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Gels and Modifiers used for balancing with fluorescent or sacrificing much intensity and there
lighting). is many other options for modifying
A vast range of different options
light. They are are vitally important
are available to modify the colour, Diffusion gel is also available in
part of recreating naturalist lighting
quality and directionality of light various strengths but diffusion or soften-
effects.
sources. Gels are used to adjust the ing of the light is also achieved by
colour of the light. Colour conversion bouncing light off of large reflectors or Justified Lighting
gels are the most commonly used. They shining it through muslin or a similar
One of the principal characteris-
convert the colour temperature of the fabric. Softboxes use this same princi-
tics of narrative lighting and the way in
source from tungsten towards daylight pal but also serve to control the direc-
which it differs most from other forms of
or vice versa. Some perform full con- tionality to some extent. Concentrating
applied lighting is the need for light to
version others only partial (see fig.1.8). the source can also be achieved vari-
be justified, or for it to be coming from
Colour correction filters tend to provide ous ways. A snoot or a focusing at-
an identifiable source. The key light or
more subtle adjustments and are avail- tachment will produce a spot but also a
principal source will almost always be
able in a wide range of colours. They very hard source. Honeycombs are
playing the part of the sun or other
are available in all primary and secon- another way to restrict the source and
main light source and in many ways
dary colours and various strengths. The achieve a tight beam with a fairly soft
can be considered a character in the
Usual naming convention is CCssH quality.
scene.
where ss is the strength of the filter and The problem with all of these fit-
H is the colour shifted towards. For Other lights may be less obviously
tings is that they absorb some of the
example a CC30M is a strong minus- justified. Fill light, or light used simply
light output of the source. Barndoors
green (Rosco full minus-green) filter to reduce contrast and fill in the shad-
give you some control over the light
where as a CC075G is a mild plus- ows, is often totally un-justified and as
spread without changing the character
green (Rosco 1/4 plus-green, these are a result we often strive to hide it’s
source. Soft sources are usually used
and the fill is often directed from the
Wratten Hoya Rosco Colour Temp. Shift (!) Mired Shift Exp. Comp.
camera position so shadows don’t give
- - Full CTO 6500K-3200K, 5500K-2900K +167 +3/4 the game away. Sometimes many dif-
85B LA-140 3/4 CTO 5500K-3200K +131/+140* +2/3 ferent lights are used to simulate cer-
85C LA-80 1/2 CTO 5500K-3800K +81/+80* +1/2 tain lighting conditions. These will
81D LA-40 1/4 CTO 5500K-4500K, 3800K-3200K +42/+40* +1/3 clearly be justified and like the key may
81A LA-20 1/8 CTO 3400K-3200K +18/+20* +1/4 well be important parts of the set or
81 - - 3300K-3200K +9 +1/6 story.
80A LB-140 Full CTB 3200K-5500K -131/-140* +1 1/2 Sometimes lights are needed sim-
80B LB-120 - 3200K-5000K, 3400K-5500K -112/-120* +1 1/3 ply to illuminate a subject or to accen-
- LB-100 3/4 CTB 3200K-4700K, 3500K-5500K -100 +1 1/3 tuate some character of it. Conven-
80C LB-80 1/2 CTB 3200K-4100K, 3800K-5500K -81/-80*/-68** +1 tional wisdom is that these lights should
80D - 1/3 CTB 3200K-3800K, 4200K-5500K -56/-49** +2/3 also be justified so as not to interfere
with the audiences ability to suspend
82C LB-40 - 2800K-3200K, 3200K-3700K -45/-40* +2/3
disbelief. This is not always the case
82B - 1/4 CTB 2900K-3200K, 3200K-3500K -32 +1/2
however and sometimes un-justified
82A LB-20 - 3000K-3200K, 3200K-3400K -20 +1/3
lights can enhance the image and give
82 - 1/8 CTB 3100K-3200K, 3200K-3300K -10 +1/3
a surreal or interesting effect.
