production

How to Light How to be Dead

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In September I had the pleasure of working once again with Lara Greenway – star of Soul Searcher, director of Hostile and The Runner, and producer of Hard Boiled Sweets and Danny Dyer vehicle Deviation. This time she was directing a pilot for a comedy web series called How to be Dead, written by Dave Turner. It was released online for Halloween and here it is:

The pub scene is my favourite thing I’ve lit in a long time, so I thought I’d break down what went into it.

The aim was to separate the lead actors from the background as much as possible. This was accomplished through depth of field (shooting at around f2.0), colour contrast (lighting them warmly and the background coolly), backlight and smoke.

Working from the foreground of the shot backwards, we have a crossed pair of Dedos behind camera, each with a half orange gel and each spotted on one of the leads. Hanging from a pair of connected C-stand arms straddling two of the pub’s wooden roof beams is an 800W Arrilite giving the leads a white backlight.

There’s a fireplace off camera to the left (in the master shot). To give the impression of it being lit, I put a reflector in it – gold side facing out – and aimed a 1K Arrilite at this reflector. My trusty gaffer Col wobbles the reflector during takes to create a flickering effect which is visible on some of the closer extras in the left of the frame.

A third Dedo, positioned near the fireplace, is trained on the skeleton hanging in the background.

Outside in the tiny beer garden is a 2.5K HMI that’s blasting through the patio doors. A blue-gelled 1K Arrilite, indoors but in the far background, adds further “moonlight”. Between them these two lamps are illuminating the copious amounts of smoke we pumped in, giving the whole scene a wonderful volume and depth.

Finally, in the far background on the left, there’s a fourth Dedo hidden in the entrance to the ladies’ loo, throwing a little pool of light on a painting on the wall. I also turned on the pub’s existing sconces to create extra contrast.

Hopefully there will be much more of How to be Dead coming soon. Visit howtobedead.com and follow Death himself on Twitter.

And if you’re in the Worcestershire area this weekend, don’t forget to come along to the film festival at The Hive where I’ll be screening Video8 and giving a talk about crowd-funding Stop/Eject.

How to Light How to be Dead

Stop/Eject: Shoot Day 4 Podcast

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A behind-the-scenes look at the fourth day of shooting, finishing up in the shop and moving onto a pressurised shoot in the mill basement. As usual, big thanks to Sophie for editing this.

Better late than never – this is the £1,000 public reward in our crowd-funding campaign. We’re just £22 away from the £1,100 Mystery Reward. Stay tuned to find out what that will be.

Stop/Eject: Shoot Day 4 Podcast

Stop/Eject: Shoot Day 2 Podcast

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Day two of Stop/Eject‘s shoot and we move into the main location: the shop.

(We actually spent half of day two filming Dan’s death scene at the River Gardens in Belper, but sadly the B-roll from this was corrupt, possibly due to being recorded on a dodgy card.)

Thanks to a generous contribution from filmmaker Barend Kruger, Stop/Eject‘s post-production crowd-funding total has jumped up to £856, smashing through no less than three public reward targets. We’re going to stagger the release of these rewards over the next couple of weeks, but the above video was the first one.

In return for his contribution, I’ll be DPing Barend’s short film next month, a psychological thriller called Mary, Mary. I think this is a fantastic example of filmmakers collaborating to help each other’s projects succeed, and I’m really grateful to Barend for approaching me with the idea. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about his film on this blog, and the trailer for it will ultimately feature on Stop/Eject’s DVD.

Stop/Eject: Shoot Day 2 Podcast

Lighting without Movie Lights

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After my last post ranting about the very limited usefulness of redheads, I was asked what the alternative is for cash-strapped DPs. There are plenty of cheap fluorescent photography-studio-type lighting kits available on eBay now, but they have their own problems. So can you light without any film lights at all? Yes, you can – and here are a few examples.

