Film Lighting Read online

  I’m a big fan of Kino Flo’s Flathead 80. It is much lighter than the Wall-O-Lite or VistaBeam, because it has no built-in ballast, and it has a thin profile. In terms of practical location, it is a very easy light to work with. Often set electricians complain about it, because you don’t just plug it in, you have to hook the ballasts and cable separately and they would rather use another of Kino’s popular lights than the Image 80, but that’s their problem. I pick the right light for the right job, and I have found the Flathead 80 to be a very useful light.

  Working with Rodrigo Prieto [ASC, MSC] has been one of the highlights of my career as a gaffer. Many of those films we have worked on have been predominantly handheld, which can present numerous opportunities and challenges in terms of lighting. With the freedom of movement and organic nature of this style, much of the time you are dealing with a very wide and changing frame line. To accommodate this reality, the lighting scheme becomes about how much room for lights do I have above the frame and below the frame. In these situations Rodrigo and I have become quite used to lighting with Kino Flos. Because of their varying sizes and shapes, and their light weight, you can often easily and quickly rig them in such a fashion that allows you to shoot under or over them. If you can come up with clever ways to control them, they allow for the freedom of movement that is associated with handheld camera work.

  Robert Elswit, ASC

  In Kino Flos I like the fatboy. It has four 2 ft. tubes. On Duplicity probably 50 percent of our lights were Kinos. In an office interior in Manhattan I put Kino Flos everywhere. That is the only way to do it. Kino Flo’s Wall-O-Lites and Image 80s I use all the time.

  Matthew Libatique, ASC

  I would say that for me the new important technology was the Kino Flo, because with one unit and the selection of globes I could change the color of the scene and the atmosphere. If it wasn’t for Kino Flo, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish the look of Requiem for the Dream. Because it was so soft automatically, I did not have to diffuse it that much. And even when I did diffuse it, there was a level of naturalism to the quality of the light.

  The Lumapanel provides adjustable color temperature and extended range dimming.

  (courtesy of T8 Technology Company)

  In the realm of large-size fluorescent fixtures we should also look at the Lumapanel, a 4 × 7 ft. panel of twenty-eight T8 tubes putting out as much light as a 4K (that is, a 4000-watt) HMI Fresnel bounced off white foam core. When the fixture is lamped with 3000 kelvin and 5500 kelvin tubes, half and half, it can be adjusted to various color temperatures just by dimming individual groups of tubes.

  Michael Bauman, gaffer

  I think that Lumapanels are a great tool, a great way to provide a really natural ambience in a big area that is relatively inexpensive when compared to more traditional approaches. Normally to create an ambient quality of light, one would use a lot of space lights or chicken coops as a source. Sometimes giant softboxes are created using maxi brutes or Dinos through large frames of diffusion. But these sources use a lot of power, create a lot of heat, and require more rigging, dimmers, and cabling. With Lumapanels, you just hang them, set them up, and you can use either daylight or tungsten tubes, or mix the two and dim them to different levels to create different color temperatures. They are a fantastic companion with other fluorescent fixtures such as Kino Flo or xFlo.

  David Devlin, gaffer

  There is a beauty to a fluorescent, and the beauty is that they are perfectly even. They are all completely the same. If you point a 4K soft light on a white wall, you don’t get the light completely even and you don’t have the choice of color temperature unless you gel the light. In Lumapanels the color temperature is affected by cross-fading between different tubes. There are fourteen circuits in the panel with twenty-eight tubes. With fourteen daylight tubes and fourteen of tungsten, you can just mix between the two. When you are in a room and you ask yourself what color do you want the ambience to be, by cross-fading between these tubes, you can get the right color. Another problem with fluorescent instruments, from the perspective of a gaffer and electricians, is the cables. Whenever we would use one hundred Kino Flos, there are a lot of cables. Hundreds of connections. Creating panels of tubes, each with one connection, limits the overall number of cables. Lumapanels come as 4 × 7 ft. panels.

  Everybody puts everything on dimmers. Therefore, any technology that has the dimmers already on the lights means big savings. Otherwise, on a large stage, with all the Dino lights on, we have to run all the cables back outside the soundstage to a hut, which is then air-conditioned, to dimmers. In these situations fluorescents mean a lot of savings. You save a ton of labor and they operate at 20 percent of the wattage of a comparable tungsten.

  Litepanels 1 × 1 LED light with dimming capability

  (courtesy of Litepanels Inc.)

  LED LIGHTS

  LED or light-emitting diodes have become the fast-developing technology for lighting. The trend started with very flat light panels extremely useful for lighting in tight quarters, such as inside a car. Litepanels became one of the most recognizable producers of small LED lights with very useful features. They don’t change color temperatures when dimmed, have a very slim profile, and can run from a car or camera battery. Extremely useful for car work is also the Rosco LitePad HO, which is 3 × 6 in., has a thickness of 0.3 in., and at a distance of 12 in. provides 32 foot-candles of light. Subsequently much larger units, resembling the fluorescent tube clusters, were developed, such as Mac Tech LED fixtures by Bardwell & McAlister Lighting. They constitute very energy-efficient large soft sources that come in both tungsten and daylight.