Fig.1.9. Table of colour conversion filters and gels.
Again with direct sunlight using a fill of
balanced colour temperature can look
unnatural and cooling by 1/2 CTB can
help. When tungsten lighting is to be
used on the indoor set we have more
problems. The difference in intensity
may simply be too great for the tung-
sten lights to compete. ND (neutral
density) gels placed over the windows
can help but the colours are still differ-
ent. We probably don’t want to correct
this completely as it will also look un-
natural but some correction will be
required. As we are probably already
struggling to get enough intensity from
the tungsten lights (and they may well
be part of the set) correcting them is
often out of the question. Gelling the
windows is again the most common
solution and most cine-gel manufactures
supply combined 1/2 CTO and ND4/
Fig. 1.10. Two Ruby 7 tungsten PAR arrays being used as fill lights. Their colour temperature has been corrected to
daylight balance with a sheet of CTB (80A) gel. Luminaria Inc. © 1998 ND8 gels for this very purpose.6
Compressing Reality to the actors but can produce a kind of Fill is also important when shoot-
plastic appearance and interfere with ing under artificial location lighting.
Having touched on most of the
the atmosphere of the scene. In most Here fill should almost always be of the
available artificial light sources lets get
narrative photography fill is used much same colour as the key, unless the fill is
back to the sun. Daylight has the obvi-
more subtly, so we can see just enough to appear to come from another source
ous advantage of being free but it is
to follow the story without it effecting on the set. When light sources them-
not as predictable or controllable as
the atmosphere or looking artificial. selves are in shot this can cause an-
one might like. The problem with direct other problem. In order to have them
sunlight and to some extent diffuse On small sets and in tight cropped
render acceptably the exposure has to
daylight is the high contrast they pro- shots it is often possible to get sufficient
be set so low that they throw little of no
duce. Reducing this contrast is one of fill by using large white reflectors to
light on the subject. The usual solution
the key tasks of the cinematographer. bounce the diffuse light back into the
to this is to place another higher pow-
shadows. This requires getting the re-
The most common tactic used is to ered light of a similar quality just out of
flector(s) quite close to the subject and
‘fill’ the shadows with soft lighting, 1-3 shot, lighting the subject in as similar a
in most circumstances will not provide
stops below the key light. Usually the way as possible to the fixture lamp.
enough light. Silver reflectors throw
colour temperature of the fill light will
more light back onto the subject but this Faking Daylight
be picked to match the key light. For a
can have a quite unnatural quality. The
truly realistic effect the fill can be Rather than deal with all of the
other main problem with reflectors is
gelled to cool it down a little (1/4-1/2 problems involved with using natural
they need to be placed to catch the
CTB), simulating the blueness of skylight light, the weather, sun position and all
light. This may not be the best place for
which is natures fill. To achieve objec- the issues discussed above, it is often
the fill to be coming from.
tively correct colour much more blue easier to fake things completely. This is
shift than this would be required but as One solution is to bounce one or rarely possible on large outdoor loca-
stated earlier this kind of colour con- more daylight balanced sources off of tions but for working on a set or inside
trast is accentuated by photography the white reflector, increasing the light a location it can be the best solution. It
and so reducing the differences actu- levels and freeing it from some position- makes colour temperature and contrast
ally produces a more realistic effect. ing restraints. Another is to place light much easier to manage and you never
sources behind diffusion material or use have to wait for the sun to come out
Some shots will require different
softboxes, producing a similar effect. from behind a cloud.
levels of fill than others. In some it may
Some prefer to fill from the opposite
be desirable for the characters to be Window light is relatively easy to
side of the camera to the key, others to
seen in silhouette. In a shot where the fake, so long as we don’t need to see
fill as directly as possible from camera
characters faces are completely in out of said window. If the window is not
position. Again this may depend on the
shadow it may be desirable to allow in shot then it need not exist at all. A
shot and of course practical restrains
the key light to overexpose a stop or so large softbox or bounce lit slightly cool
such as space and mounting issues.
