Crossing Paths: Day Exterior

September 30, 2015April 10, 2017 neilosemanbreakdown, cinematography, day ext, daylight, equipment, exterior, lighting, natural light, sun

Michelle Darkin Price and Phil Molloy in Crossing Paths (C) 2015 B Squared Productions

The sun is an awesome light source, but you’re not alone as a DP if you sometimes feel it’s the enemy. Shooting Ben Bloore’s Crossing Paths at the weekend, I was very lucky to be met with a perfect blue sky, but even so there was work to do in maintaining and sculpting the light.

The first step on the road to succesfully photographing day exterior scenes is choosing the right location. Crossing Paths is mostly about two characters sitting on a park bench. It needed to look serene and beautiful – which means backlight.

The initial location had an east-facing bench, so I asked for the scene to be scheduled in the evening. That way the characters would be backlit by the sun as it set in the west.

The location was later changed to Belper River Gardens (where, three years earlier, I had shot scenes from Stop/Eject). The new bench faced west, which meant shooting in the morning so it would be backlit from the east.

In a rare instance of nature co-operating, the sun blazed out over the trees at about 8am and perfectly backlit the actors as we set up for the master shot. I used an 8’x4′ poly to bounce the light back and fill in their faces.

As we moved into the coverage, a very tall tree started to block some of the sunlight. This was where our hard reflector came in. This is a 3’x3′ silver board mounted in a yoke so that it can easily be panned and tilted.

Col set up this reflector in a patch of sunlight, ricocheting it onto the back of the actors’ heads, maintaining the look of the master shot.

Col adjusts the hard reflector to backlight the talent. — Col adjust the hard reflector to backlight the talent.

Later one of the characters stands up and looks down on the bench. We needed to shoot his CU for this moment without him squinting into the sun, and without harsh shadows on his face. Cue the next tool in our sun control arsenal: the silk. Stretched across a 6’x6′ butterfly frame, the silk acted like a cloud and softened the sunlight passing through it.

Col and production assistant Andrew position the silk.

The silk in action on Phil. (C) 2015 B Squared Productions

You need to think carefully about what order to do your coverage in with natural light, particularly if the day is as sunny as this one was. I asked to leave the shots looking south last, so that the sun would have moved round to backlight this angle.

This south-facing shot was left until around midday in order to have it backlit. (C) 2015 B Squared Productions

What if it had been an overcast day? Well, it wouldn’t have looked as good, but we were tooled up for that eventuality too. We had an ArriMax M18 which could have backlit the actors in all but the widest shots (for which we would have had to wait for a break in the clouds) and a 4’x4′ floppy for negative fill if the light was too flat. More on those some other time.

Related posts:
Lighting ‘3 Blind Mice’ – using positive and negative fill and artificial backlight for day exterior scenes
Sun Paths – choosing the right locations for The Gong Fu Conection
Moulding Natural Light – shooting towards the sun and modifying sunlight

The First Musketeer: Lighting the Barracks

July 13, 2015March 27, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting

Creator Harriet Sams and some of The First Musketeer cast presented a panel at ExiliCon, a gaming and genre convention, last weekend, and their discussion of the Fumel scenes brought back some memories of lighting it which I’d like to share. The Chateau de Fumel stood in for the musketeers’ barracks, appearing most prominently at the end of episode three from 8:32 onwards. (Click here for a playlist of the whole season.)

Set at night, like most of the show, the scene involved two major steadicam shots tracking up and down a covered walkway. This walkway was essentially a corridor which, save for pillars, was open along one side.

One of the steadicam shots was a walk-and-talk dialogue scene, the other an epic single shot fight scene. Tracking shots in corridors are always a pain to light because there’s never anywhere to put backlight without it coming into frame. Ideally you use practicals in the ceiling, but despite scratching our heads over it for a while, gaffer (and Steadicam op) Richard “Squish” Roberts and I couldn’t figure out any way to rig lights to the ceiling without damaging the historical building or getting some part of the rigging in shot.

