How do you know what to use?

[DVX100Shooter]

There was a Hip Hop Music Video being shot tonight here in Philadelphia (Rapper BEANIE SEIGEL) and I sat there on the corner in front of the house they were shooting in watching all the grips hang these huge 18,000 watt ARRI lights and they had C stands all over the place and huge scrims, etc.

The grips looked too busy for me to go up and start asking questions. I think they were preparing to shoot a scene before the sun went down. Anyway, they had 3 big grip trucks.

How does one, or a Lighting director know how much light and exactly what like he/she is going to need?

Being as though, I will be doing most of my own set ups, I try to learn any way I can.

By the way they had a huge generator they were using to power all the lights and you could barely hear the thing running! They were shooting on location in a middle/upper class neighborhood.

 

[J_Barnes]

Re: How do you know what to use?

You learn through experience. There's a certain amount of science in it of course, but the speedy decision that move a lighting crew come with experience.

Anyone with an American Cinematographer Manual could begin to get a good assumption of how much light they'd need for any given shot in terms of straight lumens, and then a solid understanding of individual lights will tell you what instruments are needed to achieve that level of exposure.

As far as knowing exactly how much light you need, that's determined by the cinematographer.

If you're the cinematographer, that's determined by your capture medium and lens settings. If you're shooting on say...a 500 ASA film stock and you want your lens to be at an F/4 at 24 fps with a 170 degree shutter...you can know definitively that you will need 40 footcandles to achieve proper exposure.

If you're inexperienced, then your working method will likely rely on setting up a light and measuring it with a light meter until you've placed the instrument where it casts the right amount (and the right quality) of lumens on your subject. If you're more experienced, you'll go to lights you've used before in similar situations and adjust them accordingly.

Knowing what light to pick comes from experience. It's like knowing what note to play in a solo, you can have a theoretical understanding of a musical scale, but your ability to pick the right notes comes out of experience rather then knowledge.

Lighting for video tends to be different because a lot of people seem to set up the light and adjust the camera to fit the lighting setup they've created.

You can aproach video in the same way you would aproach film, by lighting to a specific ASA (I've heard 640 batted around as a standard for the DVX), but in general, the way you use your camera will generally define the way you learn to light.