Film Lighting

by Kris Malkiewicz

  The collaborative effort, often under adverse conditions, creates intense relationships among crew members. In a very natural way the cinematographer often becomes the nucleus of this instant family, with crew members looking to his or her leadership.

  The cinematographer’s second in command in the area of lighting is the gaffer, also referred to as the chief set lighting electrician. The gaffer is not only the chief electrician but also a close collaborator with the cinematographer in shaping the look of the film.

  Colin Campbell, gaffer

  I don’t think that the terms chief set lighting electrician and gaffer really describe what we do. Our job is to coordinate the lighting for the cameraman, to do as much of the prep work and prelighting as possible, so that when he gives his attention to that setup, we have the time to make that shot as good as he has the vision to make it. That’s really what my job is. Of course experience helps. There may be a better, quicker, or easier way to do a given task. Time is the major thing I can give the cameraman.

  James Crabe, ASC

  I worked with several gaffers who had decidedly distinctive styles. You often learn from the people that are working for you. I worked with Aggie Aguilar quite often. He works a lot with those soft lights with the egg crate grid and then he has that honeycomb that he puts on lamps, so you get the directionality of light and you are able to control the soft light.

  Gaffer Richmond (“Aggie”) Aguilar feels that the cameraman and the gaffer work as a team. With today’s complicated camera movements occupying the cinematographer’s attention, lighting becomes too much work for one person. The gaffer communicates with the operator as well, regarding the frame lines of the shot. The best boy (male or female), who is next in line on the electrical team, runs the crew, takes care of equipment, and makes the power connections. Most often cameramen leave it to the gaffer to decide on the particular lighting instruments to be used.

  Harris Savides, ASC

  I like to hire people who know more than I do. I certainly benefit from their experience. Sometimes I will be very specific with the crew, and there are times when I will bounce ideas off them in hopes that we can come up with the best solution to a problem.

  From the gaffers’ point of view, cooperation with a director of photography (DP) also differs with various personalities and ways of working involved.

  Michael Bauman, gaffer

  How do you start the process of working with a DP? Every DP has his own unique creative process; I see my role as getting the vision that’s in his or her head into the camera as seamlessly as possible. It begins with conversations about what kind of story is being told. Sometimes you talk about various visual references; it could be other movies, photos, paintings. We also talk about contrast, color, methods for creating separation and depth. The discussion often goes into set construction and dressing with the production designer. Those conversations can branch into talks about practical lighting and dressing with the set decorator and lead man (the foreman of the sets crew). But the beginning of the prep period in a movie is all about discussing the look and feel of the project and the ways to create it.

  Some DPs prefer a gaffer who is a facilitator and want you just to execute exactly what they have in their head. Some want a collaborative working environment with more input from the gaffer. Sometimes the collaboration is such that you don’t need much conversation about light. We’ll just talk about how it will look. If you work together many times, you just develop similar taste. For me, one of the challenges at the beginning of a new relationship with a cinematographer is discovering what the process is and what my role is in it, to make it work as efficiently as possible.

  Robert Jason, gaffer

  I have worked with some cameramen that were very exacting about what light they wanted to use before even starting the film, and this was the only thing that they wanted to use; I felt that it was a mistake. It was like taking this one thing and trying to make it work for everything. And I think that it is just not the wisest decision; you have to know what effect you want and then understand what tool gives you that effect within the time and space limitation that you have.

  It is most difficult to work with a cameraman that is very insistent on using very, very specific lights for a wrong purpose. You are forced into this position of knowing that there is a simpler, faster, and better way to do it while you are trying to cram in the wrong unit. It is like putting a round peg in a square hole, but it is your job to service the cameraman. I think every gaffer will tell you that that is the most difficult situation. If you and the cameraman can sit down before shooting starts and you are on the same page as to what the movie is about and what it should look like, then it should go quite easily, because if you can visualize the set in your head exactly the way you want it to look, then it is quite obvious where the light should be and what light units you should use.

  When the gaffer and his electricians are setting the lights, the chief grip with his crew is responsible for handling all the reflective boards and the diffusion materials used in front of the lamps. They also set all the black flags and teasers to control the light spread.

  James Crabe, ASC

  It takes a new kind of grip nowadays. In the old days the grip was always there with a C-stand and a little flag, but when you deal with large sources, you have to be quite ingenious in stringing up black cloth to keep light out of the lens.

  A person who should become the cinematographer’s close ally is the script supervisor. Conrad Hall confesses that he “attacks each day with absolutely no foreknowledge of what he is going to do.” He knows the script but asks the script supervisor to read the scenes for a given day, to hear it coming from somebody else. Often this reading gives him an idea. Hall also believes that the script supervisor is his ally when it comes to matching the shots.

