Film Lighting

by Kris Malkiewicz

  Soft lights need periodic maintenance to provide the proper color temperature of light.

  Haskell Wexler, ASC

  Most soft lights after a few weeks of use tend to get warmer and lose about 200K. I used to take some aluminum foil, crinkle it up, and put it inside Mole-Richardson soft lights when I wanted a really correct color temperature. The white paint used in these lights is fairly good, but in aging it always goes toward yellow and to the warmer tones. Mixing blue paint with white helps to bring it back to where it should be.

  2K Baby Molepole Zip Softlite

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  A homemade variety of a soft light became known as a softbox light. These lights were designed to create an overhead illumination. They are usually built at the studio according to the specifications of the cinematographer or his gaffer. A typical softbox soft light unit consists of a frame 4 × 4 ft. or larger with a few rows of photoflood bulbs and another frame 14 to 20 inches below the first one, covered with stretched silk, Rosco’s Tough Frost, or other diffusing material. On all four sides of this overhead lamp are hung black velvet skirts that can be rolled up or down to control the light falling on the walls or on the particular areas of the scene. When nook lights are used instead of photoflood bulbs, they point up and are reflected off a white card or bleached muslin stretched on the frame above the lights. Utmost care is required to make coffin lights well ventilated in order to prevent fires.

  The closest manufactured version of this kind of light is the chicken coop, which was a predecessor of the softbox light. It consists of a large inverted box case housing six globes, sometimes with internal silver reflectors covering the filaments from direct view. It provides a high level of light that is usually softened by a diffusing material spread underneath the lamp.

  Softbox light with photoflood bulbs mounted on a frame 18 in. above the diffusion. One nook light is also employed.

  The black velvet skirt controls the light pattern of the box light.

  This softbox design makes use of 1K nook lights bounced off white card or white bleached muslin.

  A fully assembled softbox light. Its design should allow for good ventilation to avoid fire hazards.

  A six-light overhead cluster, traditionally known as a chicken coop. The soft overhead light can be further softened by a diffuser screen.

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  In a similar category of overhead lights is the space light. It consists of a vertical cylinder of diffusion material illuminated from above with from one to six nook lights or PAR lights.

  Richard Crudo, ASC

  Space lights are always handy. When they’re rigged to a dimmer board, they can be a very quick and efficient way to light up a large area. Even though the light they give off is soft, you can control the spill by varying the length of the duvetyn skirt that surrounds the unit.

  6,000-watt Molequartz Spacelite

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  The basic idea of creating soft light units by positioning electric bulbs inside diffusion shells led to several ingenious variations. The most obvious came from using the Asian paper lamps, called by film technicians Japanese lanterns, Chinese lanterns, or just China balls. The paper of the original lanterns is now often replaced by muslin.

  Mole-Richardson six-light MaxiCoop

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  Chinese lantern sprayed on the side to control its output and direction.

  Len Levine, gaffer

  A company called Jem Studio Lighting has different size China balls covered with full grid or muslin. The other thing they have is a paper lantern harp. It is the gut (inside yoke) of a China ball, so if the ball lies on its side, the bulb is still suspended in the middle of the ball. In a 30 in. muslin China ball you can put up to a 1500-watt bulb. You can put up to a 500-watt bulb in a paper China ball.

  Robert Elswit, ASC

  My gaffer modifies the China balls. He starts with a regular China ball and then he covers it with muslin. The other light that I use, made by a gaffer named Jack English, is a 2K nook light that bounces up into a tube made out of muslin with a white top. He calls them bag lights. They give you this soft ambience. There is always this trade-off: is it soft or is it bright? You cannot have both, so you are always going one way or the other. These bag lights are relatively soft and you can put on a black cover leaving them 90 degrees open or 180 degrees open. So I set them up in a street. When Julia Roberts was walking, she always had some fill. I even used them as key sometimes because they were far away enough and soft enough, and if they felt wrong, I could always put an opal diffusion in front of them. So they really saved me. I rented them all from Jack English. I had fifteen of them for the walk of Julia Roberts in the street at night.

