ARTISTIC versus TECHNICAL. compromise

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PIMP

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Been wanting to post this for a while

Since I have gotten the HVX200 I have been extremely happy with it. The picture quality is incredible. However I have had trouble dealing with some of the compromises that come with working with the camera. Specifically the lighting aspect of it. I realized before I purchased the camera that it was light hungry. What I didnt realize was that sometimes I would have sacrafice creative lighting. I am a huge fan of film noir type lighting, where people are lit with half light and in shadow. And as many of you know, the HVX200 does not like darkness. Noise and compression are extremely distracting. I would like to know what you all think with regards to this sacrafice.

And maybe you can shed some light into something someone from this site told me a while back. You can over light and darken it in post. Is this possible and how is it done?

thanks
 
Noir is totally doable, you just need higher contrast lighting. Bright, hard lighting will make the shadows much blacker, especially after darkening the image overall to bring down the bright areas (if you're into that kind of thing). Lighting darkness takes more light than you might think, you have to create the impression of darkness--not actual darkness, because then what is the audience going to look at? Don't get me wrong, brief periods of pitch black can look really good. The best example that I can think of would be Blade 2, down in the sewer running under the grates. Snatch and possibly Red Dwarf are other examples.
 
The original film noir came from lighting sets with massive arc lights. The "look" has nothing to do with minimal light. It is quality of light, lighting design and exposure control.
 
When you say bight hard lighting. Do you mean over lighting, as an example my actor. And then darkening it in post? Or crushing the blacks in the camera?

Noir is totally doable, you just need higher contrast lighting. Bright, hard lighting will make the shadows much blacker, especially after darkening the image overall to bring down the bright areas (if you're into that kind of thing). Lighting darkness takes more light than you might think, you have to create the impression of darkness--not actual darkness, because then what is the audience going to look at? Don't get me wrong, brief periods of pitch black can look really good. The best example that I can think of would be Blade 2, down in the sewer running under the grates. Snatch and possibly Red Dwarf are other examples.
 
Not sure what you mean by "overlighting". It sounds like you mean over exposure with a fix in post. Not a good idea if you lose the detail by blowing it out.
 
yes, noir is totally doable. first do you have barry's book or dvd? it wil give several ways to control the image a lot better ( helped me out alot ), and secondly a good way to do those high contract noir looks for light hungry cameras is light the subject as much as possible without blowing him / her / it out and light the background well too, just not as much as the subject and then bring it all down in post.
 
I do own both the book and dvd. When you say bring it down in post do you mean in regards to gamma or brightness levels?
 
I believe what Happy was referring to is light ratios. In order to get a noirish look you are shooting what is referred to as low key lighting. A term which i always found somewhat confusing since it means you are going to have a high key to fill ratio (you want your key light to be many times brighter than your fill light) while high key refers to just the opposite (a scene with a low contrast ratio). Personally I always thought the terms should have been switched around.

For noir films they often used very basic 3 point lighting. With a key, a fill, and a rim or hair light. Now in the 1940s where probably shooting ISO 25 film...indoors...if not lower (i'm not really up on my historical stocks) so they probably had more light in their fill side than you'd use to light an entire room with an HVX.

You can get the noir look in an HVX200, hell if you got the right lights and knowledge you can get that look in any camera.

As mentioned in the thread the simplest way to increase your contrast ratio is to throw more light into the scene. But not just adding light, you must be able to control your light.

First of all light placement is very important. Avoid frontal lights (unless you're shooting a makeup commercial), you want your key to be anywhere from 45 to 90 degrees in relation to your subject and the camera. Where exactly you put it is up to you but remember to always think about where you are placing the shadows. For a noir look you might want your subject's eye in the fill side to be in full shadow, but that might not be the best way to light your leading lady...even in a noir film.

