The best colorists try to preserve and enhance the original cinematographer’s vision. For this purpose, the director of photography should be present in the DI room, if at all possible.
Steven J. Scott, colorist
Sometimes the DP is not available or has not been given enough, or any, time in the DI room. That is always a mistake in my mind. The project is never as good as when the person who actually lit, composed, and captured the images is there to give guidance and direction.
Because stocks react in a unique way, a way that’s hard to anticipate and predict, what expert is better versed in proper balance of those variables than the DP? No one knows better what was shot, or why it was shot a certain way. No one knows better what was intended or what tools, processes, or DI options were meant to be explored better than the author of the images, the DP.
I practically view it as a sacred duty to protect the DP’s work and make sure it is always seen in the best possible light, to make sure that their vision remains intact, and to keep them informed about what’s going on in the DI suite if they’re not able to be there in person. If somebody down the line wants to stray from the DP’s vision, we always save the DP’s version and have it at the ready, so that if they want to come back and fight for it, it’s there.
Digital intermediate became the most important phase in image manipulation at the postproduction stage. Many of the previously described techniques, such as the use of filters and nets, can, to a great degree, be created in the DI.
Chapter Four
Anatomy of Lighting
Key Light, Fill Light, and Backlight Concepts
In the hard, directional lighting style, the traditional concept of key light, fill light, and backlight was clearly defined. Today, a soft light, enveloping objects and bouncing off surfaces, creates a seemingly less clear distinction, and yet with a little bit of common sense we can always analyze the sources.
KEY LIGHT
The main source of light, which gives character to the scene, is the key light, even if it is extremely soft.
M. David Mullen, ASC
Key light does imply that it is the brightest light in the frame, giving the subject a “key” or full exposure, but today we also use the phrase key light to mean whatever is the primary light on the subject’s face. It could be underexposed. The main thing is that as long as there is something else bright in the frame, the face doesn’t look accidentally underexposed. It doesn’t look like a mistake because you still have the full range of tonal values in the frame. Then you can leave the face in an underexposed area of the frame, and it may look more natural because, in real life, people are not always standing under the brightest light in the room.
After I block the scene with the director and look where the actors are standing, the main issue for me is always, From which direction should I key the scene? If the location has an obvious source of light, like a window during a day scene, then I may have already worked with the director to stage with that in mind. But other times, when you have the option of turning on some practical sources and turning off others, you’ll first stage the actors and then decide from where you want the source light to be coming.
Cinematographers often key from the direction the actors tend to look so that the light catches their eyes and they seem to be looking toward their key and not away from it. I’ve heard of it referred to as lighting from “the smart side.” This usually means the camera itself is favoring the shadow side of the face, which also enhances mood and increases the sculptural quality to the light because you are shooting from a reflective angle to the key light.
Next I consider how soft the key should be and what color it should have. But the direction of the key is the first thing I worry about, and then the quality and color of light after that.
Dion Beebe, ASC
When I light faces, I tend to use multiple sources. I have found when I observe a face in an everyday situation that it is seldom lit by just a single source. So I will build multiple sources into a room that decrease in intensity and wrap around the face in a natural way, often leaving one side of the face in soft shadow.
Key light position changes with every face. It is important to have an opportunity with an actor to do a test. I try to determine, Will it work better if the key is slightly higher, wrapped around, etc.? Every face responds to light differently, and lighting faces is a key part of what a cinematographer does.
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC
You can have a secondary light on somebody’s face—a combination of a key light and a secondary light, especially if an actor turns during the shot. If the key light is supposedly coming from the window, but it doesn’t go to the other side of the face, then maybe I will use another, softer light, maybe a stop or two underlighting, to light the face. The light from the side will not create another shadow, so you can use such a combination. The cross light is actually becoming a secondary key light when the actor is turning.
John Buckley, gaffer
Chivo Lubezki, ASC, came out with a system where the key light goes right up to the matte box and becomes this one huge source, but there is no fill. It gets right next to the matte box and gets double-diffused so it is almost shadowless when it comes onto somebody’s face. It is really quite beautiful that way. It always falls off at the cheek. That gives you the definition to it. I am not a big fan of eye lights, of putting that in specifically, because it is so unnatural. If I have to use it, what I use depends on what is in an image. If it is like a streetlight, then it would be something that is a little harder.