In fact, the only possible place to hide lights – except behind camera, which would have made for a flat, boring image – was in the garden outside the walkway. So all the light would be side-light, broken up the pillars and the bushes between those pillars.

Here’s the lighting scheme I arrived at:

I decided to fire in “moonlight” from our 2.5K HMI, positioned on the far side of the garden. Shooting at a white balance of 3,200K, this would appear blue on camera. (We were shooting on Squish’s Blackmagic Cinema Camera, using a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 zoom or a Sigma 20mm f1.8 for wide shots.)

hmi — The 2.5K HMI on the far side of the garden

Then I had Squish set up two or three 800W open-face tungsten lamps as 3/4 backlights, spaced evenly along the run. We gelled these with CTO so that they’d appear orange on camera, suggesting firelight sources of some kind. (The First Musketeer is full of implied firelight sources, because we were never able to have naked flames in the locations!)

The 800W tungsten lamps hidden behind the pillars

The final touch was to light the far end of the corridor, to give the shot some deep background. We tucked a 2′ 4-bank Kinoflo (with tungsten tubes) into a little alcove and shone it at the back wall. To provide a third layer of colour to the image, while still staying within the palette of firelight, I gelled this with Straw. When the smoke catches the light, it gives a nice bright patch in the background which is great for the depth of the image.

Toby Lorde as the Duke de Luyne in the walkway, lit for shooting. Photo: Jessica Ozlo — The walkway, lit for shooting. Photo: Jessica Ozlo

A frame grab from the walk-and-talk scene

Toby Lorde (the Duke de Luyne) on the steps, backlight by a half-CTB-gelled 800 and keyed by the 2.5K HMI, way off left — Toby Lord (the Duke de Luynes) on the steps, backlit by a half-CTB-gelled 800 and keyed by the 2.5K HMI, way off left. A Kino off right provides fill. Photo: Jessica Ozlo

Later in the scene we moved out to the far side of the garden, shooting back towards the building as the Duke de Luynes thanks Athos and friends for their help.

The 2.5K stayed in the the same place, 3/4 backlighting the heroes, side-lighting the duke and 3/4 front-lighting the building. The 800s were moved inside the walkway and hidden behind pillars.

Another source was required to rake the heroes’ profiles and backlight the duke. This was another 800, gelled with half CTB for a vaguely starlight look, placed at the top of the steps. When I have stairs in a shot I always like to put a lamp at the top and fire it down so that it catches the top of every step, as it does here.

We were all set up and ready to turn over on this wide shot, when suddenly the building’s automatic floodlights came on. We hunted high and low, but couldn’t find the switch to turn them off. Instead, I placed a piece of CTO over each of the floodlights and assigned members of the crew to hold their hands over the lights, wiggling their fingers. The result is that the front of the building appears to be uplit by brazieres. It works beautifully and adds another layer of depth which we couldn’t have created otherwise, because all our film lamps were already in use.

You should always be ready to improvise like this when shoots throw you a curve ball.

This illustrates the directions the various lamps were coming in from. Click the image to enlarge.

Visit The First Musketeer’s YouTube channel to view the whole series for free. The show is © First Musketeer Ltd 2014.

Synced: The Japan Shoot – Part 3

June 25, 2015July 15, 2017 neilosemancamera moves, cinematography, lighting

Shooting tracking shots from the back of a pick-up. Above me is camera assistant Yujiro Matsumoto with a diffused LitePanel which provides fill during the move.

Continuing the story of lensing the sci-fi feature Synced’s Japanese scenes earlier this month. In part 1 I looked at the prep, and part 2 covered an interior scene.

Next up, after dark, was a street scene with the beautiful Himeji Castle visible in the distance. The castle was already lit up by spotlights, but while the street had a fair bit of existing lighting, that wasn’t bright enough to shoot under. The scene was a slow chase in which the trio of heroes, one of them wounded, is slowly but menacingly pursued by the limping villain. This would be captured primarily in tracking shots, filmed from the back of a small pick-up truck pushed by the crew to avoid engine noise spoiling the soundtrack.

