Cinematography of The Lord of the Rings

NextWaveG

Well-known member
We had a LOTR marathon over the weekend which always causes me to end up buying more lighting gear...(spent only $500 this time:happy:) I really wish in all the great BTS content they had more on lighting but Blu ray on my 135" screen allows me to see a lot of detail in the eyes.

For most of the close ups it looks like the are using a large source through diffusion as the key along with a thin broad light as fill on the opposing side (possibly a Kino). In shots where there are three visible sources in the eyes, I would guess that is a distant light for room fill.

fellowship053.jpg

My curiosity is how the lighting was done on the mediums and wides. In this shot we see a relatively small location with a distant key and minimal spill on the set.



What do you think they might have used to key this?
 

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You can do a lot of lighting magic with a few Dedo lights - love the precision and versatility of those little guys.


Frank
 
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You can do a lot of lighting magic with a few Dedo lights - love the precision and versatility of those little guys.


Frank

Yep, I use them a lot. Great for location interviews in dark/dim rooms, though not enough power for lighting large sets or if fighting daylight. I think the OP and Shooter are right about the lighting set-up on these shots - looks like a traditional set-up to me.
 
Fresnels through a 12 x 12 silk. Possibly a 6K. Hard, but soft and with less fall-off than a low powered light.

Fresnels through a weak diffuser create a light source that has characteristics of both soft and hard light, where the light becomes a mixture of collimated "directional" light ( from the fresnel ) and un-collimated "random" light ( from the diffuser ).

Back in 80's I used to achieve the same effect with photo soft-boxes by removing the inner-diffuser, so that your soft-box has a definite "hot-spot" in the center of it, and will produce qualities of both hard and soft light at the same time. ( great for people and non-reflective objects )
 
I am seeing many image 85's and other kinos around.
And the dining table is lit by many Par 64's with some kind of diffusion.
 
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