Kubrick & natural lighting

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bressonftw

New member
I was wondering what you guys think of trying to use natural light as most as possible, as for instance, Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of. Not all of his shots are purely natural (meaning coming from realistic light / bulb sources /lamps in room as well as daylight), and he got to built sets in which he probably made a very well lighting plan, to get the whole room lit, and realistically. For instance, in The Shining Documentary, there is a shot with Jack Nicholson hanging above the camera, talking to Wendy on the other side of the door, his face was lit with just a small bulb. And, as can be seen in The Kubrick Archive book, there is a picture on set where in a nightscene, they used like 3 china balls with a blue filter. Aren't these all like inspiring low-budget solutions to lighting (granted that you've got a fast lens), or am I being naive here? I plan on getting a set of lightbulbs and lamps to place in different places in different sets, and using mirrors and other reflectors for daylight. Do you guys have experience with this? What are the drawbacks?
 
Natural light is wonderful

I think the first drawback is - I guess - the DR (dynamic range) of your digital camera

To me the first call of lighting is to control DR

(with film I guess the first call of lighting was to get enough light for an image to read on slow stock)

The next problem with natural lighting is continuity - sun moving going in/out

Then of course there is lighting for design - thats suggesting the Devil lives in a room with red lights .. or whatever

I think there mastery of natural light is a critical part of cinematography .. and the most enjoyable and rewarding

IMO
 
Worked with Bob Primes ASC a long time ago and I was amazed how little he lit things. When he did throw a light up, it would literally just be one light, and well...it looked fantastic.

Problem is what he does with one light it would take most of us 5, it takes a long time to figure out how to perfectly your gear and when to not do anything at all. Hopefully we'll all get there one day.
 
Ive treaded this Kubrick water before; read tons of interviews and looked closely at his work:

keep in mind:

-He sometimes lit high key, which alot of us try to avoid since w'ere shooting video.
-He had awesome sets and shot on film, so even if relatively flatly lit, it still looked great
-He used saturated blue for night. I love that look, some see it as phony-looking and dated.
-He had big money to build lighting into the sets:
the wall of bajillion christmas lights in Eyes Wide Shut
the Korova milk bar sculptures
the light on the bar in The Shining hitting Jack menacingly from below
- The on-camera light sources he often used might blow out in an unattractive way on the more limited DR of video. They are easier to do in film.

there's lessons in his work obviously, but most of us can't do (exactly) what he did.
 
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