Wide-street — The set-up for the street scene

Exisiting practical lighting around the doorway the characters enter at the end of the scene

Employing my standard approach to night exteriors, I had the crew set up the 575W HMI as backlight, tucked around a corner. When we came to do the reverse shot, the HMI was moved to the opposite end of the street. It glared horrendously off some windows and shiny tiling, but with the time and equipment available I could see no way to remedy this. The lamp really needed more height, but I hadn’t hired a double wind-up stand because it wouldn’t have fitted in the car.

Three of the LitePanels were spaced along the street as sidelights, suggesting additional off-camera streetlamps. The furthest one, illuminating the villain on his first appearance, I gelled with Light Straw to separate him from the heroes.

The fourth LitePanel, with diffusion and egg crate fitted, was mounted on the pick-up truck behind the camera, providing a constant low level of fill.

Keisuke’s little LED panel was gelled red and wedged into a shop doorway to lend a sinister tone to a key moment in the scene.

The scene ends with two of the heroes entering a building. There was some existing practical lighting around this doorway which I asked to be turned on, and this proved sufficient to illuminate the characters as they approached and entered the door.

The final scene of the night took place in a quaint little alleyway. Cool blue streetlamps contrasted nicely with a halogen security light, but the former were too frontal and flat, while the latter was triggered by an infrared sensor – meaning it could go on and off annoyingly during takes.

So we flagged the main streetlamp and disabled the security light by gaffering the sensor, and I recreated the colour contrast of that lighting using our own lamps.

The houses on either side had convenient ledges above the windows, perfect for placing LitePanels on. So two panels became 3/4 quarter backlights from either side, set to 5,600K.

The third panel, set to 3,200K, was hidden behind a gate to light some of the background and edge the actors a little before they got in front of the other backlights. (I left the existing practicals to light the deep background.)

The fourth and final panel, set to 4,500K and gelled with Light Straw, blasted out of the door the actors came out of, matching to the light in the last part of the kitchen scene.

Near the end of the scene, the master shot becomes a two-shot of Ollie and Daisy, and the two 3/4 quarter backlights serve as a classic cross-backlighting set-up.

For Daisy’s close-up, since she was quite close to the wall and therefore quite dark, I tweaked the lights heavily. I brought one of the backlight panels much closer, bouncing it off the cream-coloured wall next to Ollie to serve as her key, and switched the second backlight to the opposite side of camera to balance it out. I also added a ‘health bounce’ reflector, ensuring she had a nice big eyelight to underline her vulnerability in the scene.

In the fourth and final part I’ll be looking at the day exterior scene we shot in the grounds of Himeji Castle.

Synced: The Japan Shoot – Part 2

June 18, 2015July 15, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting

In part 1 I described how we arrived at a lighting package and monitoring solution for the Japanese leg of this sci-fi feature shoot.

The first scene to go before the camera was the night interior, set in a hospital kitchen. The location was blacked out by the Japanese crew with incredible efficiency, so we could shoot it in the afternoon. Unable to light through the windows, I hid LitePanels in alcoves and around corners. They were all set to 5,600K and most were gelled with half CTB to appear very cool when shot with a white balance of 4,500K. The idea was to give the impression of streetlights – many of which are cool blue in Himeji – spilling into the dark, abandoned kitchen.

But Japan is a colourful place, and at night all hues of lighting are seen from signs and shopfronts as well as streetlamps. So, behind the frosted glass door of a locker room at the back of the master shot, I set up the HMI, gelled with Light Straw to suggest an older sodium vapour streetlight.

For a third layer of colour, I gelled one of the LitePanels red.

The kitchen had big hooded vents above the cookers, and for certain shots I was able to clamp the red panel inside one of these using a C-stand knuckle.

