Welcome again to KubricksRube’s Beginners Guide to Filmmaking. We’re on day 4 now and now we need to look at one of the most important and yet underused things to consider in any film: lighting your scenes. I’m very excited to say that helping us in discovering more about lighting is a real expert, emmy-award winning writer and producer Barry Green. In addition to his years of experience in the film industry, Barry has produced several incredible DVDs, books and articles on helping people to improve their filmmaking. You can look at them here, and they really are invaluable tools that I strongly recommend. With that said, on to the interview!
KubricksRube: What is the main purpose of lighting in a film?
Barry Green: Well, that’s an easy one to answer, but there’s more to it than the easy answer. I mean, the first answer is: so your camera can see something! Cameras are light-gathering devices, and if you don’t feed them enough light, they won’t see anything. But I don’t think that’s what you’re really asking, you’re more likely asking about what goals are served through artistic lighting in a film, and the answer is: a lot of them. Light shapes the way we see and perceive the characters. Light can be used to affect the viewer’s perception of someone. Harsh lighting can make someone look like a “shady” character, soft lighting can make someone look flattering and more romantic, and on and on. What we teach in our “Lighting for Film & Television” DVD series is that the lighting is there to support the emotion in the scene. It’s certainly not there for it to “look cool” (although that can be a side benefit). Lighting, when used properly, is there to support the director in her quest to tell a story (just like every other aspect of filmmaking: sound design, art design, staging… it’s all there to enhance the story and each element can be used to really emphasize what the director wants the audience to receive from each scene).
KR: What are the main points to consider when lighting a scene?
BG: The first and foremost point is: what is the director trying to say with this scene? Understand that and you’re a long way towards knowing how to light it. You need to know if this scene is meant to be confrontational, or scary, or confusing, or sad, or comedic, or what … and that will help you design a lighting scheme that supports that message. Once you know the general tone of the scene, you can start planning out what kind of light you’ll use, what your ratio of light to dark will be, whether it’ll be soft light or hard light, what color temperatures you may want to use to emphasize or de-emphasize elements in the scene… and you also will want to take into account the geometry of the scene. What movement happens in the scene? Is it a sit-down over-the-shoulder talking head shot? Where will the camera be? Will it be stationary or moving? You approach a sit-down OTS talking head quite differently from how you’d approach a long walk ‘n’ talk down a hallway, for example. If it’s a steadicam shot and the operator is going to be moving all over the place, you have to try to design a lighting scenario that can look good from multiple angles — and that’s not easy. It’s infinitely easier to create a dramatic look that’s meant to be viewed from one angle, so a tripod or mild dolly shot of relatively stationary actors is a whole lot easier than a high-motion scene with lots of walking around and camera movement.
Finally, you’ll want to take into account the believability and consistency of the lighting. You want to establish where your light sources are coming from, and keep them consistent shot to shot throughout the scene. Once you establish that the sun or the moon or whatever your main “motivated” light source is coming from a certain window, then all future setups will have to remember that and work around that. You don’t want your key light jumping around the scene, it is quite distracting and amateur to have that happen. You shouldn’t be lighting each individual setup willy-nilly, you want to construct an overall plan for where the light sources are in your scene (i.e., there’s a window over here, and a chandelier here, and a reading lamp there…) and when you know where those are, then (even when they’re offscreen) you still want to base your scene lighting with respect to those existing “established” or “motivated” light sources.
Of course you can cheat here and there, fill in a little here or accent something there, but you don’t want to ignore the overall room and scene geometry or you’ll end up with a confusing mess when you cut those shots into a complete scene.
KR: What are the different kinds of lighting available?
BG: There are lots of different kinds, although typically we’ll use four main types: tungsten/incandescent, HMI, fluorescent, and LED. Of those, tungsten is probably the workhorse of the low-budget industry, tungsten lights are the cheapest to buy and have been around forever, you can get some good ones used for not too much money. HMI is comparatively very expensive, and emulates the look of daylight. Fluorescents have become much more popular, especially since Kino Flo created their color-accurate fluorescents. And LED is really promising, although the current LEDs that you can buy cheap aren’t very good, and the good LEDs that you can buy aren’t cheap! In addition to those four main categories, there’s all sorts of other things you can use to fill in. There’s daylight, of course, and there’s practical lights (such as a room lamp in a scene), and then there’s things like candles and rope lights and Christmas lights and flashlights and taplights that can be used where appropriate. But as the core of the lighting package you’ll want some soft lights (typically a fluorescent or a tungsten unit in a softbox) and some hard lights (usually tungsten fresnels, unless you’ve got the budget for HMI’s).
