Film Lighting
NEWLY REVISED AND EXPANDED, FILM LIGHTING IS AN INDISPENSABLE SOURCEBOOK FOR THE ASPIRING AND PRACTICING CINEMATOGRAPHER, BASED ON EXTENSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH LEADING CINEMATOGRAPHERS AND GAFFERS IN THE FILM INDUSTRY
Film lighting is a living, dynamic art influenced by new technologies and the individual styles of leading cinematographers. Reporting on the latest innovations and showcasing in-depth interviews with industry experts, Film Lighting provides an inside look at how cinematographers and film directors establish the visual concept of the film and use the lighting to help tell the story.
Using firsthand material from experts such as Oscar-winning cinematographers Dion Beebe, Russell Carpenter, Robert Elswit, Mauro Fiore, Janusz Kaminski, Wally Pfister, Haskell Wexler, and Vilmos Zsigmond, this revised and expanded edition provides an invaluable opportunity to learn from the industry’s leaders.
KRIS MALKIEWICZ author of the classic work Cinematography, is a graduate of the prestigious Polish State Film Academy. He helped design the film department of the California Institute of the Arts and taught film at the Film Division of The Polytechnic in London, England.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Malkiewicz, J. Kris.
Film lighting : talks with hollywood’s cinematographers and gaffers / by Kris Malkiewicz ;
drawings by Leonard Konopelski.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
1. Cinematography—Lighting. 2. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—History. I. Title.
TR891.M35 2012
777′.52—dc23
2011018969
ISBN 978-1-4391-6906-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-0739-3 (ebook)
Acknowledgments
I am greatly indebted to a large group of marvelous people who generously contributed with their expertise and their time: Richmond (“Aggie”) Aguilar; the late John Alonzo, ASC; Michael Bauman; Robert Baumgartner; Dion Beebe, ASC; John Buckley; Stephen Burum, ASC; Colin J. Campbell; Russell Carpenter, ASC; the late James Crabe, ASC; the late Jordan Cronenweth, ASC; Richard Crudo, ASC; Allen Daviau, ASC; Caleb Deschanel, ASC; David Devlin; Robert Elswit, ASC; Mauro Fiore, ASC; the late Conrad Hall, ASC; Richard Hart; Adam Holender, ASC; the late James Wong Howe, ASC; Slawomir Idziak, PSC; Robert Jason; Janusz Kaminski; Ian Kincaid; Richard Kline, ASC; the late Philip Lathrop, ASC; Len Levine; Matthew Libatique, ASC; the late Alexander Mackendrick; M. David Mullen, ASC; Wally Pfister, ASC; James Plannette; Rodrigo Prieto, ASC; Harris Savides, ASC; Steven J. Scott; Dante Spinotti, ASC; Haskell Wexler, ASC; the late Robert Wise; Ralph Woolsey, ASC; Jerzy Zielinski, ASC; Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.
There are others, too numerous to mention by name, who over the years shared with me their knowledge, either directly or as authors of books and articles. American Cinematographer magazine was a particularly rich and inspiring source of information. Last but not least, I am particularly grateful to Barbara J. Gryboski, who was my invaluable assistant on the first edition of this book.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Second Edition
Chapter One The Cinematographer as Collaborator
Working with the Director
The Hiring Process
Taking on the Project
Style
Serving the Story
Working with the Art Director
Working with the Designers
Rehearsals
Composition
Working with the Crew
Chapter Two Lighting Equipment
Types of Light Sources
Tungsten Lights
HMI Lights
Fluorescent Lights
LED Lights
Fresnel Lights
Ellipsoidal Reflector Spotlights
Xenon Lights
Beam Projectors
Moving Lights
PAR Lights
Open-face and Area Lights
Soft Lights
Compact Lights
Accessories to Luminaires
Light Packages
Power Supply
Chapter Three Image Manipulation
Film Stock
Digital Cameras
Brightness Range Manipulation
Measuring and Evaluating Light
Picture and Waveform Monitors
Color Gelatins
Image Manipulation by Filters, Nets, and Other Optical Media
Working with Smoke
Image Manipulation in the Laboratory
Processing
Timing and Printing
Digital Intermediate
Chapter Four Anatomy of Lighting
Key Light, Fill Light, and Backlight Concepts
Key Light
Fill Light
Backlight
Chapter Five Strategy of Lighting
Hard Versus Soft
Controlling Hard Light
Using and Controlling the Various Types of Soft Light
Box-type Soft Light
Diffused Light
Bounced Light
Ambient Light
Low Key, High Key
Studio Versus Location
Lighting for Multiple Cameras
Lighting for Digital Video
Chapter Six Lighting a Scene
Lighting Approach to a Scene
Sources of Light
Long Shot and Close-up
Studio Day Interior
Night Interior
Treatment of Walls
Using Practical Lamps
Special Practicals
Mirrors
Process Shots
Lighting Faces
Beauty Lighting
Lighting for Skin Tones
Close-up Accessories
Eye Light
Chapter Seven Lighting on Location
Location Exterior
Daylight
Sunset
Day-for-Night
Night-for-Night
Location Interior
Location Interior/Exterior
Location Lighting with Fluorescents
Theater Interior Lighting
Vehicle Lighting
Chapter Eight Learning to Light
Notes on the Contributors
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Preface to the Second Edition
Since the first edition of this book in 1986, the filmmaking world has entered a technological revolution comparable to the transitions from silent to sound and from black and white to color. The revolution is digital. When a film production is photographed on film stock, it will most likely be timed (corrected) as a digital intermediate. When a film is photographed on a high-definition camera, it will most likely be distributed to the theaters on film stock. But it may also stay digital as DVD, Blu-ray, or some other format of the future.
