Movie vs Theatrical Lighting
- Thread starterTyler
- Start date
meatpopsicle
Active Member
Well, hmmm.
As a frequent gaffer, and the current programmer for a very large movie about to shoot here in ny, the replys here are, happily, pretty accurate. However....
the rig I'm programming on has 768 dimmers, 96 are 12k, and 192 dmx controlled relays (called duece boards - 48 channels). Each rack gets its own 4/0 run with double pump neutral. We've used about 150 100' runs of soca and 100 100' runs of 100amp bates. I'm driving an Expression 3x 1200. I almost went with an ION but the gaffer wasn't impressed with the feedback from three other shows that were using it. The fact that it took the shop guy 10 minutes to do a 3 light chase and he couldn't load it onto a sub sealed its fate. As the programmer/board op. its my job to make all the "maps" (plots) of the sets and lights for the gaffer and crew and to put together all the paperwork to support the rig - channel sheets, dimmer schedules ect. ect. I'm using WYSIWG r23. Most people in the industry use VW, one uses vw with show designer and a lot use the mod. 1A pencil. All my paperwork is in Excel since I've only had a week to plot and its faster to come up with schedules when all u have is dimmers and circuits and no lights.
We are in a stage that is 190 x 100 and will have 2 sets on it. There is no daylight units (hmi) since we're inside. We do have 6 20k fresnels for one set which we are running at 220v by pairing differently phased 12k dimmers. And we're using a lot of tungsten pars from mole richardson (like daylight pars only with tungsten lamps). The coolest light I've seen on this set is a 20kw beam projector that we tested. Think of a sunbeam coming 120' through real (fake windows), the unit is rigged on a boomed man lift ("condor") and has an operator in the bucket at all times to focus.
The goal of movie lightng (generalizing) is to make a fake world look as real as possible. We use a lot of soft lighting (read bounce sources) the bigger the source to the subject the softer the shadow. As one poster put it if the camera doesn't see it you can put something there...however usually somebody else has put something there - like set dressers (the scenics who put dressing on a set (props the actor won't touch as opposed to "props" - stuff the actor will touch). We've just spent 3 weeks pre rigging the stage with 8 electricians a day (riggers, called grips, were also 8 a day).
this set will shoot for a week or so. Then we go on location for a couple of weeks while the set next to it is finished. then we come back and shoot the other half of the stage for a week or so. Then we go away and shoot on location (a 3 block stretch of chinatown) for 1 week, then we go to an armory where another 3 sets are built and there is a similar, albiet larger rig, this with movers, atomics, and, hopefully under 1200 dimmers. I'll run the movers on an IPC or Full Boar - what ever See Factor can get me.
and lastly, the tonnage of a "grip truck" is an 80's invocation. Currently most units have a 40' tractor trailer for grip, one for electric, one for rigging grip and one for rigging electric. This doesn't count the straight trucks bringing gear for each specific location. Most trucks mount at least one 1200amp movie generator. Electric trucks frequently run a "twin pack" of two. Most exterior shots at this level will have at least 4 "machines" running. These are just for the two departments that relate to theatre electrics. Of course props has their own truck, wardrobe their own (usually 50') tractor and the ever popular "honey wagon" - dressing rooms and a mens and womens room. Hey, you have a bathroom at your office...and so do we.
Total shooting days - 120
As a frequent gaffer, and the current programmer for a very large movie about to shoot here in ny, the replys here are, happily, pretty accurate. However....
the rig I'm programming on has 768 dimmers, 96 are 12k, and 192 dmx controlled relays (called duece boards - 48 channels). Each rack gets its own 4/0 run with double pump neutral. We've used about 150 100' runs of soca and 100 100' runs of 100amp bates. I'm driving an Expression 3x 1200. I almost went with an ION but the gaffer wasn't impressed with the feedback from three other shows that were using it. The fact that it took the shop guy 10 minutes to do a 3 light chase and he couldn't load it onto a sub sealed its fate. As the programmer/board op. its my job to make all the "maps" (plots) of the sets and lights for the gaffer and crew and to put together all the paperwork to support the rig - channel sheets, dimmer schedules ect. ect. I'm using WYSIWG r23. Most people in the industry use VW, one uses vw with show designer and a lot use the mod. 1A pencil. All my paperwork is in Excel since I've only had a week to plot and its faster to come up with schedules when all u have is dimmers and circuits and no lights.