Check out my pieces to camera in the Stop/Eject funding pitch which follows the trailer in this video:

£2 LED camping light
£2 LED camping light

I was so lazy when I filmed this that even though I was only two metres away from where I keep my Arrilites, I didn’t use them. There are three light sources in this shot:

  1. My key-light is an ordinary, bare, domestic 100W bulb (NOT an energy-saver) clipped to a proper light stand. I wish I’d put it a touch closer to camera and a touch higher so that my right eye was better lit.
  2. My backlight is an LED camping light (£2 from a charity shop) propped up on top of a bookcase out of the rear left of frame.
  3. Behind me is a thin brown curtain through which daylight can be seen. Since I’m shooting on a tungsten white balance preset, this and the camping light appear blue.
Total value of the kit I used to light this: less than £5
Total value of the kit I used to light this: less than £5
By the way, if you haven’t contributed to Stop/Eject please do so over at stopejectmovie.com. We need everyone’s help to reach our funding total and complete the film.

Shelf Stackers (2011, dir. Tom Wadlow) is a comedy set mainly in the aisles of a supermarket – in reality a set in a conference centre. Colin and I rigged half a dozen 500W DIY work-lights to the ceiling using the method I described in a July post, in a line running down the centre of the aisle, all of them facing towards camera to provide backlight throughout the set.

I’ll confess there were a couple of Arrilites poking over the tops of the shelves, but often we used something much lower-tech as our key-light: a dozen 100W bulbs rowed up on a long piece of timber – the Cyclotron, as we dubbed it. The intention was to emulate the long, thin source of a fluorescent tube without the associated cycling and colour balance issues.

The Ikea reading light used as my backlight in the shot below
My backlight in the shot below

And here’s another one of me where I was too lazy to break out the proper lights. This is my living room, and the existing ceiling light – an energy-saver bulb in a spherical white Ikea shade – is providing the key. I made sure I stood in a position where this would illuminate both my eye sockets. I’m backlit by another Ikea product – a goose-necked reading light clipped to a bookcase out of shot.

Remember you can get a digital download of the full video, “How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000” by donating £10 to Stop/Eject.

Lighting by Ikea
Lighting by Ikea

I hope that’s given you some ideas. And if you’ve done a good, cheapo lighting set-up yourself, leave a comment or Facebook me; I’d love to hear about it.

Lighting without Movie Lights

Fire and Ashes

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Last week I looked at some watery lighting created for one of the fantasy scenes in Sophie’s short, Ashes. Today let’s look at another of the film’s fantasy scenes and another element: fire.

Sophie wanted a 1940s Hollywood look to this romantic scene set in a room full of candles. Shane Hurlbut recently posted a great blog about building an artificial firelight source, but given the size and layout of the room I didn’t feel this was going to work for us. When I lit the Wasteland trailer last autumn I used domestic 100W clip-lights to represent candlelight, and this is what I chose to go for again.

Sarah Lamesch and Adam Lannon in the "Hollywood" scene
Sarah Lamesch and Adam Lannon in the “Hollywood” scene

There are about half a dozen 100W bulbs hidden on the floor behind the bed, and another half dozen on a boom arm out the top of frame, again behind the actors. There are no other light sources but the candles themselves. To give a little bit of movement to the light, my righthand man Col is wobbling a reflector just off camera. More movement would have been nice – some dimmers perhaps, or someone lying behind the bed wiggling the bulbs a bit – but given that it was a closed set I felt it was better to keep things simple.

Col tapes the tights to a filter tray
Col tapes the tights to a filter tray

I was so focused on the lighting of this scene that it was only the day before the shoot that I realised the key to the forties look was going to be diffusion. By this point it was too late to add any Promist filters to our package, so I consulted Shane’s blogs on diffusion for other methods of softening the image. AD Chris was subsequently dispatched to buy some tights.