Everyone with a cell phone in his/her pocket is a potential filmmaker.
However, before we get tempted to dismiss photochemical film altogether, let’s pause for a moment. As it is, one of the greatest advances in filmmaking in the last twenty-five years was the amazing progress in film emulsions. They are much “faster,” with wider latitude, better color rendition, and less grain. Parallel with the changes in shooting media are huge advances in lighting technologies.
The question often asked is, if new film emulsions are more sensitive to light, why are the companies designing bigger and more powerful lights? The answer given by one cinematographer: “The lights are bigger because you want to place them further away and emulate nature.”
Light sources are put on cranes and inside helium balloons. Fixtures range from a six-inch-long fluorescent Mini-Flo to a 100,000-watt SoftSun. Moving lights, also known as intelligent lights, seen at rock concerts, are being employed now in many feature film productions. At the same time, film electricians are using household bulbs to build strips of light covered with diffusion and often used for creating ambient light.
Like their older colleagues interviewed a quarter of a century earlier for the first edition of this book, the cinematographers and gaffers interviewed and quoted here were very generous in sharing their aesthetics and their techniques. I am humbled in the face of this wealth of visual imagination and knowledge. With so many new technologies available, cinematography becomes an even more individualized art, where different experts often achieve their goals in unorthodox ways.
The reader will notice that the voices of older masters from the first edition were also preserved. These are the classic practitioners, whose aesthetics and wisdom are timeless and whose advice is priceless. A few of them are not with us anymore, yet their visual genius is eternal.
In today’s Hollywood one meets cinematographers from various countries and cultures, which makes for a very rich offering of styles and sensibilities. Light as always plays a crucial role in creating screen reality. Fast film emulsions and very sensitive digital cameras have liberated the lighting domain. Cinematographers and gaffers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what has been done before. Film lighting is an exciting field and the future is bright. (Pun intended!)
Chapter One
The Cinematographer as Collaborator
“Film is light.” This statement by Federico Fellini brings us to the essence of the cinematographer’s art and function. One of the most important abilities of a cinematographer is to see light and to remember it. “Light memory” for the lighting cameraman is similar to the musical memory necessary for a musician.
Light is the most changing element in our daily life. We move among solid objects and among people who do not change drastically during a day or a week. But visually the appearance of our environment and of people around us may change from one hour to the next owing to the time of day, the weather, or the particular source of the light. The best cinematographers are very aware of these changes and store in their memory the impact different types of light have on our emotions and our subconscious. Most people see the change in the quality of light as the day goes by, but a cinematographer must be as observant as the French impressionist painter Claude Monet, who painted the cathedral at Rouen from the same angle at various times of the day. When Sven Nykvist (ASC) and Ingmar Bergman prepared to shoot Winter Light, they spent an entire day observing the changes in light in a country church in northern Sweden in order to be able to reproduce that winter light on a soundstage.
For a cinematographer, watching the light becomes second nature. Whether in a city hall, a restaurant, a nightclub, or the woods, the cinematographer will file it away in his/her memory to be recalled when lighting a similar situation on a movie set. This will help in the final task of a cinematographer, which is to contribute to the visual character of the film.