We are in a stage that is 190 x 100 and will have 2 sets on it. There is no daylight units (hmi) since we're inside. We do have 6 20k fresnels for one set which we are running at 220v by pairing differently phased 12k dimmers. And we're using a lot of tungsten pars from mole richardson (like daylight pars only with tungsten lamps). The coolest light I've seen on this set is a 20kw beam projector that we tested. Think of a sunbeam coming 120' through real (fake windows), the unit is rigged on a boomed man lift ("condor") and has an operator in the bucket at all times to focus.
The goal of movie lightng (generalizing) is to make a fake world look as real as possible. We use a lot of soft lighting (read bounce sources) the bigger the source to the subject the softer the shadow. As one poster put it if the camera doesn't see it you can put something there...however usually somebody else has put something there - like set dressers (the scenics who put dressing on a set (props the actor won't touch as opposed to "props" - stuff the actor will touch). We've just spent 3 weeks pre rigging the stage with 8 electricians a day (riggers, called grips, were also 8 a day).
this set will shoot for a week or so. Then we go on location for a couple of weeks while the set next to it is finished. then we come back and shoot the other half of the stage for a week or so. Then we go away and shoot on location (a 3 block stretch of chinatown) for 1 week, then we go to an armory where another 3 sets are built and there is a similar, albiet larger rig, this with movers, atomics, and, hopefully under 1200 dimmers. I'll run the movers on an IPC or Full Boar - what ever See Factor can get me.
and lastly, the tonnage of a "grip truck" is an 80's invocation. Currently most units have a 40' tractor trailer for grip, one for electric, one for rigging grip and one for rigging electric. This doesn't count the straight trucks bringing gear for each specific location. Most trucks mount at least one 1200amp movie generator. Electric trucks frequently run a "twin pack" of two. Most exterior shots at this level will have at least 4 "machines" running. These are just for the two departments that relate to theatre electrics. Of course props has their own truck, wardrobe their own (usually 50') tractor and the ever popular "honey wagon" - dressing rooms and a mens and womens room. Hey, you have a bathroom at your office...and so do we.
Total shooting days - 120
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If this is the Long Island location, then I'm coming to see this thing. I'm off Tues & Wed. and may join my wife for lunch one of those days and will come looking.
Steve B.
meatpopsicle
Active Member
Sadly, this is not Salt, which is shooting at the Grumman plant in Bethpage. I wish...since I live in Bethpage. My show is Sorcerer's Apprentice, shooting at Steiner. And we only tested it... I think the DP went with 10k tung. pars. Sorry to disappoint. KBritt has Salt.
You've got some great responses about the gear... Now I'm going to throw in a bit about the design side too...
The human eye is very good at calibrating itself. In a few seconds it adjusts to a wide variety of intensities and color temperatures. When you're outside in daylight, a very bright blue light looks white to you... you step inside and within moments a much dimmer warm amber light can look white... and both lights allow you to read text with the same ease.
The camera is a mechanical instrument designed to capture light. It has controls that can be adjusted by the operator to adjust how much light it lets in, but only within a narrow range (at least when related to the human eye.) The DP doesn't want to use the iris on the camera to adjust the light input, because this ALSO adjusts the depth of field (how much of the scene, depth wise, is in focus or blurred). And then you have to consider the actual film. There are hundreds of film stocks available, each with their own sensitivity to light, and furthermore, with their own sensitivity to different colors of light.
