Character isn’t something that’s only revealed in front of the lens
Actors, costume designers, make-up artists and set dressers all work hard to enhance character through their work. Often cinematography is not considered part of this process, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be.
Here are some examples of how I’ve used cinematography to enhance character:
In Soul Searcher, protagonist Joe has an unrequited love for waitress Heather. Whenever they talk to each other, her CUs are shot on sticks, while his CUs are shot handheld, reflecting his nervousness.
There is a similar situation in Someone Else’s Shoes, written and directed by Nick Fogg. We decided to use wide lenses for the man’s CUs, putting the audience right there with him, and long lenses for the woman’s CUs, suggesting she is being observed and loved from afar. You can watch Someone Else’s Shoes below.
I won’t reveal the name of this film, because it’s still in post and I don’t want to spoil the plot, but a project I worked on last year featured certain characters who were real and others who were imaginary or supernatural. I decided to give the unreal characters perfect haloes of backlight wherever they went, and make their faces flawless by surrounding them with reflectors.
In Ted Duran’s The Gong Fu Connection, which we start shooting next week, the theme of connecting with people is very important. Characters who have this connection will be shot in two-shots and dirty singles, while characters who don’t will be shot in clean singles or isolated in frame.
For Coffin Grabber, director Claire Alberie devised a visual grammer whereby the film’s young protagonist would be shot at his eye level with an engaing handheld camera, while adults would be shot in locked-off, isolating wides.
How could you use cinematography to reveal and enhance character in your films?
Painting with Light is a book I first heard about when Hollywood DP Shane Hurlbut recommended it on his excellent blog. Browsing the shop at the BFI Southbank recently I came across a copy, liked what I saw… and went home and ordered it on line. Them’s the breaks.
John Alton was something of a rebel. In an era when most DPs used complex lighting set-ups hung from the studio grid, Alton lit from the floor, using fewer sources, and was consequently faster. This made him unpopular with his peers. A strained, in-out relationship with the American Society of Cinematographers didn’t help. He sometimes clashed with other heads of department too, notably designers, who didn’t like the way his lighting made their work look. But directors and producers loved him because he worked quickly.
When Painting with Light was published in 1949, Alton was emerging as a key cinematographer of the film noir genre. Today he is remembered as one of the masters of noir. His utterly black shadows, backlit fog and slatted keylights defined the visuals of films like The T-Men (1947, dur. Anthony Mann) and The Big Combo (1955, dir. Joseph H. Lewis).
A classic bit of Alton’s noir lighting from The Big Combo
However, noir lighting – or “Mystery Lighting” as Alton terms it – occupies only one chapter of Painting with Light. Two preceding chapters cover the basics of Hollywood filmmaking and introduce lighting equipment, most of which is now obsolete. Subsequent chapters cover “Special Illumination” – predominantly weather effects and vehicle interiors, “The Hollywood Close-up” – looking at key angles and introducing a clock system not dissimilar to the one I once blogged about – and “Outdoor Photography”.
The book then diverges from filmmaking, offering advice to novice photographers taking holiday snaps or equipping a portrait studio. Chapter nine, “Visual Music”, explores lighting and composition in terms of a musical allegory, each shot contributing to the symphony of the movie. Chapter twelve is the strangest, urging women to be aware of how their faces are lit as they go about their lives so that they can ensure they are always seen to their best advantage. All cinematographers know that beauty is as much about lighting as it is about bone structure and make-up, but I can’t see that idea ever catching on outside of the industry. Brief chapters on film processing, suggested improvements to cinemas, and the human eye as a camera, round out this mixed bag. A foreword, a lengthy but interesting biography and a filmography introduce the current edition.
