Talk me through your methods

iamWZA

iamWZA

Active member
Let me put you in this position...

You've found your perfect location for a scene in your film. You've got your actors and you know roughly what shots you want to get. Where do you start as far as lighting is concerned?
Do you assess what impact the existing lights at the location have, and base your additional light choices on that? Or do you start with lighting your actors and think about practicals afterwards? Do you use entirely additional lights?
I'm interested to hear how you go about doing this.

Any insight welcome!
 
I usually start by setting up the "base light". Idk if that's a term ppl use but what I mean is getting everything in frame to be at least somewhat lit. These will be my darkest areas in the scene. From there I decide on highlights or possibly cutting light in the background/foreground. Trying to create depth in the scene before I get actors in there. Once that's ready I have a stand in come in and all I have to do is add enough highlights, a lot of times a nice backlight and soft fill just to keep the actor visible.

Also keep in mind what is the source of light before starting!

So when you say assessing impact of lights on set already, that could be considered part of or complete "base light" that I referred to. I'm not a pro or anything, but this works for me
 
I love practicals, mainly because they're so practical. I try to find out if there are any that works with the scene first, because that's a time saver (and everybody on-set loves these). Next I block out any unwanted light (Actually, I might do this first). Then I go on to lighting the rest of the background before grabbing a stand-in to light for the actors. Once that's done I take a step back and look at the entirety and make any necessary tweaks. Finally I request the actors to make sure the lighting I did with my stand-in actually works, and usually there's an eye-light that can be tweaked a little, and if the skin tone of the stand-in and the actors differs quite a bit I'll adjust for this.

That's a very rough take on it. The way you approach lighting can be so different based on the nature of the scene, your equipment and the location you're on.
 
1) Block 2) Light 3) Shoot is the "preferred" method... but of course the realities of production always take precedence. Ideally, I would start with a totally dark room, watch the rehearsal and the blocking, and then add lights one by one where I wanted them. That's not always practical, unfortunately, so sometimes you just have to take a look through the viewfinder/lcd/use your lightmeter/whatever, and say "Yeah, the lighting in here is pretty good, we just need some extra lights back there to punch it up."

When you start getting experienced, you can walk into a room and just know (to an extent) what needs to be done. "We'll be able to use the house lights, but we'll need to replace the bulbs over there with 100watts, and this bulb will need to be a 300watt, let's see if we can gel those flourescents in the corner and add some extra 150watt lights underneath them" etc. If the option/time is available, I'll almost always bring in a few extra lights for punch.
 
I'd agree with the block/light/shoot method. Once you know where the actors will be in a given setting, you can think about framing, lens choices, camera movement, and then - lighting. Lens choice and framing and blocking will all dictate what lighting you can employ, so I'd start there.

As for "motivation" of added lighting, that depends on what's there or not there to begin with of course. I like to have motivated lighting, but it's not always possible and then you're trying to just not have the lighting be self-evident in most cases. The best example of this are scenes in darkness. It's always interesting to me the various methods used to light a "darkness" scene.

When working with ambient light (not practicals, but light from the sun), it can prove to be inconsistent and will change as the sun/clouds move, so it's most often the safest approach to try and use your own lighting that you know will remain consistent (if you can).

I often shoot in office spaces which have overhead fluorescent fixtures everywhere and I've found this to be pretty sufficient if only adding a silver bounce for a frontal angle of light or one similar fixture at a high frontal placement.
 
Of course as many have mentioned it all depends on the situation, but my general approach (after blocking, and when time is on my side) is:

1) Wherever practical, flag off/block out/turn off existing, undesirable light sources - this may be windows, overhead fluorescents, etc.
2) Light the talent (using a stand-in if needed) - they are the most important thing in the scene, hence the most important thing to light well.
3) Light the background to suit. This can be done with practicals, off-camera lights, or even re-introducing some of the light that I flagged off in step 1. Whatever achieves the desired result.
4) Tweak everything.

It is rare that I actually follow this process exactly as there are often extenuating circumstances that make it more practical to do certain specific tasks first, but keeping that process in mind helps me think through the best approach to each situation.

Personally I don't like to start with the background as I want to know I have the most important aspects of the setup right before I move on. In the case where talent shows up early, especially an executive or VIP who is not accustomed to waiting, I would rather be scrambling to get the background lit than have a nice background and be throwing something together to light the talent. With experience though I've become pretty good at getting people to chill out while I get things finalized, rather than getting flustered and rushing.

Another reason I tend to light the talent first is I like to set up my highlights first, expose for that and then lighten/darken the shadows until I get the contrast I'm looking for. Since the faces(s) of the talent are generally the most important objects to have a controlled exposure on, this gives me a good reference point for setting up the background.

But like I said, it's all circumstantial and I can go both ways.
 
I SUCK SUCK SUCK at lighting.
All the techniques and approaches Ive read about and experimented/tested with and tried and failed with all clash in my head like a giant mish mash and leave me confounded and confused.

so for now I invented my own mini lighting theory/approach, and will build on it bit by bit as I get better and make more movies:

It's called:
SOFT SIDE LIGHT.
SOFT= somewhat natural
SIDE= gives you shadows for depth and mood.
So....Set up a soft source(s) to the side of the scene (relative to the camera of course). The exact amount of softness and the exact angle depends on you and what you wanna do.
Pretty much done.
Then, of you have the space/equipment/time/skills/need, you can choose to:
- add another soft light to FILL in the shadows.
-motivate the light by making it emulate a real world source
- throw a backlight/kicker on the subject to create depth
- turn practicals on to motivate the light and/or create white/hotspots in the frame for more tonal contrast.
-flag light off the background for depth
-paint the background with a light hooked up with a gel or cookie

That's how Ill be thinking about things. Anything else makes my head hurt.
 
I think it really depends on your location, your set.

If you're up on the 25th floor in a tiny cramped room, you're going to have much more limited ways of lighting than if you built the same room as a set on a soundstage.

I tend to go through the script with the Director and discuss the scenes, the themes, the kinds of lighting and decide the mood we want to set. I work from there. When I get onto a set, my first thoughts are the mood I want to set (ie; mysterious, happy, gloomy, miserable etc.) and the time of day (ie; is it late afternoon? middle of the night? dusk? early morning?).

From there, it depends on the set, the scene and the shot. Sometimes I like to light the background, block actors and then light the actors. Other times I like to block the whole scene, and then light the whole thing.
Often, I set a base with the knowledge of what happens in the script and then see the blocking and light from there. Often, with all the Pre-Pro I've done with the Director, I know the areas that I'll need to light as a base, and then once I see the blocking I decide on what's going to be the key for the actor(s) and work from there. But it also quite often depends on the scene I'm lighting.

I also tend to work very closely with the Production Designer in Pre. Sometimes I'll request certain practicals that will go with the scene.
 
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