As the action progressed around the room, shot by shot, I moved the panels to new areas when the old areas ceased to be in frame, always taking care that the light was hitting the actors from the sides or from behind, never from the direction of the camera. (This would have made for flat lighting, a massive no-no in cinematography.) At one point I needed one more lamp than we had, and Keisuke saved the day with a small but very bright LED panel of his own.

This iPad photo gives a rough idea of how the lighting in the above diagram will appear in the movie.

In part 3 I’ll be breaking down the night exterior scenes.

Soft Wrapping Backlight on The Shepherds’ Play

May 25, 2015April 10, 2017 neilosemanbrea, breakdown, cinematography, lighting

The Second Shepherds’ Play, the medieval comedy which I lensed last week, had several scenes in “the Mak Shack”, the grotty home of the antagonists. The set posed an interesting problem in that – apart from the door, which wouldn’t always be open – it contained no light sources. No windows, no lamps, no candles. Given the wordy script and the tight schedule, I needed to light it in a way that would not need tweaking between set-ups, and which would work for one particular scene that director Doug Morse wanted to film as a single developing shot showing about 180º of the set.

One option would have been to posit a window in the off-screen 180º, but that would have resulted in very flat illumination, all lit from the front like a photo taken with flash.

I wanted to create a cross-backlighting set-up (Lighting Technique #2), but it was impossible to hang lamps above the rear of the set without damaging the location’s brickwork. So instead I had Colin rig two pieces of Celotex (matte silver bounce board) above the back two corners. Into these I fired Source Fours, peeking over the front walls of the set. These lamps, designed for theatre use, are relatively cheap to hire and have lenses and cutters which provide a great deal of control over where the light does and doesn’t go, meaning you can ensure it all goes onto a bounce board and nowhere else. Using Source Fours as sources for bounced light is a tip I picked up from David Vollrath‘s talk in the Big League Cine Summit in January.

Here you can see a Source Four Junior peeking over a wall at the front of the set to hit a bounceboard at the back.

Viewed from the back of the set, both Source Fours can be seen firing over the front walls. The lamps are high enough that their beams go completely over the heads of the talent.

This reverse angle shows the two bounce boards above the back corners of the set, which you'll have to trust me is directly underneath them in the darkness. — This reverse angle shows the two bounce boards above the back corners of the set, which you’ll have to trust me is directly underneath them in the darkness.

This set-up enabled me to execute the 180º handheld shot without casting any shadows myself, and without the actors casting hard shadows (which would have been inappropriate for a period piece), while still primarily lighting the downsides of their faces to give depth and shape to the image. It also provided backlight to ensure the actors stood out.

I’ll leave you with some frame grabs (courtesy of Grandfather Films) and a floor plan of the set-up. Visit Grandfather Films on Facebook for more on the Shepherds’ Play.

DIY Interview Lighting for the Ren EPK

April 4, 2015March 27, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting, press

Left to right: the flipchart holding up the key bounce reflector, the halogen key source with the flagging reflector immediately to the right of it, the hair-light LED panel peeking over the backdrop above the hot seat, the LED panel acting as a flag, and the halogen 3/4 backlight.

Shooting interviews is a great way for a cinematographer to learn to light. I figured out loads about how human faces react to light of different kinds from years of experimenting on the talking heads in corporate videos. And because those interviews were often long and dull, there was plenty of opportunity to evaluate my lighting as I relaxed behind my locked-off camera.

At the weekend a “promo day” was held for Ren, the fantasy-action web series which you must all have heard of by now. The goal was to shoot publicity stills of the lead actors, and to shoot interviews for the EPK (Electronic Press Kit). We decided to stage these against a black backdrop.

Our venue was the office-cum-studio of the nascent Cambridge TV station, kindly lent to us for the day, but the only lighting kit we had were two Chinese LED panels, two halogen worklights and a couple of collapsible reflectors. I knew from the start that I wanted to use the worklights to key the talent, because halogen bulbs put out a much fuller spectrum of light than budget LEDs. Without a full spectrum you can’t capture all the skintones, and your subject will lack life.