Demonstrating the use of a clothes light
While many of the ideas and principles put forward by Alton are still relevant today, some of it serves more as a historical record of cinematography in the mid-twentieth century. Curiously propounding the system he apparently rebelled against (I wonder how different the book might have been had he written it at the end of his noir period), Alton paints a picture of a time in which cinematography was much more complex and artificial. Whereas today we talk of the three-point lighting system of key, fill and backlight, Alton speaks of an eight light system, adding:
eyelight – to give a sparkle in the eye
kicker – a three-quarter backlight to define the jaw
clotheslight – a cross-light to bring out the texture of the costumes
filler – not to be confused with fill, the filler is purely to cure vertical shadows from a high keylight
background light
While the modern cinematographer is aware of all of the above and tries to incorporate them, he or she tries to make lamps pull double- or triple-duty and would almost never use eight lamps to light a single close-up. Alton also advocates abandoning all of your wide-shot lighting and starting again from scratch for the close-up, to beautify your star; today’s audiences would not accept the mis-match of such radically re-lit close-ups. He talks of flag and grip equipment which could never work with today’s dynamic blocking and camera movement, like a “chin scrim” designed to cast a very specific shadow on the collar of a white dinner jacket to stop it blowing out.
Alton explains his clock system and its effect on an orange
But some sections still have undeniable value today. Alton looks at different types of faces and how to light each to their best advantage, how to light a dinner table or a campfire scene, and how to light for different times of day. He maintains that movie lighting should always mimic what natural light does in real life – hard to believe, but this was quite a radical concept in 1949. Examples and diagrams are used throughout to illustrate his techniques.
For me the most interesting part was his insight into depth in cinematography. Many DPs, myself included, feel that a shot looks best when the foreground is dark, the midground is correctly exposed and the background is bright. Alton offers the following explanation of this phenomenon:
At night when we look into an illuminated room from the dark outside, we can see inside but cannot be seen ourselves. A similar situation exists in the motion picture theatre during a performance. We sit in the dark looking at a light screen; this gives a definite feeling of depth. In order to continue this depth on the screen, the progression from dark to light must be followed up. The spot which should appear to be the most distant should be the lightest, and vice versa…
I have no doubt that there are more useful tomes on the market for a student of contemporary cinematography, but if you like a bit of history along with useful tips you’ll find Painting with Light a good read. Like a time capsule, reading Alton’s book today reveals which bits of the past were transient fads and which were timeless universal truths. The importance of depth, the tricks of lighting for different faces, the textural power of cross-lighting, the drama of back-lighting… There are plenty of timeless truths here, and in learning them from Alton you’ll be following in the footsteps of many great cinematographers.
As you would expect from the master of noir, Alton’s chapter on mystery lighting emphasizes the importance of shadows.
A clip from The First Musketeer has been released. Taken from episode three, it shows the first meeting between Athos and the mysterious Marion.
Rocamadour. Crazy, huh?
This was shot at Rocamadour, a medieval town carved into the side of a gorge. (Read director Harriet Sams’ blog for more on the locations of The First Musketeer.) And I think this may have been the night when gaffer Richard Roberts quite literally got a shock as the 1.2K HMI ballast packed up. His arm was numb for 20 minutes. Fortunately this happened after he had executed some nice steadicam work for the early part of this scene.
Come to think of it, it was probably also the night he knackered “the donkey”. Take a moment to come up with your own jokes. Done? Okay, so the donkey was his van. Yeah, not so funny, but at least I let you dream for a bit. Anyway, you can imagine how steep the road was to get down to this place. Now imagine it’s also incredibly narrow. And that the van is quite small but loaded full of generators and other heavy kit. Like I say, Richard knackered his donkey.
Richard avec le steadicam. Photo: Jessica Ozlo
My recollection is that this was our first big night exterior, and I remember being shocked at how long it took just to cable everything. Often we were throwing cables over balconies to someone else below – to avoid running the cable through shot. When it was unavoidable, the wonderful art department – Amy Nicholson and her assistant Denise Barry – would come in and hide the cables with straw. It really felt like 30% of the set-up time was planting the lights, and the other 70% was running the cables, hiding the cables, siting the generators, checking we weren’t overloading either of them, discovering we were even though the generators were rated a full kilowatt above what we were drawing, deciding to run some stuff off the mains, blowing a fuse because the electrics are old, failing to find the fusebox, etc, etc.
