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Seamless hard key lighting?


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Hi guys,

Just had this clip pop up in my feed, and I was struck by the key lights in the first section around the card table:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz8TYyn-k40

Straight-up hard keys.

And they look great, almost seamless. I had to actually pause the clip at first to confirm that it was actually hard lighting. I feel like you could use this lighting in any contemporary film and "get away with it" without spoiling the look or feeling incongruous with the soft-lit keys that (these days) shape the vast majority of shots. Indeed, most of Goldeneye is very much soft-lit.

Now I know this is Phil "F**king" Méheux's work, and I'm not worthy to smell the ground he cinematographically walks on. But I'd love to hear how people would approach a situation like this.

I feel like it's reasonably obvious that the hard lights were simply the only practical way to pick out Bond and Onatopp from the crowd is such a large, and crowded environment (they look about a stop hotter than everyone else, which serves that purpose really nicely. Also, with such a large table, and a lot of top-light providing the general ambience, booming in softer keys for the close-ups would have been obviously time-consuming and a bit problematic.

But why do these keys look so smooth and seamless (when others so rarely do)? Is it just a really precise key-to-fill ratio?

I'd love to hear people's thoughts.

I feel like mastering this kind of hard-lighting would make a lot of nightmare lighting situations (like this one) a great deal easier. Trying to wrangle big soft sources all the time can be a real pain.



 

Edited by Mark Kenfield
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Classic glamour lighting in a glamorous space -- but it can be motivated by the fact that she's sitting under an overhead lampshade, and a casino is a somewhat theatrically-lit space. And she is a somewhat theatrical character.  If he had met her in a gas station convenience store, this sort of lighting would seem out of place.

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On 7/5/2020 at 1:30 AM, Phil Rhodes said:

Isn't it? I was looking where the shadow goes under the chin.

_109522049_edwards1_bodybbc.jpg

I think it's a very fair comparison. I'd call it the same look. It's so smooth, that you could slot it into any narrative context and it would look just fine.

I'd love to know the recipe. Is it really just a single hard key and a single hard fill source (I assume it must be to get such a clean result)?
 

On 7/5/2020 at 3:06 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

Classic glamour lighting in a glamorous space -- but it can be motivated by the fact that she's sitting under an overhead lampshade, and a casino is a somewhat theatrically-lit space. And she is a somewhat theatrical character.  If he had met her in a gas station convenience store, this sort of lighting would seem out of place.

I feel like the 'glamour' aspect is more-so a function of the setting, and the higher exposure levels on Bond and Onatopp (relative to the background actors around them).

I guess my initial point/question is moreso that I think you could take that exact same key lighting, use it in that gas station convenience store, and (assuming you had your exposure and colour at a level that suited the ambient environment, I think you'd get away with it just fine (because it's so smooth/unobtrusive).

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.  if I saw that lighting in a gas station store scene, TBH I would really wonder why ,assuming its was done on purpose ,or wonder who they had got out of retirement to shoot it .. cant see how this lighting would not draw alot of attention to itself in fluorescent lit store scene .. non ?  

Edited by Robin R Probyn
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1 hour ago, Robin R Probyn said:

.  if I saw that lighting in a gas station store scene, TBH I would really wonder why ,assuming its was done on purpose ,or wonder who they had got out of retirement to shoot it .. cant see how this lighting would not draw alot of attention to itself in fluorescent lit store scene .. non ?  

Obviously everything depends on context, and if you were seeing a whole bunch of overhead fluorescents before moving into your closer coverage, I'd agree, it's unlikely to look right.

However if you were out at the petrol pump, or in the car, then just cut into a scene over the counter. Without a broader context of the space I don't think (if you did it as smoothly as Méheux does it) that anyone would question it.

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58 minutes ago, Mark Kenfield said:

Obviously everything depends on context, and if you were seeing a whole bunch of overhead fluorescents before moving into your closer coverage, I'd agree, it's unlikely to look right.

However if you were out at the petrol pump, or in the car, then just cut into a scene over the counter. Without a broader context of the space I don't think (if you did it as smoothly as Méheux does it) that anyone would question it.

.. but why light the store scene like that anyway .. .   I think people would notice that thats not how a 7-11 store looks ....why would there be that hard light and hard shadows under chins..   the lighting would be calling attention to itself .. 

 I much prefer Roger Deakins lighting in Skyfall .. but different era with different camera,s and light s .. and maybe less pressure on the DoP to give it that "Bond"big studio epic look of that time..

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Because I'm bored of everyone lighting everything the same way? Because it could look great and be seamless anyway? Because I'm an inherently contrarian person with an overriding compulsion to feel special and unique? Because wrangling soft light is a goddamned nightmare (unless your wardrobe and set dressers make EVERYTHING else dark for you)?

I don't know.

But I feel like it could work (IF you could pull it off as well as Méheux does) and now I really want to try.