The DP has to consider the lighting when selecting film stock, and the film stock when setting up the lighting. You have to keep the intensity and color within the parameters that the film stock can capture on this particular camera. For a lot of 'films' these days, we're actually talking about shooting on video... but even here the ccd chips have sensitivities to certain wavelengths... and these can be adjusted somewhat, but must always be considered. All of these technical considerations relate to the theatrical designer's responsibility to provide adequate visibility...
Next comes the artistry... There have been some good posts that mentioned that a lot of the color is added to film in post... this is true but not absolutely. If you're not 'sure' about what you need it to look like, you might choose to light the scene conservatively and add in the 'artistic touch' in post. But a good DP knows that the more of the scene he gets right 'in camera' the better.
Good film lighting (and theatre lighting for that matter) is about contrast. I often have a black and white monitor next to a calibrated color one when I'm shooting on location. The lighting needs to look good on BOTH monitors to actually be good. In live theatre, sometimes color and depth can be relied on to help the audience focus on a foreground object but not a background one. These are tricks you use in film too, but in film, a difference of intensity should almost ALWAYS exist between the subject and the background.
A big function of film lighting is softening the effect of natural lighting that is too harsh. If you're shooting outside on a sunny day you may turn on a LOT of light and use reflectors and diffusers in various places to put light on the 'shadow' side of the face and to soften the sunlight onto the bright side so that the camera, with it's narrow 'contrast ratio' (ratio between the brightest thing it can capture and the darkest) can record the whole image without parts bleaching out to white and parts fading off to black.
Typically fewer(but often FAR brighter) light sources are used in film than theatre because the camera gets in close and complicated or multiple shadows get very distracting. The sun casts one shadow of you as you walk down the street. In a theatre, a system of 12 lights may represent this sunlight into various areas of the stage, and the audience never really minds the fact that as you walk from one light to the next you have two shadows for an instant... the film audience will notice this very quickly so if you need a whole street to appear like it's lit from one source, you have to light the whole street with one gigantic source. (or several gigantic sources far enough away that they aproximate one source, in rare and expensive circumstances.)
Composition isn't really the job of lighting in film like it is in theatre... the cameraman should be making sure that an interesting picture with good focus exists at all times. (attention focus, not lens focus.) Lighting DOES have to sell location and mood though and this can be difficult. Getting the scene bright enough that the camera captures a clean image and making it look like a dark and dirty night club can be tough objectives to reconcile. You have to point a light at every surface that the camera can see at any given moment, and you will use the metal screens to adjust the intensity relationship between these various objects.
Good film making uses a LOT of color... but generally less saturated colors than the theatre and often not as the primary light source to reveal the talent. This isn't a rule either... lots of film shoots use color (and not just color correction) on the talent too in some scenes. When doing theatre lighting... the lighting designer gets to decide (within limits) what will serve as 'white' for this production. Bastard Amber may be white, 1/2 CT Blue may be white, and I've seen pale greens that when used in context for the right play, I believed as 'white' for that show. In the movie theatre, the audience knows what white is and knows if you're deviating from it... so all color is considered in reference to true 'white' (whatever that really is.... get familiar with the color temperature scale) whereas in theatre I reference all color to whatever I've defined as 'white' for this prodution. (for example... if L201 is white for the show...R52 is a warm color. If R03 is white for the show, R52 is a cool color...) The overall artistic 'color cast(the difference between the look of 'The Matrix' and the look of 'The Transporter')' and the look of ' of the film is set by the film choice and the post processing... the lighting defines how color changes in reference to this overall look.
I hope some of this helps! Shout if you want clarification, more details, or just to argue about any of this!
Art
The human eye is very good at calibrating itself. In a few seconds it adjusts to a wide variety of intensities and color temperatures. When you're outside in daylight, a very bright blue light looks white to you... you step inside and within moments a much dimmer warm amber light can look white... and both lights allow you to read text with the same ease.