  Litepanels MicroPro LED light with dimming capability

  (courtesy of Litepanels Inc.)

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  Most LEDs are daylight-balanced, though some 3200K versions are available. They use very little power and the smaller units take up little space. A common use is on top of a camera as an eye light or fill light. Or they are placed off camera to simulate the glow from a TV set or car dashboard. Larger panels of LEDs are used as soft sources; again, being very flat, they don’t take up much space. People working on a small budget find them useful, just as they do Kino Flos, for providing a soft daylight effect while using very little power.

  Robert Baumgartner, cinematographer and gaffer

  I have found LEDs to be very cold, very harsh lights. Tungsten is still the cleanest source. You don’t have to worry about color between different units. I see it coming back. I’d love to shoot a film with only tungsten and maybe a little bit of fluorescent, though the project would have to be small in scope. At this point I could not see lighting an entire set with LEDs. They are very, very good for architectural purposes and they can be a good eye light. I have found only a few applications for LEDs as a key source, mostly in confined spaces. Also, they often require so much in terms of color correction, softening, and control that the applications are limited, but they have their purpose, yet another tool in an ever-growing kit.

  John Buckley, gaffer

  I don’t like LEDs. They are too hard to manage in color temperature. They are green. They are good for certain very specific, practical things. They cannot be used in filming high-speed. They have to be at 24 frames; at higher speeds they start to become a pulse.

  Mac Tech LED 2 × 8, a power-efficient light that produces virtually no heat.

  (courtesy of Bardwell & McAlister Inc.)

  Janusz Kaminski, cinematographer

  When we did A.I. Artificial Intelligence, I went to a rock ’n’ roll concert and the stage was illuminated by the huge LED panels—in one moment they were going to red and blue—so we used it on A.I. The tiny LEDs, the little ones, battery-operated, are great for the car work. You can tape one to the roof of the car, you can put it on the dashboard; it’s a really great invention. You can also hold it in your hand and in a close-up you can bring it in a little bit to give you this extra light.

  Colin Campbell,
gaffer

  The LED light source may revolutionize this business within the next five years, once they solve the color temp. They are coming along very fast. When you think about LEDs and their future, pretty soon you may be able to light almost everything that you will need to light on house power. It is incredible.

  Mac Tech LED tubes come in both tungsten and daylight. They have a rating life of 100,000 hours.

  (courtesy of Bardwell & McAlister Inc.)

  650-watt Molequartz Tweenie II Solarspot

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  Michael Bauman, gaffer

  The use of LED for film lighting has exploded in the last few years. They allow a tremendous amount of color manipulation and put out a lot of light for the wattage. Now LED-based panel-type lights are very common on the set. Litepanels has a wide variety of lights. Nila is another brand. I’ve used the Zylight and the Kelvin TILE recently. A company called LiteGear has the LiteRibbon, flexible LED strips of light which are great for creating your own specific panel lights or to use in lighting many of the architectural elements of a set.

  24,000-watt ARRI T24

  (courtesy of ARRI Group)

  Apart from the light source type, lights are also categorized by their housing. In this respect we can distinguish between lights furnished with a lens and the open-face or open-end fixtures. A lamp that may be viewed as a hybrid of these two types is the sealed-beam PAR globe with the lens constituting its integral part. In such a lamp the distance between the filament and the lens remains constant, unlike the focusable Fresnel lights.

  Considering that the housing for fixtures using tungsten incandescent globes and HMI globes are in their design very similar, we will present them as one group yet indicate their source types.

  Since certain instruments have survived the test of time, we will begin our survey with lights that were designed several decades ago.

  FRESNEL LIGHTS

  The Fresnel lens is still the best tool for condensing light. It creates reasonably even illumination across the beam of light it forms. The light beam falls off gradually enough to allow for soft blending of two lamps lighting adjacent areas.

  The Fresnel lens remains stationary while the bulb and spherical mirror can be moved together, either spotting or flooding the light. When the bulb and mirror are farthest away from the lens, the light rays are more converged. This is the spot position, and it narrows the beam to a small area of coverage. Flooding the lamp moves the bulb and mirror to the front of the housing, near the lens. In the flood position the lamp throws a wider beam, illuminating a broader area. When pointing a Fresnel light at a subject, it is first spotted, also known as “putting it on the pin.” This narrows the beam so the electrician can clearly see exactly where the center of the beam falls. When the beam is hitting the center of the designated area, the Fresnel can then be flooded to the desired degree.

  In the tungsten-type Fresnels the smallest lamp is a tiny inky dink, which houses bulbs from 20 to 250 watts. In recent years 600-watt Fresnel lights have become very popular with cinematographers and gaffers. With ever-increasing film speeds, smaller units of various designs are appearing continually. Such lights can often be equipped with a 30-volt globe powered by a 30-volt battery pack or belt.