Now you must think about light quality. What i mean by this is very simple: the softer the quality of the light the more diffused and softer the look. You will not get deep rich shadows. For low key lighting you want a very hard light. What i mean by this is simple: Stand outside at noon on a clear day and look at your shadow. Notice how defined it is? That is because in relationship to the subject (you) your key light (the sun) is very small (perceptionally). That is you can squint at the sun and block it out with your finger. Well that is in a general way the definition of a hard light:
The quality of light changes based on the relationship between the source and the subject.

Simply put :
large source of light in relationship to what youre lighting= very soft and diffused shadows, harder to control spill. (IE an overcast day, you cant even see your shadow in the street!)
small source of light in relationship to what you're lighting = very hard shadows, very defined, it is much easier to control spill since there is less scattering of the light. (IE a small flashlight in a totaly dark room will create very defined shadows).

I think that perhaps its controlling your light that might be your problem. Here are some tips that you may find useful in any lighting situation:
(I dont really know your level of expertise in lighting so please forgive me if these tips are a bit too basic.)

Use PARs, Open face lights, Fresnels or other types of direct lights for your keys in order to control spill and create a harder key with more defined shadows.

Control your spill, avoid fluorescents, reflectors, softboxes, or other kinds of lights that are very diffused and therefore are harder to control. Consider using things like Blackwrap (basically black aluminum foil) or simply a bolt of thick matte black cloth to create "negative fill" (place it on the fill side and it will absorb, rather than reflect your key and will help increase your ratio.

Think of your set, clothes, and resources. You can have a film noir look in a white room with a blonde in a white dress, its just going to take a lot more grip and lighting equipment to do properly. Just be aware of your set, white ceilings and white walls will make it much harder to control spill.

Lighting is all about controlling the light.

Ideally for a fiction film you'd have a small lighting and grip truck to help you create your vision, but we know thats hardly ever the case in this new world of filmmaking, but at least we have technology (to the rescue!). Don't worry if you can't crush your blacks completely in-camera, I would advice against overexposing to the point of detail loss. Instead I would shoot so that I have a decent ratio (Even if in camera i can still see everything in the shadows!) so long as there is good highlight detail, and the light quality is correct (this is important AKA even if you can only achieve a 2:1 ratio or less, so long as your shadows are hard and defined) you can always play with the levels in post to increase contrast and drop out your shadow detail.

You can get rid of detail in post, but you can't add detail! Nor can you change the quality of the light. If the shadows are soft and not well defined, they'll just be darker soft shadows in post.


Ok i think thats enough typing for the day, i hope this post helps a bit!

Daniel Colmenares
 
Wow Danny thanks a lot. That helped me a lot. Incredibly informative thanks for taking the time to post that.
 
No problem guys, it is always a pleasure to help out fellow shooters. If you have any more lighting related questions dont hesitate to PM me or try the lighting forum, they might be able to give you some tips to get the most out of the HVX.

I haven't shot too much with my HVX yet so I dont have any HVX specific tips, other than dont rely on the viewfinder, I think it tends to sometimes exaggerate noise, specially in the blacks, that wont show up once you bring it into post.

Also White/Black foam board can be your best friend in tight lighting situations when you have limited lighting equipment and need to control your ratio for close ups. I swear by negative fill, it is an aspect of lighting that I think can sometimes go untaught in many film programs/cinematography books that can take your project to the next level.

Once you have your scene lit, start turning off lights individually, see what they are doing. I started doing this and began to surprise myself with how many unnecessary I was bringing to a scene. Sometimes just a key and a fill or a key and a rim are all that is needed.
 
We did a bunch of lowlight stuff onmy film, Farheight High The Sci-Fi Movie Musical, and I think overall it came out pretty good. We used a number of different tricks. These included overlighting and using the ND filter to compensate, and also placing bright lights low to create hard shadows on the walls. We were just shooting a scene last night that we used this effect on, and it came out really well. The real trick is to have the actors moving in and out of light, certain characters need shadows on their faces, etc. You have to play around with it in every scene to get it to work right, and sometimes it's not appropriate.

We were in no way trying to make a noir film, however we definetly used some noir elements in certain scenes. Check out our trailer at www.farheight.com to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.
 
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