  James Plannette, gaffer

  When John Toll and I were doing Legends of the Fall, we had a great sequence at the dining table. John said something like, “I wish we had China balls.” So I had a grip build a couple of wooden frame boxes and we put #2 photofloods inside them. We covered the outside with diffusion. Then we put them over the table. The advantage of not having a round ball was that with a rectangle, you could put a piece of a show card on a side where you didn’t want the light to come through.

  A studio-made soft light with an adjustable diffusion sleeve.

  Mole-Richardson six-light Maxi-Spacelite

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  A round light source creates a nice reflection in the eye. If you put a large Chinese lantern next to an eye, you’ll get a very pretty, round shape reflected in the eyeball, which can look more organic than a square source like a Chimera.

  By following the same concept but changing the shape of the light, gaffers designed what is known as a covered wagon.

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  A covered wagon is generally a homemade device. It’s basically a bat strip (a batten strip of wood with a row of lightbulbs) with a chicken-wire cage wrapped around the front, allowing you to wrap the unit with diffusion gel. The unit ends up resembling a covered wagon of the Old West. What I like about the covered wagon is that, being made up of tungsten bulbs, it can be put on a dimmer to both control its intensity and warm the color without gelling. It is a fairly soft source that can put out more light than a Kino Flo of similar size because you can use brighter bulbs. You can put 250-watt photofloods in it if you want. A covered wagon is like a long, skinny paper lantern. Being narrow, it is often used along the top edge of a wall on location, just above the frame line, to provide a soft backlight.

  Ian Kincaid, gaffer

  We built something that is an improvement on the covered wagon. It’s more flexible and you don’t throw it away. We have a 4 ft. aluminum channel that has four receptacles, household size, medium mogul base. Each of these has a switch, and then that channel has attachable diffusion frames, and if you are using it as a top light, it has a skirt system that works around them. We can put any globe we want in there. We can put ECTs, which are 500-watt photofloods, we can put 25-watt globes, it just depends what we need. You can have it on the ground, you can screw it to the wall, it has pins so you can put it on a C-stand, and you can hang it.

  Dion Beebe, ASC

  On Memoirs of a Geisha we used covered wagons. These are simply bulbs mounted on a batten much like footlights on a stage, except these are portable and constructed in 1, 2, or 4 ft. strips. They usually have a wire frame so they can be covered with diffusion or gel if required, hence the name. A great advantage on Geisha for these multiple bulbs was when we had a lot of lanterns burning. In order to create the flicker of the fire, I would have the alternating bulbs in these wagons create a very soft flicker effect. They are very low-profile and therefore easy to place within the frame and close to actors. They were a key fixture, combined with Full or Half Straw [Rosco gel] and burning at 40 or 50 percent, creating a deep amber glow to the light that became a signature color for the mov
ie. On Nine we took the idea one step further, building what became known as “Biggle strips,” named after my gaffer on that movie, John “Biggles” Higgins. I was looking for something that had even a lower profile than the wagons so I could use it from the ground and run through dimmers. Biggles basically took an aluminum strip of sockets and created a strip light of MR16-type bulbs. They were so tightly positioned that the bulbs were almost touching and their profile was literally 2.5 inches tall with the width of only an inch and a half. In a one-foot section I got about twelve bulbs. I had sections from one to four feet long. On the dimmer they were often only running at 20 or 15 percent. It was a fantastic unit and packed more punch than the wagons. We used these extensively, both built into the set and as part of our everyday lighting package.

  “Biggle strips” bring to mind the Decasource Lighting System offered by Mole-Richardson. This modular system is based on clusters of M16 bulbs mounted on metal reflectors. An individual module called DecaPod has thirty 75-watt, 12 V globes totaling 2,250 watts of light. Five DecaPods mounted as a unit represents the PentaLight, and ten DecaPods the DecaLight.