In an ideal world you get hold of some very fine silk stockings and tape a piece to the back of your lens. We were stuck with bog-standard 15 denier, and the design of the EF-S lens mount makes it impossible to put anything over the rear element, so it had to go on the front. Col stretched the piece of fabric across one of my Pro-aim shoulder rig’s 4×4″ filter trays. Putting the tights on the front rather than the back makes the effect much less subtle, but fortunately Sophie really liked it. You can see it in action on the still above, but I’ll leave you with a side-by-side comparison from a quick test we did on lead actress Sarah Lamesch:

Sarah Lamesch with (right) and without (left) the stocking filter
Sarah Lamesch with (right) and without (left) the stocking filter
Fire and Ashes

Water and Ashes

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The opening frame of the big track and dolly shot
The opening frame of the big track and dolly shot

Earlier this week I DPed Sophie Black’s short film, Ashes. The script contained three fantasy scenes which were really fun to light because they didn’t have to be in any way realistic. All the scenes took place in the same bedroom, so here was a great opportunity to light the same space in three completely different and pretty whacky ways (plus in a more down-to-earth way for the “real world” scenes).

In lighting the fantasy scenes I drew inspiration from techniques covered in some of the blogs I listed in my top five last week. Sophie’s vision for one fantasy scene was of the lead character, played by Sarah Lamesch, on a bed adrift on a sea of hands. The hands were moulded in plaster and spread all over the floor, and it was my job to create the impression of water through lighting. So I turned to The Underwater Realm’s website, recalling a video blog they posted last year when their DP Eve Hazelton began testing lighting techniques for dry-for-wet photography (around six minutes in).

The silver wrapping paper on the ceiling
The silver wrapping paper on the ceiling

Big thanks to Realm Pictures for posting this blog. Although Eve ultimately rejected the technique in favour of something more realistic, it was perfect for Ashes. I had Sophie buy several rolls of silver wrapping paper, which we pinned loosely to the ceiling. I placed a 1.2K Arri Daylight Compact on the floor in the corner, pointed up at the paper. As we rolled, Sophie aimed a desk fan at the paper to create rippling, watery reflections.

I knew I wanted to do something special with Sarah’s incredibly striking eyes in this scene, to complement the make-up. I started off by having Colin rig a DIY lamp above her, surrounded by black wrap and card with only a slit of light coming through to highlight her eyes. Unfortunately I discovered that the light from DIY lamps just isn’t focused enough for this kind of effect, so I abandoned it.

Instead I created Sarah’s eye-light using a string of white Christmas lights taped to a piece of black card. This was inspired by Galadriel’s eye-light in The Lord of the Rings – a reference Sophie gave me. As it turns out, I think the starry reflections you see in Sarah’s eyes here are more from the silver paper than the fairy lights.

Sarah Lamesch
Sarah Lamesch as Sarah

This scene was also interesting from a grip point of view. We’d borrowed a jib, which we mounted on my dolly so that we could boom up from the hands on the floor, over the footboard and track to Sarah’s face. This was a real team effort. Colin handled the dolly and jib movement, while first assistant director Chris Newman operated the camera to begin with. As soon as the camera had cleared the footboard I jumped up onto the bed and took over from Chris for the rest of the shot.

In my next couple of posts I’ll look at the other fantasy scenes and we’ll see how Shane Hurlbut’s blog and a Lana Del Rey video inspired the cinematography in those.

Water and Ashes

Makeshift Lighting Grid

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Keeping lights – especially their stands – out of shot can be a real challenge in some locations. If you’re filming in an office or other type of commercial building, you probably won’t be allowed to screw into the walls or ceilings – but there is another way to hang lamps.

If your location has a false ceiling, the kind where polystyrene tiles sit on a metal grid, you can pop some of the tiles out and use heavy duty wire to attach lamps to the metal. I’ve done this on two shoots now, most recently Get It On for Catcher Media, where we had a tight schedule and the director wanted lots of roving handheld shots. Col very kindly lent us his DIY work-lights, which are ideal for this sort of thing because they’re not too heavy.

The ceiling of our Get It On location - a kitchen in the Performance Hub of Wolverhampton University
The ceiling of our Get It On location – a kitchen in the Performance Hub of Wolverhampton University

I’d advise you to run separate cables from each lamp to whatever point in the room is least likely to be seen on camera, and from there down to a power socket. Make sure you can unplug any given lamp without having to get up on a ladder, because that will slow down shooting.

