Lighting for single candlelight in a room - HELP !

[ravisabnani]

I am an amateur film maker who is still studying film making in a film school.

 

In our cinematography class, we were being taught different types of lighting. During the course of the AV, our professor explained to us how a particular candlelight shot was lit.. The scene consisted of 2 subjects sitting across each other on a solid table. There is a lit candle in the centre of the table. Now obviously, when you shoot this shot, the candle light cannot just be the only source of light. So in the next slide of the AV we were shown how the scene was lit.

 

There were 2 key lights which were used from both sides . These lights 'key lit' the subjects faces. There were 2 backlights to highlight the contours/profiles of the subjects. There was a fill light (bounced/reflected light) used from near the camera to drown some shadows created by the key lights. And there was one over head light to provide the warm 'candle glow' on the table.

 

The question posed to us was: After this lighting is set, if the candle light were to flicker (maybe because of some wind) how would you show this flicker in the shot that you have just lit ?

 

Can someone please help me ? If someone could please explain in detail but keeping your terms simple. I'm still a student. I mean, I do understand F-stops, exposure, shutter speeds, lenses, focal lengths etc but if there is something a little more complicated kindly take some time off to explain it.

 

THANKS !

[David Mullen ASC]

You'd put your lights on a flicker box or a hand dimmer and try and match the candle flicker.

 

Years ago, in the late 1970's, I read an American Cinematographer article about a device that measured the flickering of a candle and matched lights to it during the shot using a dimmer box of some sort. But I never heard of it again.

[John Pytlak RIP]

If your lights are on a dimmer, you could try to match the flicker of the actual candle manually. I guess it would be possible to build an SCR dimmer that was controlled by the amount of light from the candle falling on a photocell:

 

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/lights/lightdimmer.html

 

http://www.discovercircuits.com/L/lite-dimmer.htm