  John Buckley, gaffer

  On Memoirs of a Geisha I created covered wagons that were put on two circuits, so that you could use two different magic gadgets [flicker generators]. Because it wasn’t all one unit going up and down, it created multiple flashes. I would use them right off the camera.

  On a four-footer covered wagon there are probably thirty globes right next to each other, so it becomes one source. A one-footer has three globes. Most of the time they are 100 watts each.

  Decasource Lighting System PentaLight. Composed of five pods, each containing thirty MR16 bulbs, it provides an intense light source without strong heat.

  (courtesy of Mole-Richardson Co.)

  Assembling Lowel Rifa eXchange #1

  (courtesy of Lowel-Light Manufacturing Inc.)

  Richard Crudo, ASC

  Everybody has his or her own version of a covered wagon. I’ve had gaffers make them up from scratch, very quickly and easily. Usually they’re just a wooden batten lined with a number of porcelain sockets, two, three, or four according to what you need. Then you can stick household bulbs, 211s, 213s, mushroom globes, anything you want, into them. Sometimes I like to use daylight-balanced photographic bulbs, then dial them down on a dimmer so as to maintain maximum color temperature.

  One of the all-time favorite lights among cinematographers and gaffers is the Lowel Rifa eXchange.

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  A Lowel Rifa light combines a diffusion bank and lamphead in one unit that can be folded up rather than always requiring disassembly, as when you put away a Chimera bank on a lamp. The lamp itself is either a 1K or a 300-watt tungsten halogen globe, or it can be switched to hold one or three daylight compact fluorescent bulbs. There are different sizes in diffusion banks available: 16 × 16, 21 × 21, 25 × 25, and 32 × 32 in.

  Assembling Lowel Rifa eXchange #2

  (courtesy of Lowel-Light Manufacturing Inc.)

  Robert Jason, gaffer

  Rifa light is a terrific light. I think that with three Rifa lights you could almost light any set and do it instantly. It is all one self-contained unit that you literally open and put up as quick as you would open up an umbrella. You open it up and you can use a battery pack or plug it into a wall and you are ready to shoot. So with three of them, obviously, you can shoot almost anything.

  Robert Elswit, ASC

  The way I do candlelight or lamplight is with a Rifa light. They are the most efficient soft directional lights that anybody makes. I use a combination of Rifa lights and Chinese lanterns. I did all the Sunday house interiors in There Will Be Blood with lots of Chinese lanterns and lots of Rifas in various places, selectively fading the light levels.

  Assembling Lowel Rifa eXchange #3

  (courtesy of Lowel-Light Manufacturing Inc.)

  If I were on a deserted island and I could take only one light with me, it would be a large Rifa light. It is a wonderful combination of efficiency, brightness, and softness. It is controllable because it has that grid, so you can actually aim it at somebody and in a way control what it doesn’t light a little better. It is not perfect, but it is as close as you can get to a soft source that feels real and yet has a kind of attractive look to the shadow, and it is efficient. So it is all that stuff. And it comes in so many different sizes. It is easy to hide, easy to work with.

  The Barger Lite represents a very interesting concept for a compact soft light with a wide range of intensity control. It resembles a shallow dish with six 650-watt tungsten globes having a light output comparable to 1000 watts each. As the globes can be switched individually, there is no need for a dimming mechanism.

  Assembling Lowel Rifa eXchange #4

  (courtesy of Lowel-Light Manufacturing Inc.)

  The light’s softness is produced by the attached Chimera diffusion boxes. Regardless of the size (medium or large) of the Chimera box, the light fills the entire front screen for a very even pattern of light.

  Barger 6-Lite with a Chimera. With one to six globes, individually switched, this fixture fills the entire Chimera screen with a very even light.

