DV Talk Archives

Lighting for television and documentary.

With a couple of thousand interviews under my belt I have lit for every occasion, under every circumstance and in various sized rooms, some massive, some postage stamp size and some with no power outlets. So you mentally need to be ready for any circumstance, so you don’t fall apart in front of talent and producers.
Almost every shoot I’ve had to light have been within tight deadlines, interviewees rarely want a crew hanging around their homes drinking their coffee and eating their Peek Freans, so you have to get in and have everything set up and be ready to turn over within 10 to 15 minutes, and tear down in 10 then a quick handshake, a goodbye and exchange of business cards.

If you don’t have time for a recce beforehand you have to depend on common sense and a prayer and have the ability to think on your feet when you get there and are under pressure.

The first thing to do is NOT panic.

Get your camera on your tripod and plug in your monitor and find the best shot (Framing) which works on a wide, a mid and a close up.
*If you don’t have a monitor always expose for the face, if you are going to make a mistake in lighting at least it won’t be on the main thing people are looking at.
Choose your Tungsten or Daylight preference. Usually daylight is used if you are in a room with a big window. Although it looks nice, using a window as a backdrop may cause problems with fluctuating light levels if the weather is unpredictable, and again in this case as long as the subject is lit properly then only your background outside light will change.
Controlling your light is a safer and less stressful solution.
Once happy get out three lights and set up in a three point formation point down at subject. A back light, key and fill. www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point. Turn off the available light once you've flicked on your lights to see.
Set up your chair and have your sound recordist or assistant sit in, always pull your subject away from the wall for depth. You may need to use another light with a gobo on the wall behind them for extra creativity. That makes it four point lighting. Distance between camera and subject is also a must to pull your background out of focus if this effect is desired.
*(Gobos control light by blocking, coloring, or diffusing some portion of the beam before it reaches the lens.
Apply gels and filters, I pretty much always use a color gel on the backlight and a frost (diffuser) on my key and sometimes on my fill to create a softer look.
I can’t rave enough about my Chimera (softbox) www.chimeralighting.com. It saves loads of time and replaces my key and fill light with one 650 watt Arri. www.arri.com. (They are a quick fix although you don't have much room to sculpture your lighting with a chimera.)
Zoom in tight on subjects face and expose and check your focus while you are there.
White balance on a white card in front of subject, in the same light your subject is lit in. Also a good idea to black balance as well from time to time.
*(White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.)
When your real subject sits in, just tweak the lights as you see fit for their stature and skin tone. Always be on the look out for nose and chin shadow.
Have a good look at your monitor on the wide, mid and close up to make sure everything looks great and there isn’t a light stand or ugly shadow in the shot.

Good luck!

Being a lighting cameraman, you face the trials and tribulations of uncertainty on every shoot. Not only do you face fires, homicides, irate people, and panicked interviewees but also you must confront tighter budgets and more people fighting for fewer camera jobs in a freelance video world.





With all that in mind, remember that sometimes in addition to controlling a 20 lb. camera on a tired shoulder, you are also a sound recordist and often even the interviewer.





Among the chaos, in no particular order of importance, is a list of 10 basic “off the top of my head” things to check before you roll.

1. Is the colour filter wheel on the right setting? Are you indoor and it’s set to daylight? Vice versa.
   
   
   
   
   
   



2. White balance! Don’t have time, a monitor and the black and white viewfinder getting you down? Auto white balance will do the trick if you are in a panic.
   
   
   
   
   
   



3. Check your lens? There is no excuse for a dirty lens.
   
   
   
   
   
   



4. Is back focus adjusted? Try to check this before you leave the house in case you have to get a shot quick. If it’s not adjusted and you pull out or push in, part of the shot will be out of focus. Before an interview I usually zoom in on the interviewees eyes to check my focus too.
   
   
   
   
   
   



5. Is the gain setting off you were using in low light the night before?
   
   
   
   
   
   



6. Are you set to 4:3 when you should be in 16:9 widescreen or vice versa? It’s pretty important anyways to go through all the menu settings before each shoot.
   
   
   
   
   
   



7. Bring an extra baseplate. Say goodbye to the tripod if you forget your baseplate, unless you have lots of Gaffer tape. I’ve seen this done before and it wasn’t pretty.
   
   
   
   
   
   



8. Don’t know what to expose for? Check your exposure on the interviewees face. I figure people are mostly going to be looking at their faces on the screen, so I zoom in, fill the frame, and take a reading from that. At least the face will be properly exposed.
   
   
   
   
   
   



9. Audio settings a must! you need useable audio also! You can’t have one with out the other.
   
   
   
   
   
   



10. Have you pressed the record button? I think all cameramen have been guilty of this at one at one time or another. But don’t let it happen very often.

Good luck!

In a world where digital dominates, it's almost nostalgic to capture images on gelatin. Last year alone, over one hundred million digital cameras shipped from manufacturers. Digital SLRs have risen significantly, representing five percent or 5 million units.

There's some things that digital still can't touch though. Enter the world of medium format photography.

Pictured right, two strips of film side-by-side. One 35mm (with the sprocket holes) and the other called '120' (which is actually ~70mm). The image on a 35mm strip of film is 24x35mm, on the larger it can be a variety of different shapes but is generally either 60x60mm or 60x70mm. That's a ratio that's approximately 1:4, the medium format film has over four times the surface area.

The most modern [affordable] cameras of this day capture in the neighbourhood of 12 million pixels. At their high end are models like Canon's EOS-1Ds and Nikon's D2X. Each with a 35mm-sized sensor, they capture enough detail to make nice 16x20's.

While digital cameras cater superbly to the majority of photographers' needs, fine art photographers still rely on the detail of film to produce their breathtaking imagery. My camera, a Rollei 6003, captures a 60x60mm image onto film.

The whole film process is very new to me, but I'm planning to get my favorite images scanned by a precise instrument, worth more than a EOS-1Ds or D2X. The optical detail that this instrument captures is said to be 4000 dots-per-inch (dpi). So the theory goes : 2.25"x2.25" of film will produce a digital image with 80 million pixels, enough information to make extraordinary 30"x30" digital prints.

The proof is in the actual output though. I'm planning to explore traditional optical enlarging, lightjet printing and inkjet printing. I know that the traditional will look the best, but I also know that it will cost the most. I'm very interested to see the others.