Here’s the lighting set-up I arrived at.

I’ll talk you through it.

The keylight (halogen, top left) bounces off the silver side of a reflector (resting on a convenient flipchart) to give a nice, soft source. The second reflector is used as a flag to stop direct light from reaching the talent.

The second halogen (top right) serves as a hot three-quarter backlight. One of the LED panels is used as a flag (!) to stop this backlight flaring into the lens.

The other LED panel pokes over the top of the backdrop to provide hair-light.

The white walls of the studio provide sufficient bounce to render a fill light unnecessary.

The result is a nice, slick, minimal look. The two backlights stop dark hair or clothes from disappearing into the background, and the soft key is flattering to all yet is at enough of an angle to provide shape and contrast – see how it outlines Sophie’s left cheek and jaw.

Incidentally, we considered using a white backdrop for a little while. Had we gone with this, how would I have changed the lighting? I would have had to lose the backlights, because white rim-light will only make your subject bleed into a white background. The lamps thus freed could have been trained on the backdrop in an attempt to blow it out, but it’s questionable whether that would have been achievable with the Blackmagic’s dynamic range. Finally, I expect I would have introduced negative fill to get rich, black shadows on the talent’s up-side, in order to get some contrast into the image. More on lighting for a white backdrop here.

After the publicity shoot, we repaired to Kate’s place for a Q&A livestream. Here it is if you missed it. Subscribe to Mythica Entertainment’s YouTube Channel to make sure you never miss our behind-the-scenes videos and trailers.

www.rentheseries.com

Lighting ‘3 Blind Mice’

March 30, 2015April 10, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting

A cinematographer should always be looking for ways to enhance the story through camerawork and lighting. 18 months ago I lensed a short film called 3 Blind Mice, which sadly seems permanently mired in no-budget postproduction hell. It comprises a trio of vignettes linked by a common theme. Each vignette featured two characters: one real, one supernatural or imaginary. In preproduction, director KT Roberts told me that she wanted the unreal characters to look somehow artificial, so I decided to give these characters each a perfect halo of backlight, whilst simultaneously eliminating all shadows on their faces. By contrast, the real characters would have no backlight and a grittier look to their faces with light and shade.

The first vignette to go before the camera was an interior scene, so we sat the unreal character (Charlotte Quinney, above right) in front of the window for backlight, and used a 4 bank 4ft kinoflo and a collapsible reflector to evenly light her face. The natural daylight was reinforced by a 1.2K HMI outside the window, gelled pink to match the colour scheme of the set dressing and suggest sunset. The real character (Libby Stewart Power, above left) was strongly lit from the right side by the “daylight”, with only a low level of fill from the reflector off left.

The other two vignettes were daylight exteriors. In both cases the 1.2K was used to halo the unreal character, with a reflector and silver foamcore used to fill in their faces (Will Attenborough, above right – third vignette). The 1.2K was used again when shooting the real characters, this time bouncing it off the reflector onto one side of their face. In the case of the final vignette, the other side of the real character’s face (Jack Mosedale, above left) was filled in by natural light, so we brought in a black drape hung from a flag arm as negative fill to combat this.

Shooting the real character in the final vignette. At left is the reflector bouncing the HMI (right). In the centre can be seen the black drape creating negative fill.

Shooting the unreal character, surrounded by matte silver foamcore (bottom right) and a collapsible reflector (bottom left) to remove shadows from his face. The 1.2K HMI in the background creates a halo of backlight around his head. — Shooting the unreal character, surrounded by silver foamcore (bottom right) and a collapsible reflector (left) to remove shadows from his face. The 1.2K HMI in the background creates a halo of backlight around his head.

How have you used lighting to help tell your stories?