The camera is a mechanical instrument designed to capture light. It has controls that can be adjusted by the operator to adjust how much light it lets in, but only within a narrow range (at least when related to the human eye.) The DP doesn't want to use the iris on the camera to adjust the light input, because this ALSO adjusts the depth of field (how much of the scene, depth wise, is in focus or blurred). And then you have to consider the actual film. There are hundreds of film stocks available, each with their own sensitivity to light, and furthermore, with their own sensitivity to different colors of light.
The DP has to consider the lighting when selecting film stock, and the film stock when setting up the lighting. You have to keep the intensity and color within the parameters that the film stock can capture on this particular camera. For a lot of 'films' these days, we're actually talking about shooting on video... but even here the ccd chips have sensitivities to certain wavelengths... and these can be adjusted somewhat, but must always be considered. All of these technical considerations relate to the theatrical designer's responsibility to provide adequate visibility...
Next comes the artistry... There have been some good posts that mentioned that a lot of the color is added to film in post... this is true but not absolutely. If you're not 'sure' about what you need it to look like, you might choose to light the scene conservatively and add in the 'artistic touch' in post. But a good DP knows that the more of the scene he gets right 'in camera' the better.
Good film lighting (and theatre lighting for that matter) is about contrast. I often have a black and white monitor next to a calibrated color one when I'm shooting on location. The lighting needs to look good on BOTH monitors to actually be good. In live theatre, sometimes color and depth can be relied on to help the audience focus on a foreground object but not a background one. These are tricks you use in film too, but in film, a difference of intensity should almost ALWAYS exist between the subject and the background.
A big function of film lighting is softening the effect of natural lighting that is too harsh. If you're shooting outside on a sunny day you may turn on a LOT of light and use reflectors and diffusers in various places to put light on the 'shadow' side of the face and to soften the sunlight onto the bright side so that the camera, with it's narrow 'contrast ratio' (ratio between the brightest thing it can capture and the darkest) can record the whole image without parts bleaching out to white and parts fading off to black.
Typically fewer(but often FAR brighter) light sources are used in film than theatre because the camera gets in close and complicated or multiple shadows get very distracting. The sun casts one shadow of you as you walk down the street. In a theatre, a system of 12 lights may represent this sunlight into various areas of the stage, and the audience never really minds the fact that as you walk from one light to the next you have two shadows for an instant... the film audience will notice this very quickly so if you need a whole street to appear like it's lit from one source, you have to light the whole street with one gigantic source. (or several gigantic sources far enough away that they aproximate one source, in rare and expensive circumstances.)
Composition isn't really the job of lighting in film like it is in theatre... the cameraman should be making sure that an interesting picture with good focus exists at all times. (attention focus, not lens focus.) Lighting DOES have to sell location and mood though and this can be difficult. Getting the scene bright enough that the camera captures a clean image and making it look like a dark and dirty night club can be tough objectives to reconcile. You have to point a light at every surface that the camera can see at any given moment, and you will use the metal screens to adjust the intensity relationship between these various objects.
Good film making uses a LOT of color... but generally less saturated colors than the theatre and often not as the primary light source to reveal the talent. This isn't a rule either... lots of film shoots use color (and not just color correction) on the talent too in some scenes. When doing theatre lighting... the lighting designer gets to decide (within limits) what will serve as 'white' for this production. Bastard Amber may be white, 1/2 CT Blue may be white, and I've seen pale greens that when used in context for the right play, I believed as 'white' for that show. In the movie theatre, the audience knows what white is and knows if you're deviating from it... so all color is considered in reference to true 'white' (whatever that really is.... get familiar with the color temperature scale) whereas in theatre I reference all color to whatever I've defined as 'white' for this prodution. (for example... if L201 is white for the show...R52 is a warm color. If R03 is white for the show, R52 is a cool color...) The overall artistic 'color cast(the difference between the look of 'The Matrix' and the look of 'The Transporter')' and the look of ' of the film is set by the film choice and the post processing... the lighting defines how color changes in reference to this overall look.
I hope some of this helps! Shout if you want clarification, more details, or just to argue about any of this!
Art
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