Matthew Libatique, ASC
Somewhere down the line I became motivated not to key. I avoided key light. I realized that when I key, I always want to key from the side. I grew tired of this convention. I discovered that I could key an actor or actress flat but underexpose his or her face. I combine this with placing something brighter in the frame. When I discovered this, it changed my entire concept of lighting, because I realized that I didn’t have to key traditionally. I was seeing the face and there was enough contrast, so I avoided making the face the brightest thing in the frame.
Wally Pfister, ASC
I wait with the key light. We prerig any of the broader strokes, the background elements, all the ambience, and I am somehow prepared for the key light, but I kind of wait till I see the rehearsal. One of my favorite lights—and I probably use it too much—is a key light coming from the side. So it illuminates one side, but it just makes it around for the second eye. It’s a wrapping soft light and it could be a book light where we bounce a nine-light and then it goes into a 4 × 8 diffusion close to the subject. Either we bounce it into the card and let that single source bounce around, or we put the 4 × 8 diffusion close to the subject and we use two Zip lights. I have one as a very sidey thing and the other Zip on the front end of the 4 × 8 wrapping around and catching the second eye. And then we flick up switches to find the exposure level. I like sometimes using two sources behind the 4 × 8 diffusion. It mixes as one, it wraps better, but I also started experimenting on Batman Begins with mixing colors a little bit. I did a scene with Tom Wilkinson, who was playing a Mafia guy. I had the normal 3200K key, but then I put half CTS (color temperature straw) on the light wrapping the second eye. So the fill was a little warmer than the key light.
FILL LIGHT
The task of a fill light, as the name indicates, is to fill the shadows created by other lights and thereby lower the contrast of the frame. Although with softer keys the fill light is not always needed, it remains an important light when the key light comes as cross lighting, for example, from the side (half light) or even from three-quarters back.
Richmond Aguilar, gaffer
Fill light is a very important light. It is taken for granted, but it sets the mood and it can save your life in exposure. It starts picking up details in the background, things that you would not see otherwise.
In terms of placement, fill light can be described as being rather close to the lens ax
is, for example slightly above the lens, but cinematographers vary in their creative use of this light.
Richard Crudo, ASC
Generally speaking, fill light comes from either the lens position or the key position. Of course, we break those rules all the time . . . Nonetheless, for aspiring cinematographers, this provides a good place to start from in the way they think about their lighting.
This production photo illustrates the use of small 750-watt soft lights to provide the .ll for this evening scene. (Sophie’s Choice, Nestor Almendros, ASC, cinematographer)
(© Universal Pictures, a division of Universal City Studios, Inc. Courtesy of MCA Publishing, a division of MCA Inc.)
Mauro Fiore, ASC
Fill light is probably the last thing I actually use on the set. It’s sort of a last resort for me. I don’t even think about fill light when I am lighting a scene. It is something I have to add because technically the film may need it. In other words, when I find something that works in a specific way, when I put the key light in a right place that I feel is aesthetically pleasing, judging at that exposure I may have to add a fill light in order to bring exposure up on the other side of the face. You also have to be careful with soft light as far as contrast is concerned, because even if that light wraps around, the contrast may be so extreme between one side of the face and the other that light automatically feels hard, no matter how soft it is and no matter how much it wraps. Sometimes adding a fill light will make the soft light feel softer than it is. These are the choices that you make at a given time.
Robert Jason, gaffer
It does seem that it is automatic that everyone wants to use a big soft light for a fill, but I think that people have forgotten how cameramen used to make women beautiful in the thirties and forties: quite often the soft lights were very small. Actually they work better because you don’t want to eradicate every shadow. Sometimes it is the shadows that make the faces look attractive. So maybe you want to be soft, but maybe you want to cover the very center of the face and not go everywhere. Maybe you throw the neck in the shadow. And also you don’t necessarily want the light to go everywhere on the set, because now you’ve just destroyed everything that you have done. I call it “the big eraser.”
M. David Mullen, ASC
I often like to have fill light slightly cooler than the key light because I think that underexposed skin has a tendency to get very reddish on film or on a digital camera. So you can compensate for that by cooling off the fill light a little bit, so that the shadows don’t go as red. This is one reason I tend to avoid using gold fabrics for bouncing light in day exterior work.