Shooting ‘Self Control’

March 16, 2015April 10, 2017 neilosemancamera movement, cinematography, composition, lighting

On location in a cafe-bar in north London

Recently I photographed Self Control, a short film by writer-director Stanislava “Stacey” Buevich. Joanna Kate Rodgers plays Lily, a woman who struggles to control her violent urges when she’s befriended by an extremely annoying colleague.

A read of Stacey’s shotlist revealed a clear Wes Anderson influence, which was great for me because I immediately knew the parameters: flat angles, formal composition, deliberate 90 degree pans and lateral tracks. Stacey also referenced Ida, which led to several wide shots with lots of headroom, like this one…

Creating interesting shadows by using a partition window at the location.

Lighting wise, it was a limited kit (two tungsten 2Ks and a Dedo kit with only two functioning lamps). Bin bags and some sheets of thin white packing foam were used to eliminate or reduce natural light coming through offscreen windows, to give shape and contrast to the images. For a scene in the office kitchen, I fired one of the 2Ks through a high partition window to create some shadows.

I knew that I wanted to do something with lighting to clue the audience into Lily’s true identity (she’s the devil in human form). By the end of the first morning I’d settled on lighting her from below whenever possible. In this CU from an office scene, a blue-gelled tungsten 2K was fired down onto a white desktop in front of Lily…

A 2K fires down onto a white desktop to uplight Lily (frame grab below).

For a yoga/relaxation scene on the second day, production designer Devon Barber conveniently dressed in a row of tealights on the floor in front of Lily, giving me a great excuse for satanic, fiery bottom-light. We set up a Dedo either side of camera, firing down into strips of kitchen foil so that the light would bounce back up onto Lily’s face. The Dedo dimmers were ridden by my ACs during takes to create a flickering effect.

Strips of tinfoil placed on the floor around the dolly track reflect two Dedolites (just out of frame either side) back up onto Lily's face. A 2K hidden behind the wall on the right provides backlight. — Strips of tinfoil placed on the floor around the dolly track reflect two Dedolites (just out of frame either side) back up onto Lily’s face. A 2K hidden behind the wall on the right provides backlight.

To find out more about the work of Stacey and her producing partner Lara Myles, visit www.clockpunkfilms.com

Lighting ‘X, Y & Z Rays’ by Revenge of Calculon

February 22, 2015April 10, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting, music video, promo

Stage-bound music promos can be an interesting challenge for a cinematographer. Often there is no set that has any basis in reality, no windows, no starting point for lighting. This should be very freeing but is actually pretty scary. Where to start?

This is X, Y & Z Rays by Revenge of Calculon, my latest music video for director Tom Walsh of Polymath Pictures…

Nick Pylypiuk did an awesome job of building and programming the LED panels, and Amy Nicholson did a great job of dressing the gadgets and cables. How did I go about lighting it?

2 of the 800W tungsten Arrilites hidden behind the big LED panels — 2 of the 800W tungsten lamps hidden behind the big LED panels

Well, cinematography isn’t just about mimicking natural light. It’s about depth and contrast, to name just two things. And depth was where I started. If I didn’t want the LEDs to float in a black background, then it was necessary to light the cyclorama to reveal it as a separate layer behind the LED panels. But leaving the cyc dark would give the image more contrast. I wanted to have my cake and eat it. So the lamps I lit the cyc with had to be dimmable so that they could be off at some points during the track and on at others.

I placed 800W tungsten lamps on the floor behind the central and outermost LED panels, uplighting the cyc. Poor Emma, the art assistant and the smallest member of the crew, was assigned to hide behind one of the panels, pulsing the 800s on a dimmer board in time with the music.

Next I needed to light the musicians. We didn’t have access to the studio grid, the LED panels were providing plenty of light from behind, and any light from the front would have polluted the panels, so my only option was to light from the sides. I placed a Dedolite off to each side, gelled with different varieties of blue/green gel to make this layer of the image stand out from the warm, ungelled tungsten of the 800s.

