylight balance. Hope this helped a little bit.

Let me try to go in order here: Yes, there appears to be a softer source edging the actor's (and horse's) legs. I didn't comment on this before because the whole scene has a magenta tint to it and I figured that edge was created off the background lights. It could be one huge light source scraping the entire frame, in which case some heavy diffusion was probably used as well; but I think there were probably multiple smaller units. Notice the separation in the horse's legs. His back legs are colored and the front are not. The blue you see on the other side of the horse is coming from a completely different source. My first thought was that maybe they used some negative fill by stretching a large solid on the left side of the frame, and they may have, but that blue color is coming from somewhere. Whatever it is it's a soft source with some sort of dark blue/violet colored gel. Could be a kino, could be an LED, or it could be a heavily diffused fresnel. It could be a million things. All we really need to know is that it's a soft source hitting from frame left with some colored gel and diffusion. I think it's important as a cinematographer to know the exact look you are going for WHILE SHOOTING. Sure you can tweak things in a post a bit but the idea is to get it as close to the desired look as you can while in production. If anything I'll take some contrast and saturation off on camera and adjust levels accordingly while grading; but color should be as close as you can get always. As for differences in light fixtures: Fresnel - A fresnel light is defined by the lens, which is the same as they use in lighthouses. It's what comes into your head when you think classic film light. They are balanced at 3200K and allow you to focus the light by using the spot/flood knob located on the back of the fixture which brings the globe closer to of further away from the lens. HMI - Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lights are very similar to fresnels except they are daylight balanced (5600K). There is a spot/flood mechanism as well (on most fixtures) but you can also change the lenses if you want the light to spread wider or to be more narrow. PAR - Parabolic aluminized reflector lights are classic stage lights you might see overhead at a theater. They're essentially long cylinders which emit intense oval pools of light with unfocused edges. You can also switch globes in these fixtures depending on how wide or narrow you want the source to be. To clarify a few things you said before, any of these lights has the power to create deep shadows. It just depends on how close your subject is to the light, what they're standing against (open space, wall, floor), and if you're diffusing light at all. It's not so much that HMIs are better for outdoor use it's that they are daylight balanced so it's easier to match color temperature when shooting outside. They're also great for shooting through windows when you want to mimic daylight during an interior scene. Lastly PARs can have higher output but they also can not. It all depends on the wattage of the fixture. A 750w PAR will not have a higher output than a 1.2kw HMI or a 1kw tungsten fresnel. The major difference is that the light produced by PARs is much harder with more definitive cuts. This is because there is nothing between the globe and the subject and no lens to focus the light. I really hope all of this helped you get a better understanding of how light works and the differences between fixtures.

PS I totally had images in there but I guess it chose not to show them. Sad day :(

Hey Salomon, Let's take a look at the image and break it down a bit. When analyzing lighting there's a few things we need to look for. First, let's notice our highlights and shadows. This will help us determine light placement and angle. Next we'll observe the quality of light to best figure what the source may be. In the above frame the first thing my eye was drawn to was the bushes which our subjects are enclosed between. Notice how they appear a bit brighter than the rest of the image. Look where the light falls on them. My best judgement would tell me that each bush has it's own source directly overhead. The quality of light is very hard and very spotty. It only hits the bushes and does not allow spill to the actors or the unicorn. My guess is that each bush had a Source 4 overhead, but it could easily have been done with fresnels and snoots. That's the beauty of lighting, there's infinite ways to get the desired effect. Also, there appears to be a bit of backlight especially on the frame left bush. Notice the slight glow around the edges. The backlight also plays on the unicorn. See the highlights on the unicorn's back? You can pretty easily tell where the light is hitting him from. The shadows on the left side of the horse tell us that the light is not hitting from the front, and the lack of shadows on the ground around the unicorn indicate that the source is not overhead. The unicorn is predominantly backlit. Lastly, let's look at the actors. Look how flat the skin is. Again, I'd have to say they are lit overhead with the light favoring the front side. The lack of shadows reveals that the light is not hitting at any kind of an angle. It actually looks like they exposed for the male and lit the female off his falloff light. I don't see much of an edge, and his back leg is pretty dark. Thus, I'd conclude that a single light source illuminates them and there is no backlight. I'd say fresnel lights were used for the majority of this image. The sources appear hard but easily shaped. A PAR would be a bit more difficult to control, and kinos are too soft with too low an output. Hope this helped you!