When lighting night exteriors, I tend to start from the back and work my way forwards. Backlight lets you see everything without really seeing it, and then you can add in pools of light from the sides when you need to see more. So for the wide shot at the start of the scene, the first lamp to go up was a 1.2K HMI (before it died), right at the back. There was some debate about whether we could site it there, because it was on some steps which were used occasionally during the night by the resident monks. Yep, monks. In the end we said “screw it” and put it there, leaving as much room as possible for the monks to get past it. Once smoke was pumped in, that HMI gave us the nice blue ambience in the background.
Nicole O’Neill as Marion De Lorme. Photo: Jessica Ozlo
Opposite the door of the tavern were a couple of Dedos creating pools of light around the candles – more on that in a future post. In the foreground I placed a Kinoflo on the floor to the left of frame, dimmed right down and diffused, just so characters wouldn’t be complete silhouettes going under the arch.
The conversation between Athos and Marion is backlit by a Dedo boomed over their heads, behind them (from the camera’s point of view). It wraps around Marion’s face enough to make out her profile, which is about all you want in a mysterious scene like this. There’s some bounce on Athos which I think was just coming off the surrounding stone. The only other lamp was a 2.5K HMI, lighting the background. For Marion’s close-up, I aimed the Dedo at Athos and let the bounce off his shirt and jacket light her face.
If you want me to rationalise it now, I’d have to say that this Dedo represents a particularly bright moon, and the HMI represents starlight. Frankly this was one of those cases where making it look good seemed more important than making it look realistic.
On the left, a real streetlight. On the right, a 650W Arrilite with Urban Sodium gel.
Saturday night saw the third and final day of production on Forever Alone. If you haven’t already, check out my blogs on day one and two of this sci-fi short by Jordan Morris. (I’ve gone back and added some frame grabs into the day two post.)
This time around, our lighting kit had grown just slightly with the addition of a 650W Arrilite. Without this it would have been near impossible to light the nighttime alley scenes that were scheduled. The alley in question was in a suburban area, conveniently adjacent to the producer’s house and thus a power source.
I knew going into this shoot that I would have to embrace the sodium vapour streetlamps. In the past I’ve always avoided or flagged them, because that grungy orange look gives away that you don’t have the budget to swap out the bulbs like they do in Hollywood. American film and TV nights are always steely blue; British film and TV nights are usually seedy orange. With only one flag and one C-stand in our kit, however, I had no choice.
The orange backlight on Faith (Haruka Abe) and the fence, although apparently from the streetlamp in the background, is actually from an Arrilite 650 out of frame right, gelled with Urban Sodium. A daylight-balanced LED panel, also out of frame right but closer to camera, keys Faith. A second panel hidden behind the end of the fence lights the white van and the grass in the background.
Fortunately there were no streetlamps close enough to spill light onto our character, Faith (Haruka Abe) – they were only creating pools of light in the background, which helped add depth. I used one in particular to motivate a strong backlight, in reality generated by the Arrilite, gelled of course with Urban Sodium (Lee no. 652).
For colour contrast, an LED panel set to 5,600K threw in a little “moonlight” from the side. The second panel, also set to daylight, was positioned to light the deep background. It was so handy, as I raced to rig our final set-up before wrap, to be able to slap a V-lock battery on one of these panels and move it across the street in seconds.
When Other Faith appears on the scene, she’s keyed by a Dedo covered with tough-spun diffuser and the characteristic Medium Blue/Green gel. My favourite shot of the night was her close-up:
Haruka Abe as Other Faith. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
Emulating the beautiful contrasty look of the TV show Fringe, I eliminated all fill light to put one side of her face in crisp, black shadow. An LED panel backlights her hair, while the Urban Sodium-gelled Arrilite rakes across the fence in the background.
Eliminating the fill was unexpectedly difficult – a downside of using a sensitive camera. The slightest bit of bounce would contaminate the blacks, as did a faux period streetlamp in the adjacent garden. It’s hard to figure out where unwanted light is coming from when it’s so dim that your naked eye can barely perceive it.
Forever Alone is now wrapped, and Jordan’s beginning the processes of editing and adding extensive visual effects. Personally I’ve learnt a lot about how far a camera be pushed, specifically the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Many of the wide shots I’ve reviewed are under-exposed (partly due to our widest lens being relatively slow) but the raw data allows the exposure to be bumped up in post without them looking nasty.
