critique some grabs

Steve Laramie

Steve Laramie

Veteran
These are some grabs from a documentary I just got done DPing. Just wanted to get some DVXuser criticism on the lighting. Remember these are screen grabs so their may be some white around edges.

Keep in mind these are all filmmakers or casting agents/lawyers so I lit to their drama or type of work.

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I'm ot too crazy about the backlight on the first one. It looks like he has a lightbulb attached to the back of his head.

And the reflections of the records in the window on the second one are just a tad distracting.

Other than that, looks nice.
 
Yeah I agree with the backlight. I went a bit to far. And the guy refused to move the records and I didnt have a polorizer.
 
My favorite is #3 as well, but I don't like the shadow from the head on his chest. One more small fill might work. Maybe not. I am not good at lightning yet, your grabs give great ideas for my own experimenting. Thanks.
 
I think they all look fine... One thing that I keep in mind when shooting non-actors is that they loose patience/focus quickly, so sometimes you subtract a bit from the aesthetics and add to the performance/spontaneity of the subject... My favorite still is the first. I hate hate hate traditional three point lighting.
 
I'm not really a fan of the backlit one. I think if you wanted to do something like that you should have just brought it around a bit so it's more like the last one. But just be careful about hitting the nose with light...I don't know, I always find that's what makes kickers like that a little weird. It might have even been nice to do side lighting on him along with that kicker, then put some negative in there to make that one side of his face go as dark as you could get it. Maybe even blue up the kicker a little bit to make things a bit colder. I feel like all of these have a warm glow to them and I don't know if it's the most appropriate.

The guy with the window next to him, I feel like he should be keyed from the window side, but he's getting this big tungsten push from the opposite side. If you didn't have any CTB, you should just trying using mirrors, shineyboards and bounce to light your subject. Just because otherwise you end up with that weird looking mix.

I do like how #3 looks. Nice.

Just be concious of the light levels on peoples faces. The lower they go, the more red and ucky looking it's going to go. I usually try and hit around 40-55 on the HVX's spot meter.
 
For what it's worth.
grab 1: As already mentioned, the backlight is too hot. Also, I prefer a more even rim from the top of the head (providing the subject has hair) and onto the top of the shoulders.
The key light should be higher. The way it is it's casting an unattractive hard shadow from his collar, emphasizing his double chin and creating an unattractive nose shadow.

grab 2: In general, it's too flat. The light from the window is creating a distracting highlight making it very hard to see his eyes/expression. Which brings up the point that it doesn't appear that you have any eyelight in any of the grabs except what happens to occur from the key light. Having good consistant eyelight in interviews is a necessity and in most cases people are way too fidgety to rely on your keylight for eyelight.
I know, I know, these cramped office/conference rooms with a wall of windows are a nightmare to shoot in.

grab 3: Add eyelight and it's beautiful. The height of the keylight is creating a good drop shadow under his chin and a nice triangular nose shadow. Pehaps the camera right light could be knocked back a bit, but all in all, good work.

grab 4: The backlight is too hot creating hard shadows on her face from her hair and also racking across her nose and chin. Overall the shadows on her face are not flattering and have no definite shape. They just look messy. Also, the light falling on her body feels too uneven for my taste.

What I like in all the grabs is that you're not afraid of shadows. I personally think that's a big deal.
 
Thanks guys I will keep all this in mind. A couple of you mentioned that an eye light should have been on #3. That director does dark movies and I got pretty creative with the lighting and a little daring but I double checked to make sure the director was cool with how extreme it was and he said go for it. I wanted a mild godfather effect. For #2 We didnt gell the key light. This is because the house lights were all fluorescent and the only way to turn them off is to turn off all the lights in the law firm. So we flagged out the fluorescents and then still had some spillage so we decided if we mixed some tungsten it would take away any green tint.
 
If you wanted to turn some of the flourescents off, all you have to do is get up there and spin them in their sockets. Then you can selectively turn bulbs off. Every office I've shot in could care less if I do this. As long as you put them back and don't break anything. But it looks like you white balanced for 5600, so you ended up mixing daylight, tungsten, and then the flourescents, which seems like it was something closer to daylight, but not quite.

I would have just turned some bulbs off to get rid of the ambience, have him be keyed by the daylight and maybe even put some negative fill in there. Then if your background is looking a little dark in comparison, throw up a tungsten lamp gelled full blue to bring it up a little bit.

Also, try and work your subjects as far away from the background as possible. For the others it doesn't really matter that much, but for the office it could have helped. I don't really know the shape of the office, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.
 
rsbush said:
For what it's worth.
grab 1: As already mentioned, the backlight is too hot. Also, I prefer a more even rim from the top of the head (providing the subject has hair) and onto the top of the shoulders.
The key light should be higher. The way it is it's casting an unattractive hard shadow from his collar, emphasizing his double chin and creating an unattractive nose shadow.

grab 2: In general, it's too flat. The light from the window is creating a distracting highlight making it very hard to see his eyes/expression. Which brings up the point that it doesn't appear that you have any eyelight in any of the grabs except what happens to occur from the key light. Having good consistant eyelight in interviews is a necessity and in most cases people are way too fidgety to rely on your keylight for eyelight.
I know, I know, these cramped office/conference rooms with a wall of windows are a nightmare to shoot in.

grab 3: Add eyelight and it's beautiful. The height of the keylight is creating a good drop shadow under his chin and a nice triangular nose shadow. Pehaps the camera right light could be knocked back a bit, but all in all, good work.

grab 4: The backlight is too hot creating hard shadows on her face from her hair and also racking across her nose and chin. Overall the shadows on her face are not flattering and have no definite shape. They just look messy. Also, the light falling on her body feels too uneven for my taste.

What I like in all the grabs is that you're not afraid of shadows. I personally think that's a big deal.
Click to expand...

I pretty much completely agree with the above. To oversimplify it:

#1 and #2 are basically underkeyed

#3 and #4 could use a touch more background light.

#3 has serious problems with eye area shadowing.

#4 ditto, but not as bad. Not crazy about the "Charlie Rose" (solid black) background.

High contrast is good, just try taking it down (or do I mean up?) a notch or two.

Hope this helps. Thanks for sharing.
 
Ryan this was a run and gun and it wasn't feasible to remove the iron egg crate to un screw fluos. We only had about 15 minutes to setup.
 
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