The 4 Dedolites can be seen here, gelled blue-green, blue-green, purple and yellow.

This was all very well, but it left a lot of the art department’s nice foreground dressing in complete darkness. So I set up a second Dedolite on each side, crosslighting the amps and other gubbins. I gelled one of these yellow and the other pinky-purple. Normally I prefer to use a narrower palette of colours, but since the patterns programmed into the LED panels used all the colours of the rainbow, I felt I had license to do the same.

After a couple of run-throughs, I decided on an alternating, pulsing pattern for the four Dedolites at half the speed of the 800s. My initial instinct had been towards something more sophisticated, but there was plenty going on on the LED panels without needing to make the foreground too manic.

Clockwise from top right: a blue-green-gelled LED panel, a tungsten-tubed Kinoflo and a daylight-tubed Kinoflo Divalite amongst the set dressing

Amy was still looking to add to the set dressing, so I suggested putting our battered old Kinoflo into shot for a bit of extra interest. This left only a Kinoflo Divalite and a 1×1′ LED panel in my arsenal. “What the hell,” I thought, and hid them behind a couple of the amps to pick out some more of the set dressing.

Despite all this, I still think the strongest bits of the video are those where all my lights are off, leaving just the patterns on the large LED panels. With a bit of dispersed smoke in the studio, the LEDs give off a lovely glow, and the dynamic wrapping backlight they shed on the performers is really beautiful.

And we quickly found that they looked great out of focus, and went with that for a few set-ups. In fact, much of the single day of shooting was spent experimenting and going with the flow. Tom trusted me to get interesting coverage while he helped operate the LED panels, and I found the electronic music guiding me into Wes Anderson-style camera moves: lateral tracks, and bold, simple pans and tilts.

Find out more about Polymath Pictures at www.polymathematics.co.uk.

Ren: Lighting Dagron’s House

October 30, 2014March 27, 2017 neilosemancinematography, lighting, video

This is our big interiors week on Ren. The main set is the inside of Ren’s house, which was assembled in a mere three days by Chris Dane and his team, cannibalising the village exterior set. In this video blog I explain how I lit the set.

This set-up worked pretty much as-is for the first big scene in the house, shot on Monday. It was all handheld, so I needed the flexibility to move around with the camera and not worry about lamps on the floor getting in shot. The way I’d lit the set meant that the cast could stand pretty much anywhere and look good, especially since whoever was wiggling the “firelight” reflector could tweak the angle of it to follow any actor threatening to go a bit dark.

100W bulbs hidden behind the dresser for "candlelight" — 100W bulbs hidden behind the dresser for “candlelight”

As the bedroom was visible in the background of many shots, I rigged a rough version of the candelight effect I knew I would be using when we got to the bedroom scenes proper. I clipped four 100W tungsten bulbs behind pieces of furniture and cabled them into two channels of the dimmer board Colin kindly lent us. These were then flickered to suggest flames.

The dedo over the table proved to be superfluous. When I saw Claire making candles for the set, I asked her to double-wick them. I’d read in American Cinematographer that they’d done that on Pirates of the Caribbean to boost the light output, and sure enough, once those candles were lit, the dedo wasn’t needed.

The following day I played around with the lighting a bit more. When we came in for close-ups – this time on sticks – I turned off the overhead 4ft kino and brought in a 2ft kino on the floor for Window Wrap (Lighting Technique Number #3). That way the light got into the talent’s eye sockets and was generally more flattering.

The kinoflo on the right acts as Window Wrap

For another scene I decided the fire had gone out, allowing our bad guys to be bathed in cool daylight while the good guys stayed near the candlelight by the bedroom door. It’s nice when you have motivated colour contrast like this in a set and you can play around with which characters are in which colour of light. I look forward to shooting the remaining house scenes and developing some nice candlelight in the bedroom.

Find out more about Ren at www.rentheseries or on Facebook or Twitter.

Neil Oseman

Director of Photography

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