Outside I think that bouncing sunlight off a blue fabric material sometimes looks more natural than bouncing off white because the blue matches the color temperature of sky light better. In real life, shadows are often bluer than the areas lit by the sun. I’ll often have small bounce cards and large frames made up with a day blue material on one side and a white material on the opposite side, so I can flip between the two. Sometimes a blue bounce can make pale skin look too cold or golden skin look too greenish, so you have to make a judgment call as to whether to switch back to a white bounce or not. Also, there are real-life situations where the sun is obviously bouncing off of warm sand or some other warm surface and filling in the shadows from below, overpowering what the skylight is providing, so a warmer bounce card may match that better than a blue or white bounce.
Generally fill light is a rather “technical” light, meant to adjust contrast more than call attention to itself in any creative way. This is why it is often very soft and very frontal, so that it simply fills in the shadows created by the key light. But sometimes you can have the fill coming from other angles than frontal. An obvious example would be if you had a very strong key light that was naturally getting bounced back from furniture or walls on the opposite side of the key. You might want any additional fill to also come from that direction to suggest that it was simply due to the key light reflecting into the shadows.
James Plannette, gaffer
To me, fill light is “nonlight.” It is the light that enables the film to have the latitude that your eyes have. So it should have no direction. And a way to avoid direction is to have it come directly from the camera and as soft as humanly possible. Maybe it is a bounce, even through something. But it has to come from the camera. If it is coming from some other direction, it is something else but not fill. Fill just enables the film to see what the eye sees.
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC
I usually will not set a fill light. On night exterior or for certain situations or film stocks I may need to, but what I do most of the time is just use 4 × 8 white beadboards or frames with bleached muslin or UltraBounce to catch the key light and bounce back some fill. Generally speaking, if I want to establish a light source to be a lamp or a window, then I don’t want to feel that there is another lighting device filling in the shadows.
Harris Savides, ASC
I generally do not look at light as key and fill. The film stocks have gotten so sensitive, one rarely needs fill.
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC
Fill light for me always comes from the camera angle; otherwise it is creating a secondary shadow. It is very difficult to deal with key light from the right side and fill light from the left side. I never even try that because it doesn’t work for me. The light coming from below, from another side, is an ambient light; I wouldn’t even call it a fill light. You can use ambient light for fill light. It comes from the floor, from a ceiling. Lots of times you use fill light bouncing from the ceiling. That actually will keep the eyes in the dark. Then you have to use eye light. I try to be (with my fill light) close to the camera, but as soft as it can be.
Sometimes the overall soft light comes from a side. For example, Sven Nykvist liked to establish the general level of exposure with a large soft source from one side. For this purpose, Nykvist would bounce light off the foam core boards positioned as high as the stands would permit. For a day interior situation, the window often would become the large soft source from one side, acting as a key light. If there was a ceiling over a set, Nykvist would often bounce a nice fill light off it.
Richmond Aguilar worked as Nykvist’s gaffer on several films. He pays great attention to fill light in general. He feels that it is more critical than is usually considered, especially for the background. On the subject of fill light coming from above, he has this observation:
Richmond Aguilar, gaffer
When you use an overhead fill, you do not have a shadow running across the back wall when somebody walks through, because you are not filling from the camera position. You are filling from the overhead. It gives you just what you need in the set and it gives a nice rim on things.
If you are close to the person at a table and you fill him just right and it falls off to the background, the background starts getting muddy. So you put your main fill light farther back or you have a second fill light so it does not fall off that fast. It is more critical than people think. Hollywood theory is to fill from the direction of the lens, but even Nykvist and other people will fill from the side opposite to the key, as long as it does not give a second nose shadow. You can move a fill light during the shot. If the fill light is big enough, you are not going to have a shadow. The movement of light might show a little bit on your foreground furniture, for example, but you can cut it off with a flag. If you are moving fill light, it is because you usually have somebody pretty close to the camera, and if there is that much movement that close, you can get away with an awful lot. We have always one light stand with wheels on it for the fill light. Generally, stands with wheels are just a nuisance on location, but I always have one for the fill light.
There is one more place where you can have your fill light source. A white card can be put on the floor to reflect the overhead lighting into the face. Sometimes the floor can be painted white for such a purpose.
On sets with low ceilings, the light bounced off the
ceiling may become too bright for an actor standing directly under the strongest reflection. In such a case, a black net can be suspended horizontally above the actor’s head to cut down the intensity.
BACKLIGHT
Backlight traditionally fulfilled the function of separating people from the background. This function was necessary in black-and-white photography. It became less important with color, where the elements in the frame are separated from each other by their hue. Some cinematographers reject backlight altogether as artificial, but with the advent of softer key light, the majority of cinematographers find backlights useful.
Film Lighting Page 16