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Lighting for Only God Forgives


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I'm just wondering if anybody could break down this scene in terms of lighting for me.

 

 

Im shooting a short film for somebody next week and would love to achieve this sort of lighting set up. what i'm looking for is

 

Light ratio

Temperature

softlight/hardlight

Colour Gels

Filters

Lights that are believed to be used

colour scheme

Practical lights

lighting position

 

If anybody could help me out it would be greatly appreciated

 

Thanks

 

 

 

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Generally, it seems to be a large, low intensity soft source over the table for general level, combined with harder sources pointing down into the table cloth, which provide a soft bounce uplight. Mother also has a high angle softish back/hair light.

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The closer singles appear to have soft light coming from the side, so that faces have a slightly darker side. Like Stuart said, I wonder if one soft light is lighting table, and slight positioning of actors with smaller hard light sources are bounced back into faces.

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The closer singles appear to have soft light coming from the side, so that faces have a slightly darker side.

 

I think the soft light from the side is just the bounce from the table cloth, which naturally favors one side of the face as they turn away from the table to face each other.

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Generally, it seems to be a large, low intensity soft source over the table for general level, combined with harder sources pointing down into the table cloth, which provide a soft bounce uplight. Mother also has a high angle softish back/hair light.

 

I have a question about this "bounced on the table" technique. In order to get enough light on their faces, it seems to me that the power of the light would just completely blow out the table, but here it is barely overexposed. (however you can see clearly on the faces that the light is coming from below, so i guess it's really coming from the table)

 

How is that possible ? Is it just linked to the camera DR that allows this ?

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If your actor is close enough to a lampshade, then you will be able to expose for their face and yet hold detail in the lampshade. Yes, the dynamic range of the camera plays an important factor in this. Also, in this case, the hottest spot on the white tablecloth is hidden by objects. Plus it would be hard to see exactly where the clipping point is on a white tablecloth. And the faces are exposed a little down, they aren't at full key exposure.

 

Finally, you could set the exposure just below the clip point on the table and then use windows in color-correction to lift up the faces as long as the camera had enough dynamic range and the noise was low enough.

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If your actor is close enough to a lampshade, then you will be able to expose for their face and yet hold detail in the lampshade. Yes, the dynamic range of the camera plays an important factor in this. Also, in this case, the hottest spot on the white tablecloth is hidden by objects. Plus it would be hard to see exactly where the clipping point is on a white tablecloth. And the faces are exposed a little down, they aren't at full key exposure.

 

Finally, you could set the exposure just below the clip point on the table and then use windows in color-correction to lift up the faces as long as the camera had enough dynamic range and the noise was low enough.

 

Thank you David, very helpful answer. It does change my idea of lighting and practicals, because (as a student) i used to really separate lighting and set/props, and even though a practical emits light, to only use it as decoration and a little for lighting the set. And even when a practical was very obviously supposed to be lighting the subject in the film, I'd always want to light it with a fresnel or whatever powerful unit to 'override' the light of the practical, being afraid of blown out parts (I guess that's partly because I generally shoot on lower-end cameras, meaning less dynamic range and uglier overexposure).

 

I think I'm going a little off topic here, but anyways, thank you.

 

 

 

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