There's so many situations I could light SO much faster, if I could simply key them with flaggable/cuttable/controllable hard lights.

There's only one thing I've shot with purely hard keys, which was a short satire I did last year, and I thought it worked okay. I don't think the results look particularly old-fashioned:


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  ...the lighting would be calling attention to itself...   This circumstance of the light calling attention to itself has probably been a focus of film scholarship and theory for decades, I imagine. 

What began as a necessity (film lighting) due to ultra-low film speeds has evolved over the decades as faster and faster film speeds have required less and less foot-candles but still some foot-candles and still the need to place them somewhere.

I suspect that in the future, due to improvement in film/digital speeds and post manipulation, wonderful images will be  possible at, say, a 1/8 foot-candle base level. But at the ⅛ fc base level, some lighting will need to be added to the set, either physically or digitally, to approximate reality.

So the conundrum arises that the industry that added lighting due to the demands of the medium requiring a great deal of light becomes the industry that adds light due to the medium requiring almost no light.

 

 

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The thing to keep in mind that practical lighting inside a room, or outside at night -- in reality -- is not always soft, so the fact that we tend to opt for a soft key light is often no more realistic than if we opted for a hard light. But softer lighting tends not to call attention as much as to where it is coming from, especially if it is very soft and rather dim, then it feels like ambient bounce in the space.

There are many sources of light in a room at night that can be hard -- a bare light bulb, track lighting, a stage spot light, a distant streetlamp coming through a window, etc.  Even a candle produces a hard light.

I think what makes a hard light look more stylized is that is often is just hitting the actor's face, in reality we move through hard sources and might end up partly in and out of one.

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9 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

The thing to keep in mind that practical lighting inside a room, or outside at night -- in reality -- is not always soft, so the fact that we tend to opt for a soft key light is often no more realistic than if we opted for a hard light. But softer lighting tends not to call attention as much as to where it is coming from, especially if it is very soft and rather dim, then it feels like ambient bounce in the space.

There are many sources of light in a room at night that can be hard -- a bare light bulb, track lighting, a stage spot light, a distant streetlamp coming through a window, etc.  Even a candle produces a hard light.

I think what makes a hard light look more stylized is that is often is just hitting the actor's face, in reality we move through hard sources and might end up partly in and out of one.

That's a good point David. And it's perhaps one of the things that bugs me - the number of situations we shoot where a soft-key is (logically) kind of ridiculous. But we bend over backwards to force one in there anyway. 

I feel like if I could really nail down a nice, smooth approach to hard-keys in those situations, I'd feel a lot better about not shoe-horning in soft light (at the expense of considerable rigging/gripping time)  just "because".

Did you have a go-to ratio for your key:fill in The Love Witch?

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24 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

I just set the fill by eye and by taking digital stills. Since the key on the faces was fairly frontal, only a minimal amount of fill was needed since the key lit both eyes.

Just using nets/scrims to control the level?

4 minutes ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Beautiful images, Mark! Love the stylized use of color. What lens diffusion were you using? It works really well with your hard light approach. 

Thanks Sat ? it was all shot day-for-night, so a bit of gripping required(!) but having the precision of the Dedolights for keying was just a delight. Diffusion-wise I'm pretty sure I went extra light on that one, probably 1/8 BPM. 

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15 hours ago, Mark Kenfield said:

Because I'm bored of everyone lighting everything the same way? Because it could look great and be seamless anyway? Because I'm an inherently contrarian person with an overriding compulsion to feel special and unique? Because wrangling soft light is a goddamned nightmare (unless your wardrobe and set dressers make EVERYTHING else dark for you)?

I don't know.

But I feel like it could work (IF you could pull it off as well as Méheux does) and now I really want to try.

There's so many situations I could light SO much faster, if I could simply key them with flaggable/cuttable/controllable hard lights.

There's only one thing I've shot with purely hard keys, which was a short satire I did last year, and I thought it worked okay. I don't think the results look particularly old-fashioned:


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Yes Im not saying never use hard light ,I was talking about specifically being in something like a 7-11 store, during opening hours with all the lights on.. and TBH  I think your posted images look much nicer than the Bond clip .. 

 

Edited by Robin R Probyn
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15 hours ago, charles pappas said:

  ...the lighting would be calling attention to itself...   This circumstance of the light calling attention to itself has probably been a focus of film scholarship and theory for decades, I imagine. 

What began as a necessity (film lighting) due to ultra-low film speeds has evolved over the decades as faster and faster film speeds have required less and less foot-candles but still some foot-candles and still the need to place them somewhere.

I suspect that in the future, due to improvement in film/digital speeds and post manipulation, wonderful images will be  possible at, say, a 1/8 foot-candle base level. But at the ⅛ fc base level, some lighting will need to be added to the set, either physically or digitally, to approximate reality.

