when to change lights

Satsuki Murashige · April 8, 2009

Sam, it seems to me that you are mainly worried about "what a good DP would do." I guess this is because as a newbie you do not want to appear to be a "bad DP." Well, let me just say this: it takes many, many years of experience to become a "good DP." You need to read mountains of books and periodicals. You need to spend thousands of hours watching films. You need to shoot millions of frames of stills, video, and motion picture film and make hundreds of mistakes (and learn from them). All this before eventually becoming, God willing, a good DP. So first, don't worry about "appearing to be a good DP." It will happen eventually or it may not, but it's not going to happen overnight. Just accept that you are a student and that you have a lot to learn yet.

Instead, be open-minded. Develop your imagination and your taste for images. Learn to answer these questions: does this frame look good or bad? Why do I think that? What's wrong with it? How I do to fix it? There is no magic formula, no secret sauce, no "usual working practice" here that will replace your own eyes and brain. Believe me, if there was some magic shortcut here, some way to avoid actually seeing, thinking, and judging, we would tell you. But there isn't. If you can't tell good from bad, if you look at a frame and have no gut reaction one way or the other, then we can't help you. Nobody can.

But I just don't think it's possible for you not to have taste, however underdeveloped it might be. After all, when you taste plate of food, don't you immediately judge it? "Mmm, this is tasty!" Or "Blegh, this tastes like dogfood!" When you see a girl at the bar, don't you think: "Dang, she's hot!" Or "Ugh, she looks like my grandma!" And when you watch a film, don't you think: "Man, this looks awesome!" Or "Geez, my mom could have shot this!" This is judgement, and without it you would not be human; you would be a machine.

So before I answer any more of your questions, I want you to answer mine: Is there a particular film that you consider to have good cinematography? What is it? Why do you think it's good? Please post a frame grab from the film that illustrates your examples. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Drew Valenti · April 8, 2009

Light for the shot, Sam. Make each shot look good while (somewhat) maintaining continuity. It's not about moving lights around, it's about making your frame look how you want it to look.

Chris Keth · April 8, 2009

Also may I ask one more quick question. Is the color of fluorescents green? I know that you have some that are balanced to daylight (blue) and some to tungsten (orange) but what's the color of the ones that have a color temperature in the middle?

You can get whole treatises on this if you search this site, but I'll give you a quickie lesson. Incandescent lights have a color temperature. We get color temperature from heating a theoretical blackbody (something with no color of its own) until it gives off light. The light it gives off changes as it reaches higher and higher temperatures. At 3200K it gives off the light of our tungsten movie lamps. At 5600K it gives off something very close to daylight.

Fluorescent lamps don't have a color temperature, because they don't produce light by heating an element. To allow fluorescent lights to share terminology with other light sources, manufacturers give them a correlated color temperature. It's just a rough equivalent. The trick with this is that fluorescence gives off some strange spectra of light. 3200K fluoros gives off a lot of orangy light, but also a pretty healthy spike of green light. Daylight fluoros give off a lot of sort of whitish blue light but also have that same greenish spike.

To help rate the quality of light a fluorescent emits, manufacturers give them a rating on the color rendering index. This CRI number is a rating, out of 100, of how much junk is in that 3200K or 5600K light. Cheap fluoros often have a CRI of 80 or 85 and will often look visibly green to the eye their green spike is so big.. Kino-flos we use to light for film have a CRI, too, of I think 95 or 98. They have a green spike but it is small enough to usually be ignored.

All of these lights generally look white to our eyes because our eyes can adapt to various conditions. Film can't do that. It sees everything that is there, including that green spike. Therefore, we have to remove the green by filtering with magenta gel, or minus green. The strength of the gel will depend on how strong the green spike is.

Sorry, that got a bit talky but I assure that was still the short version.

Chris Keth · April 8, 2009

Light for the shot, Sam. Make each shot look good while (somewhat) maintaining continuity. It's not about moving lights around, it's about making your frame look how you want it to look.

Nice advice but realistically it's also about lighting your wide shots with the singles in mind so you're half lit for those already. Slow DPs don't work much.

Karel Bata · April 8, 2009

"Master Shot"? :blink: Oww.. I cringe a little every time I hear that term. Am I alone in this?

I think of a scene as a sequence of images. Or at least try to. If the best we come up with is a wide and then a few close-ups I feel I've really got to try harder the next day. :(

Edited April 8, 2009 by Karel Bata

Adrian Sierkowski · April 8, 2009

What about a whole sequence played out in one shot, al'la There Will Be Blood?

Granted, a lot of those shots I can recall right now are exteriors. But a sequence is just a period in time of a film; it can be one shot, though you're right, primarily it is many shots put together.

Tom Jensen · April 8, 2009

What about a whole sequence played out in one shot, al'la There Will Be Blood?
Granted, a lot of those shots I can recall right now are exteriors. But a sequence is just a period in time of a film; it can be one shot, though you're right, primarily it is many shots put together.

If you shot an entire film starting with a master or wide and then moved in tighter for the entire movie or TV show, it would be an awful experience. This is why a film or TV show is a combination or certain styles and shot sequences. But when you are on a budget and you have a page count to meet, not every sequence is going to be a cinematic masterpiece. As a DP and a director, you really have to choose about 3-6 scenes that you want to spend time and money on for high impact. If every scene was a masterpiece then you would soon be out of money and time. Unless of course, money and time is no object but most of the things that I've worked on all had these restraints. Especially in TV. You have to get coverage. The question that was asked was by a film student. These guys are just learning the basics. I believe you need to learn the basics before you set up a four minute Steadicam shot going from indoors to outdoors with frame rate changes and stop changes. If you don't understand lighting for a wide shot and going in to get coverage, you will never understand the hard stuff.

Adrian, this wasn't directed at you. It was a general statement.

Chris Keth · April 8, 2009

If you shot an entire film starting with a master or wide and then moved in tighter for the entire movie or TV show, it would be an awful experience.

I wouldn't go that far. That's how most movies have always been structured, in a general sense. Even now you can find many, many movies that don't break that very much.