What’s the most you’ve ever had to push a camera?
In this splitscreen shot, the two Faiths are backlit by the 650 – this time without a gel, while an LED panel gelled with Urban Sodium lights the background. A second LED panel, daylight balanced, keys the downside of First Faith (left), while a Dedo gelled with Medium Blue/Green keys the downside of Other Faith (right).
Day two saw us shooting a big scene in the dining room. Since the location was only available to us during daylight hours, the windows had to be blacked out with bin bags. Ideally for night interiors, I would put an HMI outside to shine “moonlight” in through the windows, and perhaps use halogen floodlights to create depth and interest in the deep background. This can bother some directors, however, because it means leaving the curtains open – hardly realistic. I figured that if I could create an interesting night interior look on Forever Alone without the crux of open curtains and deep background, it would give me a lot of confidence in the future when working with those restrictions.
An LED panel hidden behind the wall that Charlotte is leaning on supplements the ceiling light from a more flattering angle. A CTB-gelled Kinoflo Divalite provides the blue wash in the foreground. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
I began by turning on the ceiling light, something I almost never do. I’m not a big fan of toplight, but it seemed appropriate given the interrogative nature of the scene, and I knew I could add bounced light off the table-top if the look was too harsh. Also, the shadow of the lightshade added some interest to the room’s blank white walls. I used the 60W tungsten bulb, and placed black-wrap across the top of the shade to prevent bounce off the ceiling from raising the ambient light level.
Cardboard barn doors. This kind of DIY solution is so much easier with sources that don’t get hot.
I clamped the Dedo to the top of a mirror directly behind Faith, which allowed me to give her a dedicated backlight. I gelled this pink, foreshadowing her eyes glowing this colour at the end of the script.
Other Faith, a visual representation of the heroine’s darker side, was keyed by another dedicated source, this time gelled with Medium Blue/Green again. Ideally this source would have been a Dedo, to achieve fine control, but only an LED panel remained available. So to reduce the panel’s spill onto other characters, I fashioned makeshift barn doors out of a cardboard box.
To light the living room – visible in the background on reverses – I employed the Divalight. This was gelled blue to suggest moonlight and create some depth and separation – a proxy, I suppose, for those deep backgrounds I couldn’t have outside the windows.
Much has been made in recent years of the low-light sensitivity of modern digital cameras, and the attendant reduction in required lighting power. When competing with natural light, larger instruments are still necessary, but Forever Alone really helped me to see what can be achieved with minimal gear. This weekend I get to see how much I can push this in a night exterior scene, as we complete principal photography. Stay tuned.
Working from the foreground back, an LED panel to the right provides the key on Charlotte (centre), with fill supplied by the ceiling light. Other Faith (right) is keyed by a second panel, gelled with Medium Blue/Green. A Dedo provides backlight, while a blue-gelled Divalite illuminates the background. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
Haruka Abe as Faith in Forever Alone. She is side-lit by an LED panel and 3/4 backlit by a Dedo, while a Kinoflo Divalite illuminates the background. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
When I was offered the role of DP on sci-fi short Forever Alone, I must confess that I had pause for thought. It was a student production, and the lighting package available from the university was much smaller than I’m used to. But I figured it would be a good challenge for me, to see if I could deliver a slick sci-fi look for a script set entirely at night, using only a handful of small instruments.
Creating darkness around the garage door meant making good use of the garage’s random contents.
The package consisted of a Dedo kit, a Kinoflo Divalite, two 12×12″ LED panels, a collapsible reflector, a single C-stand (with an arm but no knuckle) and one flag. And we quickly discovered that the Dedo kit contained only one in-tact bubble. On arriving at the house location, I checked out all the ceiling lights and, amongst the energy saver bulbs, found a single 60W tungsten globe. I immediately added that to my modest arsenal, along with my trusty £2 LED camping light which I’d brought along. Additionally, at my request, director Jordan Morris purchased a powerful LED torch for a key sequence. Dynamic practical lighting always looks good, and I thought it might help fill in any areas which our other sources couldn’t reach.