  For years the 1000-watt baby, 2000-watt junior, 5000-watt senior, 10,000-watt tener, and the 20,000-watt lamp Fresnels were the workhorses of the film industry. With today’s fast emulsions and digital cameras, less light is required. At the same time, indiscriminate miniaturization of the luminaires would deprive us of the softer light character provided by larger lenses. Frequently a tener will be lamped with a 5000-watt globe to cut down on light while utilizing the larger Fresnel lens for a softer light. Often a 10,000 or 20,000 will be used mainly for its wide spread.

  Fresnel fixtures with HMI globes typically range from 575 to 12,000/18,000 watts, the last being a standard source for lighting daylight interiors through the windows. An outstanding example of a lightweight 18K HMI light is the Alpha 18 by P56 Lighting. Its design allows the lamp to be used pointed straight down. It also features a quick-release latch for changing lenses from a Fresnel to an open-eye (clear) lens.

  Robert Jason, gaffer

  The 18Ks [HMI] have definitely taken over, but there is a small handful of people who would rather put a blue gel on a 20K [tungsten] because it is a much more attractive light. Of course it doesn’t have the punch of an 18K. And since almost everyone either bounces or lights through diffusion nowadays, the HMIs are fine for that, but if you put an HMI hard on somebody’s face, it is not very attractive.

  P56 Lighting, 18,000-watt Alpha 18 Fresnel HMI

  (courtesy of P56 Lighting)

  For all practical purposes the old carbon arcs, which were the backbone of film lighting, are no longer used.

  David Devlin, gaffer

  What killed the arcs were the 18K HMIs. The 12K were almost comparable to the arcs. But even with all the inconveniences of trimming the arcs, when you turned one on next to the 12K HMI, everybody would see the difference.

  Allen Daviau, ASC

  There is something about the look of an arc, the color of an arc, that is absolutely perfect. And HMIs are not the same. The size of the source in an arc is so tiny. Such a sharp light.

  You have to really be careful with the HMIs, particularly in the green and magenta range. You have to make sure that the lamps are matching.

  Caleb Deschanel, ASC

  Arcs you cannot use anymore because you cannot get carbons and nobody knows how to work them. Now HMIs are standard, so you use them, but you still have to be careful with HMIs because they tend to run between magenta and green, depending on how old the bulbs are. You never had that problem with arcs. I remember a couple of years ago shooting something in a loft in New York. We had six windows and each had a different HMI coming through, and they varied from green to magenta. We ended up filtering each one. If we’d had arcs, we wouldn’t have had this problem.

  Stephen Burum, ASC

  The arcs are DC (direct current) and you don’t have the problem with being electrocuted, especially if you are in a wet environment. I did a couple of pictures in the jungle and we certainly didn’t have HMIs. Too dangerous to use them when people are running through the rice paddies. So the DC is a very important thing. The other big reason is the color temperature. An arc gives you the complete spectrum, not like an HMI, which is dependent on mercury in its system to generate the light. Which means that you always get green. Which means it is not balanced from globe to globe. The 18K globes are made one at a time, so they don’t have the consistency. You lose the ability to really effectively correct the color temperature with filters because you don’t know what you are going to get. Because there is this great green spike in HMIs, you really cannot match from one HMI to the other, whereas arcs developed by Mole-Richardson and Technicolor are perfect. They are right on and all the filters can be used. One of the great things, in a way funny, about the arcs is that they have this grid to reduce the voltage and it gives off a lot of heat. So at night, the electricians always like to work with arcs because they will be warm, and they like it because the girl extras know where to stand to be warm, so the guys can pick up the girls easier. It is a smaller source of light, so it is a much sharper and much cleaner light. The other thing that the arcs were great for was doing fight scenes in a river. You could put the grids in the water and they would heat the water so actors wouldn’t be freezing to death when they had to perform there.

  HMI globes are used in fixtures closely resembling the tungsten sources, like Fresnels, open-face instruments, and PARs. Their great advantages of providing daylight and being very power-efficient are obvious, but many cinematographers have problems with their way of lighting human skin.

  Richard Crudo, ASC

  Personally I’m not a great fan of HMIs at all. To my eye, they seem to make people look a little waxy. They have an odd effect on most complexions and no matter what I’ve
tried to fix the problem, they never seem right to me. I try to avoid using them whenever possible.

  ELLIPSOIDAL REFLECTOR SPOTLIGHTS

  The lighting instrument that uses a lens but represents a design very different from the Fresnel is the ellipsoidal reflector spotlight. It casts a sharp-edged pattern that can be shaped by irises or shutters or by inserting a cutout pattern. This type of light, known as Leko, was traditionally used mostly in theatrical lighting practice. Its modern version developed by Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc. (ETC), called Source Four, is making a stellar career in cinematographic lighting.