  Conrad Hall, ASC

  It is very important to pay attention to matching, and it is one of the areas where you work most closely with a script supervisor. You have to get together beforehand and come up with a system by which to remember weeks later what you did weeks before so that you can reproduce it. You make notes on your lighting; you make notes that a given scene that was incomplete was shot at a certain time of day, what type of light there was, what kind of weather. When you are dealing with close-ups, there are means to reproduce the atmosphere, but with a large scope, only nature can reproduce atmosphere effectively and you have to let the production department know if the shot cannot be reproduced at a given time.

  The problem of matching constitutes the major difference between still photography and film. It is one of the most difficult and demanding tasks for the cinematographer: matching from shot to shot and from scene to scene. It requires the ability to constantly think in terms of three consecutive shots: the one we are lighting, the one before it, and the one after it. Of course, the final editing will not necessarily follow the same order and this has to be taken into consideration as well. Within one shot, lighting balance is the chief objective.

  Filmmaking is a collaborative art. The members of the crew contribute their skills to translate the story from the script onto the screen. But no one should forget that movies are a make-believe world, while the safety of the crew is real and of paramount importance.

  Haskell Wexler, ASC

  The problem of the health and safety of the crew as it relates to the quality of the image is an important issue for filmmakers to address. There is a tendency among some new filmmakers to forget that we are indeed in a make-believe business, that we are creating dreams and not dealing in true reality. Some directors think that they will reach some pinnacle of honesty if indeed they hit an actor with a real hunk of wood and bruise him. And that psychology can lead to putting a camera in a risky place. If the camera and the camera crew are lying on the ground in front of a dangerously skidding automobile, some directors believe that the image is going to be that much more exciting, that the adrenaline from the camera crew will somehow spread it
self onto the emulsion of the film and make a better shot for the director. Some directors feel that they are gods and forget that they are engaged in making theater, that they are engaged in making drama, that they are making images which in a manner are used to sell Coca-Cola and automobiles, and that to risk the crew members’ lives under those conditions is folly. And that is why I see the use of toxic smoke as endangering people’s lives—not as immediately as being run over by a car or dropped out of a helicopter, but still, it hurts their health. I think that these are moral, ethical issues which people who are making films should think about.

  A cinematographer on the job is engaged in a complex venture involving several key figures, usually people with well-developed egos. It is therefore small wonder that one of the talents often mentioned as absolutely necessary for a cinematographer to have is the ability to get along with other people. Without this quality, even an otherwise brilliant cinematographer can, and will, remain unemployable.

  Chapter Two

  Lighting Equipment

  Today there are enough types of lighting equipment available to fill volumes. We will try to cover the most important. One should pay particular attention to the practical working characteristics of each light, namely, the quality of the light produced by the given instrument and its physical capabilities in the way of mounting, controlling beam size, and so on.

  Types of Light Sources

  The first thing to understand about the lighting instrument (also referred to as the fixture or luminaire) is the type of light source it employs. The four principal sources used in film lighting are the tungsten incandescent globes, the enclosed arc globes (HMI), the fluorescent tubes, and the LED sources.

  TUNGSTEN LIGHTS

  The first group takes its name from the tungsten filament made incandescent by electric current. Tungsten globes of the quartz halogen type are the ones mostly used in film lighting. They are generally known as quartz lamps or tungsten halogen lights. They retain a steady color temperature of 3200K and are smaller than the household-type incandescent. Their life may exceed 500 hours. Unfortunately, when compared with other types of light sources, tungsten bulbs produce much heat. A quartz bulb should never be touched with bare fingers, as the acids of the skin weaken the quartz glass. Any fingerprints should be removed immediately with alcohol.

  Tungsten globes come in a wide range of power designations and are used extensively both in the Fresnel and in the open-face fixtures.

  HMI LIGHTS

  Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide (HMI) globes represent the advanced concept in daylight-type lighting technology. Basically an HMI is a mercury arc between tungsten electrodes sealed in a glass bulb. The HMI housing also holds a striker unit to ignite the HMI arc. The initial jump of the arc takes a tremendous amount of power—in the range of 20,000 to 60,000 volts for a one-second surge; because of this, the HMI needs a warm-up time of three minutes. HMI lamps operate on alternating current (AC) only. Between the AC power supply and the HMI light a ballast unit is required. Ballast provides the initial high voltage required to fire an arc and subsequently acts as a current limiting device, maintaining steady voltage.

  Ralph Woolsey, ASC

  One of the characteristics of an HMI lamp is that when its voltage increases, the color temperature decreases, and vice versa. When public power supplies drop under peak loads, the HMI won’t suffer any losses, but on the contrary, its light will become more blue. However, there is a constant drop in color temperature during the life of an HMI globe at the approximate rate of 1 kelvin per hour of burning. And there may be a significant difference among new HMI globes, some having much higher color temperatures than specified. It is a good routine to check all important key lights where consistency is essential, using a color meter, and to label them regarding filters required for correction to a standard. An old HMI can be down to 4800K as opposed to a brand-new one, which can be sometimes close to 6000K. We usually correct them all to about 5200K, using regular light-balancing materials.