Light will enhance or diminish the efforts of all the people who create the sets, the costumes, and the makeup.
Filmmaking is a collaborative art. It would be misleading to insist that the cinematographer is totally responsible for the visual character of the picture. Even in terms of the camera moves and framing, the creative process involves the director, the cinematographer, and the camera operator, and whose ideas are decisive in the final outcome will depend very much on their individual talents and personalities. Yet lighting is the sole domain of the cinematographer. This is his/her most obvious contribution. Light can fall on the scene in a variety of ways. It can create a great many moods, but the task of the cinematographer is to choose the type of lighting that will best help to tell the story. The angle of light, its intensity, its quality (hard or soft), its color—these are some of the paints on the cinematographer’s palette. The dark areas and shadows are of equal value. It was said by more than one cinematographer: “What you do not see is as important as what you do see.” The light is there to direct the viewer’s attention, the darkness to stimulate his/her imagination.
As in all arts, there are styles in lighting that characterize certain periods or certain film studios. For example, the glossy Hollywood pictures of the thirties were followed by the stylized low-key lighting of film noir in the forties and the Italian stark neorealism of the late forties and fifties.
Styles are also influenced by the personalities of the cinematographers and the technical progress in film stocks, video cameras’ targets, lenses, and the lighting equipment. Very sensitive emulsions and high-definition cameras, as well as faster lenses, require less light intensity, allowing for much greater use of soft, bounced, or diffused light and of practical light sources that constitute part of the set. They also facilitate greater use of the available light, especially in backgrounds, such as in the streets at night. Collaboration between the cinematographer and the set designer, who provides some of the lighting, becomes essential.
In this chapter we will look at the various aspects of the collaboration between the cinematographer and the other vital members of the filmmaking team. Working with the director is one of the most exciting artistic relationships in this medium.
Working with the Director
Ideally the cinematographer’s relationship with the director is a symbiotic one. The cinematographer embraces the director’s vision and uses his or her visual talent and technical knowledge to capture the director’s inner thoughts and put them on the screen. Needless to say, the process of choosing a cinematographer is of no small importance to the director.
THE HIRING PROCESS
Many directors choose a cinematographer much as they would cast an actor. They look at a candidate’s body of work to evaluate style and experience.
Alexander Mackendrick, director
It is my impression that most of the cameramen I know have developed a highly personal style. They have an individual character that becomes their stock in trade. During the planning for Sweet Smell of Success, the producer, Harold Hecht, suggested James Wong Howe. I remembered Jimmy as extremely good with strong, melodramatic material and felt his hard-edged approach would be ideal for this particular subject, so I was delighted.
Often a director will screen several films shot by a prospective cinematographer.
Alexander Mackendrick, director
In effect, I believe you have to trust the taste and temperament of the cameraman as you see it in his previous work. Obviously, you should take care to see a number of his films t
o see how he handles different genres; to see what range he has. Wong Howe had considerable range: I looked at both Body and Soul and Picnic, which was in color and much more sentimental. But what I asked Jimmy for was the black-and-white harshness I’d seen in his melodramatic movies.
Once the director finds a likely choice, he or she sends the cinematographer a script.
Robert Wise, director
When you start to zero in on somebody that you think might be the candidate, you want his reaction to the script. So I usually have him read it and then, without guiding him too much, I get his input in a chat about how he sees it, what kind of texture and quality he feels the picture should have.
Sometimes we may run other films, or I might refer to some films of his that I have seen and certain sequences that I liked. Depending on the kind of story, I may refer to some painters. I did that in pictures that were period pieces. When working on Mademoiselle Fifi, we turned to Daumier and his caricatures, not only for the cameraman but also for the clothes and the props. In current films you might look at photographs of contemporary things, of something with a striking look to it.
In paintings I look for lighting and composition. Very often for lighting. There is much to be gained from the examples of lighting and effects.
TAKING ON THE PROJECT
The process of selection is not one-sided. Cinematographers pick and choose among the scripts which are offered to them to find the stories which, for whatever reason, they would like to shoot. Cinematographers who are in great demand can, naturally, be more selective. As we all know, truly great scripts do not surface too often and sometimes wonderful scripts can turn out to be mediocre movies.
British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, BSC, who photographed some hundred feature films, admits to reading close to a thousand scripts. Out of this volume of work, he feels that the truly memorable films could be counted on the fingers of one, perhaps two hands.