When you wrap, just untie the wire, unplug the extensions, slide the tiles back into place and no-one will ever know you were there.

Diffuser and a flag (the latter just fell down) hang from gaffer tape between the lights
Diffuser and a flag (the latter just fell down) hang from gaffer tape between the lights
Makeshift Lighting Grid

Moulding Natural Light

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Today I’m going to take a brief look at what you can do to shape natural light when you’re filming outside and you don’t have the budget for big HMIs or massive silks hanging from cranes.

Firstly, choose the right direction to shoot in. Work out where the sun is going to be at the time you need to film the scene and decide whether you want to shoot into the light, with your back to it or at an angle. There are iPhone apps that will tell you where the sun’s going to be if you’re too lazy to figure it out for yourself. Remember the sun moves left to right across the sky in the northern hemisphere.

Amateur photographers are often told not to shoot towards the sun. This is simply because amateurs will be using auto-exposure, which will close the iris right up as soon as the sun flares into the lens and leave you with a silhouette. As a professional, you’ll be setting your camera manually, so you can expose for the shadows and let the backlight from the sun blow out beautifully.

Here’s a shot from Stop/Eject where we made the most of this effect, and really lucked out with the reflections in the water:

All the evidence you need that shooting towards the sun is good.
All the evidence you need that shooting towards the sun is good.
Using a reflector on the banks of the Derwent. Photo: Paul Bednall
Using a reflector on the banks of the Derwent. Photo: Paul Bednall

Out the bottom of frame is a reflector, bouncing some of the sunlight back at the actors – and it’s being wiggled by a crew member to suggest it’s a watery reflection.

Collapsible reflector
Collapsible reflector

If you don’t have a reflector you should drop what you’re doing and order one now off Amazon. They’re less than £10 and have a reversible zip-off cover giving the options of white, silver or gold surfaces to reflect off, or black to block light. If you remove the cover entirely you’re left with a translucent white disc which can be used to diffuse light, as we’ll see shortly.

If you choose to shoot with your back to the sun, you won’t be able to affect the light in your wide shots without big-budget gear, but you can transform your close-ups.

Let’s look at another example from Stop/Eject, before we did anything to the light:

Before
Before

Georgina Sherrington (“Kate”) is facing directly towards the sun, which is behind and above camera. As you can see, the light is incredibly harsh and the shadows are so dark that you can’t see her eyes; an effect that would only have got worse had I stopped down to prevent the highlights blowing out.

Two reflectors were required to sort this out. The first, with cover removed, was held over her head so that the sunlight hitting her face would have to pass through the translucent material and be diffused. (The diffusion is actually less significant than the amount of light the material blocks.) A second reflector was held out of the bottom of frame, bouncing sunlight back into the shadows on her face and putting a sparkle in her eyes.

After
After

A much nicer image.

If it’s a cloudy day – and let’s face it, this is the overwhelming likelihood here in the UK – the above techniques will still work, but much more subtly. If you have access to a power supply, try to set up a lamp to get some eye-sparkle and fill in your actors’ faces.

In 2008 I DPed a short set entirely in a forest: Into the Woods, directed by Matt Taabu. I knew that getting light into people’s eye sockets was going to be a major challenge, so I insisted on hiring a battery-powered 200W daylight par. We put a layer of tough-spun diffuser on this and the gaffer hand-held it for most shots, aiming it into the talent’s face. You can see the eye-sparkle it produced in this production still:

Branko Tomovic in Into the Woods (2008, dir. Matt Taabu). Photo: Alex Bender
Branko Tomovic in Into the Woods (2008, dir. Matt Taabu). Photo: Alex Bender

So if you’re DPing a daylight exterior, don’t think that means you can rest on your laurels. It’s still up to you to create the right mood and make the talent look their best.

Moulding Natural Light