  FLUORESCENT LIGHTS

  Most of the industrial fluorescent tubes, such as are used in supermarkets, offices, and airports, represent the light source with a broken spectrum, where the electrified gas inside a fluorescent tube emits only a few distinctive wavelengths. This light is rich in green but deficient in red. Being an AC gas discharge lamp, a fluorescent has a fluctuating light output. In countries with 60 Hz current, it pulsates 120 times a second. These peculiar characteristics make it somewhat of a headache when filming in color.

  Kino Flo VistaBeam

  (courtesy of Kino Flo Inc.)

  Kino Flo Flathead 80

  (courtesy of Kino Flo Inc.)

  This situation was much improved when in 1987 gaffer Frieder Hochheim and his best boy Gary Swink designed a new, high-output fluorescent light. They introduced a high-frequency ballast which ran at 25 kHz, eliminating the possibility of a flicker. New tubes were developed to produce light that closely imitates either day or tungsten light with a more continuous spectrum.

  These innovations gave a start to their company, Kino Flo, which has revolutionized film lighting in the last decades.

  Robert Elswit, ASC

  The use of balloons and of Kino Flos has really changed what you can do, where you can be, and how you can function. I used all of them really successfully. I first became aware of a really marvelous creative use of Kino Flos to do realistic lighting while watching the French film The Widow of Saint-Pierre, shot in Nova Scotia by Eduardo Serra. The windows were the source for all the light, and yet I was looking at all the fill when people were facing away from the windows, and I realized that he was using Kino Flos. That was the only way you could do it. I started using it more and more, as this is a wonderful way of getting soft, ambient fill. It should feel like an ambient daylight bouncing around the face.

  Kino Flo Blanket-Lite

  (courtesy of Kino Flo Inc.)

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  Fluorescent lights are energy-efficient and thus put out a decent amount of light using less power than tungsten units, plus they put out less heat, which keeps a set more comfortable. They are obviously useful for matching and augmenting practical fluorescent fixtures within the scene, but they also create a nice soft light with a minimal amount of grip support needed. And they are easily switched from tungsten to daylight-balanced tubes, or to standard cool white, warm white, etc., as needed. The daylight tubes are a good complement to HMI lighting. I find the fluorescent tubes to still have a slightly different character and feeling compared to tungsten units, so I am less likely to have an actor move from a fluorescent key light to a tungsten one if they are all supposed to seem like they are coming from the same type of source (i.e., household tungsten practicals). In those cases, I key only with fluorescent or only with tungsten. However, I don’t have any concerns about mixing tungsten and fluorescents for fill, back, or edge lights.

  Kino Flo 4Bank

  (courtesty of Kino Flo Inc.)

  Len Levine, gaffer

  Kino Flo 8 × 4 banks are my favorite lights because they are soft, they wrap, and they are easy to move around. VistaBeams I love; I have lots of those. In a small VistaBeam (Vista 300), the color is just much, much better than in the Diva. I like the Flathead 80 so I can go vertical and I can shove them into small spaces. I do love Image 80 for the DMX. I love the DMX. We had a nighttime exterior on stage with a 24-foot ceiling. The set was built up to 24 feet. We needed the nighttime ambience, so we mixed daytime and tungsten globes in the Image 80s, with diffusion, all across the center of the set. We could adjust the blue by just mixing the tungsten and daylight tubes on the board. So I could change it and nobody had to go up there. It was cheap and it was cool, because if the lights were at 23 ft. 8 in., the sprinklers were at 24 ft. 5 in. So if we had anything hotter and heavier, we would have had to pump massive air conditioning into the stage.

  Kino Flo BarFly 200 and 100

  (courtesy of Kino Flo Inc.)

  Robert Bau
mgartner, cinematographer and gaffer

  Kino Flos are a great product and they are so adaptable. I don’t use Diva as much. I recently have been introduced to the ParaBeams and VistaBeams. I particularly like the ParaBeams because of their size and output and their fantastic honeycomb egg crates. I became a fan of them after working with Dante Spinotti. The problem I have with the Diva bulbs is their color. They become very magenta. They have good orange and blue rendition, but when you are dimming, they go magenta very quickly. The T12 tube is the size bulb most people are familiar with—it’s found in everyday office fixtures and Kino Flo fixtures—but the T8 tubes are now the standard. It is the thinner bulb with higher output, and makers of film lighting have gravitated to designing and building fixtures that use them. Dave Devlin has used them for great effect in the Lumapanels, which he designed. With fluorescent it is not so much the orange and blue spectrum but the magenta and cyan that is always the problem. When you’re working with them on a film set, be they Kino Flos, existing fixtures, or something custom made, there is a tendency to suffocate them with gels in an effort to control, soften, or change the color and it does not give the bulbs any room to breathe. As a result they overheat and that leads to a color shift toward blue and green. I found that the biggest challenge to working with fluorescent lighting is control. Often you need to use egg crates, black wrap, diffusion, flags, and nets in order to control, and in the end you are smothering them. Though done properly and with skill, Kino Flos are an invaluable tool in film lighting.