£2 LED camping light
We were shooting on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera with three Canon primes, the slowest of which was f2.8. Regular shots would be recorded in 1080P ProRes, while VFX plates would be captured in the 2.5K CinemaDNG Raw format. I feared I would be struggling to light to f2.8 without raising the camera’s ISO above its native 800, but in fact only one scene felt underexposed.
Interactive light, the low-tech way: a 60W bulb on a stick
This scene took place in the garage, where the lead character, Faith, uses her superhuman abilities to generate a glowing light source above her head. To create the requisite interactive light, I borrowed the pendant fitting from the ceiling of the garage, removed the fluorescent bulb, put in the 60W tungsten globe and taped it to the end of a broomstick. I had chosen Medium Blue/Green as Faith’s “special powers” colour, but this is a very dark gel. With only a 60W bulb inside, even boomed above Faith’s head, it didn’t shed quite as much light as I wanted. Hopefully these shots, recorded in Raw, can be brought up in the VFX/grading process without too much noise creeping in.
Other sources used in the garage included the two LED panels, colour-balanced to 5600K so as to show up blue on the tungsten-balanced camera. These were positioned in the rafters at either end of the space and dimmed right down, to give a hint of backlight to scenes supposedly taking place in pitch blackness.
The garage’s ceiling light, turned on by the characters of Mitchell and Charlotte when they enter, was represented by our only functioning Dedo. I chose the Dedo for its focus; I didn’t want the room awash with light, just a pool of illumination that would still have shape and mysterious shadows.
Stella Taylor and Oliver Park, as Charlotte and Mitchell, are keyed here by a Dedo in the rafters. A foreground glow is created by an LED panel. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
For several shots I used my LED camping light as a key, believe it or not, even going so far as to rig it on a stand for certain close-ups. The distances involved were small, so it was quite effective. In one shot (not the one pictured below) I bounced it off the floor AND covered it in tough-spun diffuser, to get an ultra-sublte eyelight.
Haruka Abe as Other Faith, keyed by the LED camping light shown above. Image courtesy of Jordan Morris
Stay tuned for my report from day two of the shoot.
Back in early 2012, gaffer Colin Smith and I built a wagon light – or Cyclotron, as it was soon dubbed. Alright, Colin did most… all of the building, despite what this video may appear to show.
The dimmer board controlling the Cyclotron sits on the arm of the sofa next to the tungsten avenger itself.
Shooting Coffin Grabber, directed by Claire Elizabeth Alberie, we needed firelight to play on the face of a character called Phil. I asked Col to rig up a bank of eight 100W bulbs, running two of them into each of the four channels on his dimmer board. During the takes he would oscillate the faders in random patterns to suggest the flicker of flames.
In front of the bulbs I hung a sheet of Urban Sodium gel. Given Phil’s character, I didn’t want the sunny feel of a straw colour or the homely orange of CTO (Colour Temperature Orange). I happened to have some Urban Sodium in my gels bin and I felt that had just the right dirty, gritty and a little bit hell-ish look for Phil.
There are many ways to simulate firelight. Check out this blog by Shane Hurlbut about how he built an elaborate rig using gooseneck microphone mounts for The Greatest Game Ever Played. And look out for a forthcoming post from me on simulating candlelight when The First Musketeer is released.
Phil (Ross O’Hennessy) basks in the warm glow of the Cyclotron.
As a cinematographer, the idea of shooting at night, working from a blank canvas, can be very appealing. As a director or producer comparing your schedule to the limited hours of daylight we have at this time of year, it can also seem tempting to shift things to after dark. By all means do so; it will probably look great on screen, but do consider the following things first…
Let’s not beat about the bush: it’s unpleasant. Human beings are not built to work in the dark. It’s usually cold and when it rains as well it’s one of the most depressing experiences you can have on a set. If you shoot at night, morale will suffer.
It’s slow. People don’t work as fast at night, because they’re tired and cold and they can’t see what they’re doing very well. Also everything has to be lit, which is very time-consuming. Expect to get about half as much done as you would during the day.
Location owners may not like it. Most premises will be closed at night, which usually makes it easier to film there, but the location owners will need to find a member of staff willing to stay up all night and keep an eye on the place. Could be expensive.