KR: What kind of equipment is required to light a scene?
BG: That depends on the scene, of course. A stadium scene is going to require massively different stuff than a sit-down two-person over-the-shoulder shot! In general, the things you’re going to use are some fixtures (usually either an open-face or fresnel tungsten unit, or a fluorescent, or maybe an LED), with some sort of control (usually barn doors), mounted on a stand, and routed to some power (with perhaps a “stinger” or extension cord, and maybe a dimmer for the tungsten fixtures). Then in front of the light you may have some various grip equipment — you may be shining the light through diffusion, or through a colored gel, or through a shape-making sheet of wood or foil called a “cucaloris” or “cookie”, or you may have a softbox mounted on the front of the light. Or you may have some light-intensity-cutting device such as a scrim or a net, and you may also have some light-control devices such as a flag or a bounce card. And at the base of the stand, a sandbag to fix the light in position and keep it from getting knocked over. There’s a lot that goes into it!
And you’ll need one of these complete units for each position where you’re setting a fixture. I mean, obviously not every fixture will need a cookie or a flag, some might indeed be just a bare head, but you’ll still need to mount it somehow (typically a stand, but it could also be a wall plate or a mafer or a cardellini or some other type of grip equipment) and it’ll still need power, and you’ll always have to watch out for safety.
To light a typical scene you’ll need enough fixtures and enough light-control equipment to shape the scene the way you want it. Sometimes it’ll be really easy — for a horror scene where you want most everything to be in shadow, you might just use one hard light with no diffusion, blaring harshly on your actor. And sometimes you’ll want a brightly evenly lit scene, so you may just end up hanging a few Chinese lanterns around. But sometimes you want a scene with a lot of depth, a lot of mystery, a lot of color and texture, and that may mean a lot of fixtures and a lot of modifiers on those fixtures.
KR: Are there any DIY or cheaper alternatives to professional equipment?
BG: There are certainly ways that you can use inexpensive stuff and get a great look out of it. That said, understand that there are very good reasons why pro gear costs what it does! Trying to game the system and use household stuff may seem cost efficient but you will probably have to work three times as hard to overcome the shortcomings of non-pro gear. We’ve actually started a series of seminars called “Low Budget Lighting” to address this question because yes, there are some things you can use that work very well, and there are some things that just aren’t worth even bothering with. I think the $10 Chinese Lantern is probably the best of the inexpensive rigs, as long as you’re careful (I mean, you’re talking about a hot light bulb in a little paper fixture, so watch it carefully). There are other things people try, like home improvement store worklights, which I think are more trouble than they’re worth. Not saying you couldn’t light a scene with one, you probably could, but the hassle factor is so high that you’re probably not going to want to do it twice. With the advent of very sensitive cameras, the total strength of light you need is lower now, and that makes things a lot easier anyway — you don’t really need a big old 5K (5,000 watt) tungsten fresnel anymore, you can probably get what you need done with a 1K — and that makes everything less expensive, lighter, it needs a lighter stand which is less expensive, you can power it off of a household circuit so you don’t need a tie-in or a generator, so everything gets easier. Just be aware that some stuff just isn’t worth bothering with.
KR: What safety precautions should one take when lighting a scene?
BG: #1 is to secure your lights. Get them out of the way, don’t let them fall over, don’t let their cords dangle so that someone can trip over them. Use real light stands, not some cheap imitation. And weigh those stands down with sandbags (or a no-budget alternative) so that they won’t tip over. If your fixture is too heavy for your stand, get a better stand. And watch out for spare bits sticking out, like when using a C-stand (Century stand); sometimes the end of the arm will be sticking out at about eyeball height, and that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Put a plastic water bottle or slit a tennis ball and fit it over the end of the stand so people can see it and avoid the hazard. And bring along another person, who can dedicate themselves to watching out for people. Things get really busy on a film set and not everyone is always watching where they’re going. If you’re trying to do everything with a crew of two or three, you’re probably going to get in over your head and find the mic cable yanking on a light or something… have someone watching your back. Not everyone has to be watching the scene, somebody should be watching the crew to make sure no bad scenario is developing.