  (courtesy of Ed Barger)

  Barger 6-Lite uses six 650-watt bulbs on three separate circuits, making it feasible to run this fixture on three household outlets, eliminating the need for a generator.

  (courtesy of Ed Barger)

  The Barger Lite comes also as a 4-Litestrip, 23 in. wide and only 16 in. high. Its compactness makes it useful for a backlight in a low ceiling situation.

  To control the soft light projected through the Chimera diffusers, gaffers like to use the soft and deep grids made by the Lighttools company.

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  The depth or thickness of the egg crate grid will affect how much it controls the spill. Since the Kino Flo plastic grids are fairly shallow, I use them mostly just for keeping the spill from flaring the camera lens; they have a minimal effect on directing the light. You’d need a deeper grid to control it more. Chimeras use a fabric Lighttools grid that is about two inches deep and is attached with Velcro. It is very useful for controlling spill. When you need even more control than that, you can set a series of narrow blade flags in front of the light, but they take up more space. It’s the classic problem: the larger the source, the softer it is—but the larger the flags have to be to cut it.

  For a really large soft light, it’s hard to beat a balloon light.

  Aerolight 16.8K Hybrid Tube balloon light

  (courtesy of Todd Wimett, Aerolight Inc.)

  M. David Mullen, ASC

  There is a limit to how high you can get a helium lighting balloon into the air because any breeze will start to move it around. I’ve even had them nosedive to the ground and then soar up into the sky again in a mild wind. They can be frustrating to handle, plus they are very hard to flag depending on their shape, but they can be the simplest way of getting a big, soft overhead source in a large area without having stands. You have to run a power cable to the balloon. This is a moderately thick cable and it hangs right out of the balloon. Often you think, “Great, I can bring a lighting balloon into the middle of this big room and the camera won’t see my lighting,” but then you realize that you will have to hide the power cable running to the balloon, not to mention any taglines attached. So you have to think about where this cable is going to go. Lighting balloons are good for ballrooms, large restaurants, and big lobbies of some office buildings—basically any large space with high ceilings. You can get balloons that are tungsten or daylight-balanced, or you can find some with a mix of both types of lamps, so you could create a color temperature halfway between 3200K and 5500K—for example, a half-blue moonlight effect on tungsten film. Often you also have some degree of ability to dim them; even the HMI versions allow different output levels. They are useful but they are hard to work with. Sometimes it is easier to put up a big diffusion frame in front of a light on a Cond
or (crane) rather than work with a balloon. Some people will tie a balloon to the bottom of a Condor in order to keep it in one position outdoors at night.

  We were filming in an outdoor swimming pool area at a hotel, boxed in by the high towers of the hotel. This was a long dialogue scene and I didn’t want the actors to be under harsh overhead sunlight near noontime. There was no way to bring a Condor in to fly a diffusion frame from high above and we weren’t allowed to bring in big stands for the 20 × 20 ft. silks. So the gaffer found a company that had these inflatable diffusers that you can float over the actors like a balloon. It is like a grid cloth that just softens the light. So that’s how we dealt with this scene. But again, there is the same problem as with balloons, that they move around. But the inflatables were useful for that situation.

  John Buckley, gaffer

  I use helium balloons a lot, both on interiors and exteriors. On Land of the Lost the sets were really, really large and difficult to work in. I used the balloons as key light. I used a 24-foot-long one and we moved it around. With two lines I could move it over here, over there, make it a little higher, make it a little lower. I like balloons a lot. A lot of the balloons come now as hybrids, where you can have both HMI and tungsten bulbs inside them. They go basically from a 4 ft. diameter up to 18 ft. We used a long, thin balloon that we called a sausage. It was 24 ft. long and 12 ft. in diameter. Balloons just save you an enormous amount of time. I like a big broad source, because nowadays everybody moves and the background moves; it’s a big area that you have to light. With a big soft source you have to have a really good art department, you have to have great painters, and the costumes have to be set really well.