Power can be an issue. You’ll be using lots of lights, and homes and businesses you might normally run power from will not be so readily accessible after hours. You’re probably in generator territory, which means hire costs, transportation issues, refuelling, annoying trip-outs even though you’re drawing a full kilowatt less than the generator’s alleged maximum load… and of course nightmares for the sound department.
Other logistical things which are straightforward in the daytime can prove difficult at night, like catering and access to toilet facilities. Crews need a lot of hearty, hot food to get them through the night, but who’s going to cook it or warm it up at 2 o’clock in the morning? Hot beverages should also be in plentiful supply.
Many buildings have some kind of external lighting than comes on at night, either on a timer or motion-activated. The DP is unlikely to want that on, so the locations department must ensure access to the switches.
Generally locations will be quieter at night, but beware of drunken revellers, street-cleaning machines and automatic systems that kick in in the middle of the night.
On A Cautionary Tale ,we have a script that is set entirely in daylight, but in order to fit it all into three days of shooting, some of it will almost certainly have to be done after dark. The most important question must always be: is it right for the story? In our case, with the film’s supernatural undertones, I think darkness can only add to the atmosphere.
On a pick-up shoot a couple of months back I found myself in the position of needing to mould the natural light without any equipment whatsoever. The sun was shining brightly with no clouds in sight, and we needed to shoot a close-up that would match an existing overcast wide shot. Fortunately there was a B&M just around the corner. Unfortunately no-one took any pictures of the ridiculous set-up that ensued, hence the comedy illustration.
Here’s how to do it:
Get yourself round to B&M. (Other depressing discount stores are available.)
The sheet is going to be your “silk”. First of all, cut the elastic corners to make it easier to wrangle.
Assign Unfortunate Crewmember #1 to hold up the sheet so that it casts a shadow on the talent. It will soften the direct sunlight falling on the them, but there will probably still be darker shadows on their face than you want, so…
Unroll a couple of feet of the foil. This is going to be your bounce card.
Assign Unfortunate Crewmember #2 to stand on the shade side of the talent and use the foil to reflect some direct sunlight into that side their face.
Hope that this is not the day the photographer from the local paper visits the set.
So, you’re in the middle of shooting a scene. You’ve shot everything in one direction and now it’s time to turn around and shoot the reverses. The director of photography must make a decision: do I go for realistic or matching reverses?
Imagine you have a simple scene in which character A stands facing character B and they exchange dialogue. It’s night exterior so you’ve given A a blue backlight and a white frontlight. Realistically then, since B is facing in the opposite direction, he should have a white backlight and a blue frontlight. But do you really want one person’s face to be blue and the other’s to be white? Wouldn’t it be better for B to have a blue backlight and a white frontlight, to match nicely with A? That’s the dilemma.
A matching shot-reverse from Soul Searcher. Both characters have blue backlight, but somehow neither of them have blue frontlight.A realistic shot-reverse from Stop/Eject. The magenta light strikes Alice (left) from the front but Kate (right) from behind.
TV shows seem to plump mostly for matching reverses, whereas movies tend to be a little more realistic, but this is a very rough generalisation. When deciding which style to go for, here are some things you might consider:
Is the overall look of the piece stylised or realistic?
Does lighting the characters differently help to underscore the power dynamics in their relationship, or enhance their characters in some way?
Will the audience have clearly seen a window or other prominent light source in the scene to show that more light would be coming from one direction than another?
Will the light that looks so great as a backlight on character A look unpleasantly harsh as a frontlight on character B? (The answer here is usually yes. That is the whole reason cinematographers have to relight when they do the reverses.)
There is of course middle ground between matching and realistic reverses – tweaking the lighting so that an audience can still buy the continuity of it but it looks good on character B. Usually that is the middle ground we tread, but you will have to decide which style to lean towards.
Incidentally, I believe that a cinematographer should always try to differentiate the status of the characters in a shot-reverse in some way, even if you go for a matching lighting scheme. For example, in the Soul Searcher shots above, Joe’s nervousness is reflected by his close-up being handheld, while Heather’s is locked off. Another example would be a higher angle for one character and lower angle for the other. Best to keep it subtle though!