KR: Finally, what’s the main piece of advice you would give a new filmmaker regarding lighting?
BG: Lighting is important — but it’s not THE most important thing (despite what a lot of people will tell you!) People will watch a great story that has lousy lighting; they’ll turn off a lousy story that has great lighting. So take your time, learn how to do it, but don’t ignore other equally-valuable aspects of filmmaking in a vain pursuit of thinking that “lighting is everything” — because it isn’t. It’s just one of many crafts you need to master. That said, you still want to learn as much as you can. Study films with the sound off, and just look at the images. Forget the story, just look at how they lit the scene. Look where the shadows fall, look where the highlighted areas are. Why did they do it this way? What does it do to the scene? Choose films from good DP’s, don’t just watch no-budget stuff, watch anything where the credits list the cinematographer or director of photography with the suffix “ASC” or “BSC” (American or British Society of Cinematographers). Those folks know what they’re doing, and you could learn a lot from them. Study photography, great photographers tell a whole story with nothing but light — they don’t have a soundtrack or dialogue or motion, they only have the one frame and how it’s lit. And once you see a scene you like, try to recreate it. Get some friends over and try to read from the scene as to where the lights are, and try to make your scene look just like it. And start with lighting faces, because when it all gets down to it, that’s where the emotion in cinematography is usually played out — across a human character’s face. So experiment, try the lights in all sorts of different locations, and see how a small change can make a big difference in how a scene feels. And read American Cinematographer, where master cinematographers discuss their thought processes and what they did when lighting the movies that are in the theater right now.
Take your time, it’s going to take a substantial investment in time (and, yes, money) and effort to get good at this. But in the end it’ll be worth it.
Once again I have to thank Barry because that was incredibly informative and contains so much information that any filmmaker, new or old, can benefit from. I would completely agree with the point he makes that lighting is one string to your bow; the hope with this series is to show how each and every aspect of filmmaking is important and why you should give care and attention to everything. More important than this, however, is emphasising the fact that care and attention needs to go into every scene. Careful thought must be devoted to creating realism and emphasising tones. For a creative filmmaker, lighting is another way to add style, feeling and emotion to a scene; for an amateur, it’s just a means to an end.
Like with many things we’ve mentioned here, the key is to start small and expand as you progress as a filmmaker. Lighting is an area that you can potentially approach people who have older lights that, whilst a little clunky will nonetheless be valuable tools to your arsenal. And, as Barry said, there are low-budget lighting options, so be sure to explore all potential avenues before deciding on a purchase. Look for general items that will be continually needed first; don’t blow your cash on a huge collection of gels before you have any actual lights! And don’t be disheartened if your lighting isn’t perfect the first time around; as with all things in filmmaking, your first effort won’t be lit like an Oscar winner. Continual improvement is the name of the game here.
Well, that’s all for today. I can safely say we have been illuminated on this topic (apologies), and come back tomorrow when we will be discussing all the equipment you need alongside your camera.
After that, the rest is really up to you and your personal preference. Cheaper options like smaller sliders are more likely to be within reach than huge dolly systems or jib arms, and so go for what you can afford first and look to use it as creatively as possible. More and more companies are looking to tap into the market with affordable yet well constructed gear, and so these pieces of equipment really are becoming more accessible to the indie market.
These are the two main things you’ll be needing, but there’s so much more you can look into depending on budget. A pre-amp can help to reduce noise levels, you may wish to try different types of microphones like a lavalier, or even try a wireless lav system. And don’t forget you’ll need the likes of shock mounts, boom poles and windshields for that shotgun mic! The main message is look at what you’re needs and budget are, assess the situation and buy products accordingly (or ideally bring in a pro). And take the time to learn how to effectively use this gear. Remember, like Spielberg, Lucas and Bob Kessler say, “Sound is half of the experience.”
