TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECTIVE LIGHTING
Film directors of photography and video lighting directors work carefully to make settings and actors look good to the camera. To help them achieve the best results, production designers and art directors need to be familiar with some basic lighting methods.
Film Lighting
For a film, the director of photography (DP), after discussing the mood, style, and general look of the photography with the director, shoots tests using various lenses, filters, and film stocks. The DP determines the elements and chooses the type of instruments to use and where they are to be hung and focused. Because film photography generally uses one camera and many changes of angle between takes, the DP directs the relighting of the actors between setups as they move from place to place and between wide shots and close-ups.
Video Lighting
The video lighting director confers with the director and video technicians to provide correct working light levels for dramatic effect and electronic requirements. A video director commonly uses three cameras or more and cuts from camera to camera in real time without stopping to relight each time. The lighting director, then, has to light the actors and set to accommodate different angles without relighting.
Lighting directors commonly use a triangular lighting configuration for the actors: key light, backlight, and fill light.
• Key light—A spotlight, usually a Fresnel-lensed instrument, lights actors from the front or from a slight angle to provide modeling.
• Backlight—Another spotlight directed from the back; this light separates actors from the background.
• Fill light—A broad, scoop, or softlight fills in shadows cast by the key light.
Art director Dena Thomson recalls a disappointing experience with bad lighting:
I designed a set a couple of years ago for a video production set in American Revolutionary times and was most proud of the room where the Continental Congress took place. I did a lot of research and tried to make the set very authentic to the period. A couple of scenes took place at night and the lighting director just totally ignored the fact that the room was supposed to be candlelit! He just poured the light on and that was the end of my set.
Lighting directors Jones and Smith will now demonstrate their ways of using diffuse and directional lighting instruments. Besides having to light the set, they also need to light the actors. Both lighting directors have consulted the director, who has told them where the actors will stand and move, as well as the time of day, which is dusk in this example. Both lighting directors, light meters in hand, stand in the set at the appropriate places, and direct the lighting technicians who hang and focus the lights.
Jones floods the walls and acting areas of our lovingly designed suburban living room set with the required amount of light per square foot, roams the set with his light meter, calls the set lit, and goes to lunch. This approach get Jones and his crew to lunch early and makes the meters in the camera control system register the correct numbers, but causes much complaining from the director and art director. Jones, however, believes that he has done his job.
The Jones Result
When we look at the Jones-lit set, the ceiling of the room appears to have been ripped off, and brilliant shadowless light floods the interior. The script says that the time of day is dusk, and the heroine is expecting her neighbors to drop over to admire her new sofa. Bright light at this time of day makes no sense at all. Besides, after we carefully designed nooks and crannies into this room and have rummaged through junkyards to find terrific old moldings to go around the doors, the carvings are hardly visible in the video picture, and the set walls are as flat as cardboard. The Jones method has destroyed the character and mood of the set, and does not let the audience sense the time of day.
The Smith Method
Enter lighting director Smith. She lights the acting areas using key lights, backlights, and fill lights, but the key lights are softened with frost gels, and the backlight comes from the direction of the picture window. Great. Things are looking up. At least the audience can see that light is coming through the window.
Smith directs some low-angle light at the outside of the front door so that when the neighbors come over and step through the door, they are backlit with what we will perceive to be the lowering rays of the setting sun. Aha! It’s late in the day. Smith also places a metal slide in a spotlight that casts a window-frame shadow on the opposite wall; another clue that the sun is low. To prepare for scenes that are to take place in full daylight, Smith sets the light levels on the backing outside the window somewhat higher than those inside the set. The smart computer-controlled lighting system remembers the two light levels.
Enter: More Motivated Lighting
We have placed some table lamps at decorative and sensible places in the room. Jones treated them as he did every other object in the set: more things to reflect light to make the meters point to the right numbers. Smith replaces the 50-watt bulbs with which the lamps came from the property rental house with 150-watt bulbs. She then connects the lamps to a dimmer circuit so that if the director decides to have our sofa-hostess draw the drapery in front of the picture window when the sun has set, Smith can bring up the intensity of the lamps to put across the idea that night has fallen. Already the room looks as if someone lives in it.
Firmly Ensconsed
We have placed a pair of wall sconces at either side of a painting. Once again, Jones treated them as more things to make the meters bounce so the sconce bulbs cast their own shadows on the wall, which is impossible in real life. Some lighting directors, the minute their eyes land on the wall sconces, direct a small spotlight on each. The light bulbs then cast their own shadows on the wall, which is also impossible in real life.
Having fallen into this trap early in her career, Smith avoids it by hanging spotlights in the grid above and has the light fall at a sharp angle behind the sconces, thereby casting a soft glow on the wall but not on the sconces. We now have candles and bulbs not casting their own shadows on the wall.
Smith turns her attention to the set walls. She has the sensitivity and taste to see that we have spent a lot of time finding interesting moldings to go around the doors. She isn’t going to let them go to waste as Jones did. Using just enough light, which appears to come from sources such as the table lamps and the front window, Smith brings out the three-dimensional qualities of the room’s shapes by casting shadows. However, she does not let the lighting call attention to itself. Smith does not want the lighting or the set to distract the audience’s attention from the dramatic action.
Three Cheers for Smith!
When Smith finishes the lighting, the set looks three-dimensional, the audience will know the time of day, the actors will look good, and our carefully selected set decorations will give the audience a sense of who lives in the house. What more could anyone ask? Answer: a raise for lighting director Smith.
The examples here have shown us how lighting directors can make or break a set’s mood and atmosphere. The same results can happen on location, where we have less control than on a soundstage. Production designers, however, can have some influence by helping choose the most favorable interiors and exteriors.
Art directors’ concern with the mood of lighting on location is the same as for stage work, of course, but flexibility is the key word. Both film and video lighting directors have to light the room from floor-stand mounted lighting instruments because they have no grid in a real room. Also, the light sources have to be cleverly hidden in less space than available on a stage, which calls for much ingenuity from the production designer and art director.
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Now that we have some familiarity with set and lighting methods, let’s meet two important people with whom the art director works: the producer and the director.