and fill to not far below correct. If the will provide convincing light from a
Placing the fill higher up will help with
whole frame is in shade then the prob- north facing window, or on an overcast
realism, as it could be reflected light
lem may not be shadows but rather the day. If the window is real then covering
from a passing cloud but this may not
coolness of the natural light. it with diffusion and pointing light(s) at
be as flattering as placing it at about
it from a relatively high angle is the
The hollywood style tends to be to head height.
most common solution, but you can mix
use lots of fill, often to quite unrealistic
The same principals apply when and match. By how bright and how
levels. This is undoubtedly beautifying
shooting indoors with window light. cool these lights are we can control the
moon itself will rarely have the desired
effect. Some diffusion or a softer
source will help. Moonlit scenes also
appear fairly low contrast so plenty of
soft fill light is useful where possible.
Allowing any bright highlights will spoil
the effect and should be avoided. Low
contrast is the order of the day.
Lighting as Storytelling
To some extent all the techniques
we have discussed so far are about
telling the story. They set the scene,
establish the time of day and the
weather conditions and help to lead the
audiences attention to the important
elements. But when we talk of lighting
as storytelling we tend to mean it’s Fig.1.14. The unsettling effect of up-lighting in Stanley Kubrick!s The Shinning. Warner Brothers © 1980
units turned right down the light they
give off is often a little warmer than
one might expect, maybe around
4800K. With the day outside overcast
this gave enough of a colour tempera-
ture difference to create the desired
effect without the need to gel either
windows or flash. The tungsten christ-
mas tree lights rendered very warm
which was also as desired. The light
from the right was restricted right down
using a thick honeycomb. This was to
stop it having much effect on the right
hand wall or producing a shadow of
the actor. It was intended to be some-
thing of a special effect, like it came out
off nowhere.
Conclusions
Lighting is undoubtedly a creative
art but at it’s core is a technical under-
standing of light and colour. In essence
it employs the same theory and tech-
niques as used in any other form of
applied photography but applies them
to the telling of stories. The techniques
and conventions in this article are a
useful guide but they are not set in
stone, there is always room for experi-
Fig.1.15. "The Gift!. Andy Schonfelder © 2007 mentation.
The Gift
To sum up and to try and illustrate
some of this I’m going to take the ex-
ample of a narrative still image I pro-
duced (fig.1.15, The Gift), looking at
how and why it was lit. It tells the sim-
ple if fairly ambiguous story of a mys-
terious christmas gift and clearly the
light tells the majority of the story.
curtains all the lighting was xenon Fig.1.16. The making of a narrative lighting set up. Andy Schonfelder © 2007
flash. With oldish flash tubes and the
Bibliography
Blain Brown.
Cinematography. Theory and Practice. Focal Press. 2002.
Walter Nurnberg.
Lighting for Photography, Means and Methods. Focal Press. 1942.
Michael Langford.
Advanced Photography. Focal Press. 1998.
Ralph E Jacobson & Sidney F Ray & Geoffrey G Attridge and Norman R Axford.
The Manual of Photography. Focal Press. 2000.
Sydney F. Ray.
Applied Photographic Optics. Focal Press. 2002.
John Smith
Lectures and notes from ‘Applied Imaging II’. University of Westminster. 2007-8.
Sophie Triantaphillidou.
Lectures and notes from ‘Introduction to Colour’. University of Westminster. 2006.
Wikipedia [Online]
http://en.wikipedia.org, GNU Free Documentation License. Accessed in January 2008.
Rosco [Online]
http://www.rosco.com. Rosco Inc. Accessed December 2007.
Bladerunner. [Film]
Director: Ridley Scott. The Bladerunner Partnership. 1982.
Amelie. [Film]
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Tapioca Films. 2001.
1
thru 5 - Blain Brown. Cinematography. Theory and Practice. Focal Press. 2002.
6
- Rosco [Online] http://www.rosco.com. Rosco Inc. Accessed December 2007.