So the conundrum arises that the industry that added lighting due to the demands of the medium requiring a great deal of light becomes the industry that adds light due to the medium requiring almost no light.

 

 

Yeah technology has definitely played a part ..I like the "heightened reality " theory ..you can make realistic lighting "better".. but not make it ever look lit...  I remember reading about Steven Soderbergh talking about shooting in the casino,s for one of the Oceans films .. and said he didnt use any lights in there at all.. I was amazed, as in the film it looks great and I just presumed it must have been a pretty sizable  lighting rig.. same with Deakins lighting of the casino in Skyfall.. pretty much the practicals only .. well enhanced practicals anyway ..  which no doubt in 1995 when GE was made probably just not do able .. and now we have lite matts and LCD,s not available even a few years back..  

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16 hours ago, Mark Kenfield said:

Because I'm bored of everyone lighting everything the same way? Because it could look great and be seamless anyway? Because I'm an inherently contrarian person with an overriding compulsion to feel special and unique? Because wrangling soft light is a goddamned nightmare (unless your wardrobe and set dressers make EVERYTHING else dark for you)?

I don't know.

But I feel like it could work (IF you could pull it off as well as Méheux does) and now I really want to try.

There's so many situations I could light SO much faster, if I could simply key them with flaggable/cuttable/controllable hard lights.

There's only one thing I've shot with purely hard keys, which was a short satire I did last year, and I thought it worked okay. I don't think the results look particularly old-fashioned:


Snuffed_1.5.1.jpg?format=2500w

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Re specifically the inside of a gas station mini mart..an example is One Hour Photo ..the Robin Williams film.. to my mind that soft ,heightened reality , int of the store perfectly served the film ,while maintaining a look thats the audience would find believable .. and literally something they shouldn't notice ..same as the editing ,and the audio..   I never said hard lighting is crap and should never be used ? 

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On 7/6/2020 at 2:36 AM, Mark Kenfield said:

I think it's a very fair comparison. I'd call it the same look. It's so smooth, that you could slot it into any narrative context and it would look just fine.

I'd love to know the recipe. Is it really just a single hard key and a single hard fill source (I assume it must be to get such a clean result)?
 

I feel like the 'glamour' aspect is more-so a function of the setting, and the higher exposure levels on Bond and Onatopp (relative to the background actors around them).

I guess my initial point/question is moreso that I think you could take that exact same key lighting, use it in that gas station convenience store, and (assuming you had your exposure and colour at a level that suited the ambient environment, I think you'd get away with it just fine (because it's so smooth/unobtrusive).

Those studio lighting setups often have lighting that is directional but not necessarily always super hard. These days there's a lot of LEDs involved too. Traditionally you might have two or three diffused lekos cross shooting each talent position with one as a backlight/hairlight. Subject to background ratio is almost always 2:1. In this photo of the NBC Nightly News set you can clearly see the talent has two lekos focused on him and a panoply of open and fresnels and everything else. 

Awards shows sort of have the same look, especially those lit by Bob Dickinson. In awards shows the talent is cross lit with two followspots around 30 degrees to the talent, which is lower than a normal theater follow spot position (and usually with a little bit of CTO to warm up the talent) and a usually bluish hot backlight with a 2:1 ratio subject to background. 

 

NBC-Nightly-Ph04.jpg

Emma Stone Oscars.JPG

Edited by Phil Jackson
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16 hours ago, Mark Kenfield said:

Thanks Phil ? appreciate the breakdown.

You know looking closer at that NBC image it looks like there's four or five lekos firing at that talent position. One or two on the far wall maybe at 11:00 to the talent, and probably the same around 2:00 on the right. I would think this would create a light that didn't have directional shadows or would eliminate them altogether, which basically is what you'd get with soft lighting (the quality of light isn't quite the same as using diffused light because of the difference in specularity a hard light source produces, but for all intents and purposes it works well especially on someone with fairer skin). 

Lester Holt Standup.jpg

nbc-nightly-news-headlines.jpg

Brian Williams.jpg

Also I misspoke on the Oscars. They use amber no color gels to warm up the talent not CTO. Lighting the Oscars

Edited by Phil Jackson
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On 7/8/2020 at 2:39 PM, Phil Jackson said:

 

NBC-Nightly-Ph04.jpg

Phil Jackson is right. At the news station I worked at a couple years ago they were using SourceFour Parnels (which are 10" lenses I believe) and softlite/ziplight style fixtures with long foamcore snoots. Their aim is flat lighting.

Phil's photo shows some 1k and 2k ziplights with eggcrates on them which do the same as foam snoots.

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On 7/6/2020 at 5:36 AM, Mark Kenfield said:

I'd love to know the recipe. Is it really just a single hard key and a single hard fill source (I assume it must be to get such a clean result)?

I did a fake talk show that was literally 2 1K MRs at equidistant sides to the face (Starts like a minute in)

 

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