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Lighting a Nighttime Scene

Lesson 14 from: HDDSLR Filmmaking

Gale Tattersall

Lighting a Nighttime Scene

Lesson 14 from: HDDSLR Filmmaking

Gale Tattersall

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Lesson Info

14. Lighting a Nighttime Scene

Lesson Info

Lighting a Nighttime Scene

He hit one I had asked can you please mention about the importance of a dimmer and how often do you use it and in which case is actually that's a great question and then thank you for reminding me of the things that I forgot dimension and I used him is an awful lot because and and especially the night scenes in night scenes I love to simulate practical xue lost I I always ask the art department tio to give me a cz many practical as is possible by practical is I mean, I'm working with lambs you like lamb tableside lamps or bedside lamps or, you know, hanging lambs or lights in the set sconces on wars and that is like that because it is then gives you a way of justifying light sources, you know, the more practical as you have I mean, I you know, given my own devices, I end up having a set that looks like lambs harass you know, on with thousands of lights everywhere and it's nice to have the opposite and then strip them away just because you didn't know where the active begin teo on dh if...

you have a practical and there's a way of simulating a source as if it came from that branch a girl and I think that's what creates reality and lighting when you can create believability that lighting comes from practical is and going back to the question I do use dipper's a lot because nine teens I love studio lighting like that to be slightly warmer than thirty two hundred I'd like to work down at twenty six hundred twenty eight hundred thereabouts which is it's the equivalent of putting them a quarter cto actually let me just demonstrate that while we're here is it really at least these two jealous here? Can you I'll hold them up against him against the white car can you see this guys that this is what they call a full cto and so it's a dancer for cto you know obviously it's very very orange what a full cdo does basically is that's the difference thank you, miami and that's the difference between a tungsten light and a nature my light it's if anyone was good at math here way should give away a prize for this what's the difference? What what is fifty, six hundred by those thirty two hundred school s o yeah, exactly what I'm talking about the kelvin shift on each of these films is exactly the same but in opposite directions. So in other words, if I put this on an h in my light and then we have one running at the moment on dh take a little time to come up, but in the meantime what I can show you is that this is this is a thirty, two hundred k light. And can I save this? Because I think it will probably end up polluting it. And if I put them a former blue on this, it raises the degrees. Kelemen so that that becomes a daylight keller source so I don't look at the actual filter, but if you look at the card up there that's near as dammit fifty six hundred on dh it should be very, very close and need to the color of this week. It doesn't have a filled him. Now, if I take this one on, I put it on here and take that one off way. We basically achieve the same kind of thing that's always a tiny bit of off balance because jealous that never perfect. Sometimes they have green in them and things like that but a cz closest dammit, that's, what you get so I'm much too from fifty six is what was had twenty, four hundred twenty four hundred. I'm sorry I was really bad at math at school and s o so this this drops the degrees reduces kelvin by twenty, four hundred degrees k that raises killed him by twenty, four hundred degrees case I mean, you can probably guess what happens when you put them together, look at them, it becomes completely mutual so it becomes an indeed because they both cancel out because one shifting upwards in one shifting downwards the same thing same thing works on the same thing works with the quarter on eighth half and these the's jails they come in lots of different sense that come in eights quarters harvest just to shift the degrees kelvin by the proportionate amount but that's basically the difference between daylight balance film and daylight delicate balance film in a studio balance film thirty two hundred is twenty, four hundred k difference and so that's, when you think about that image of peace of mind and a fire you think about this it will help you enormously understand color temperature there's a whole other facet of it too, which is the greens and the magenta is because the green magenta shift is a whole other thing that I'll go into later I'm talking about but this is if you really want to understand about daylight and tungsten lighting this what you need to know about them it's very, very valuable information and then, uh you, um well, thank you down, right uh one more question for you is we know that you're about to set up a night scene or can you explain a little bit to the audience what it is that we're what we're filming here, what it is that we're setting up? Yeah, basically we were going to sort of finance it probably after lunch because we have some wonderful actors coming to join us, but basically I'm just just going through the very rough and very simple conventions that people use it night photography just to create mood and to create atmosphere so that's basically what will work on until lunch time, which I think is at one o'clock well, I should ask they'll kill me and then it will start working on that lets sound and save this guy weii get weiqing keep this on for the moment because that's not a bad color but if we save this guy and if I might give the used to somebody that would be a lovely thing there we get great now I mean very conventional night scene let's just save this guy and go really moody for a second. So what do we got on their side of lett's? Just change that. Teo. A full blue and a half green. If we may sorry to change my mind on you yeah, exactly in them you tend to plame or contrast for night scenes. She knew this less ambien kind of light because you assume that there's less light coming in through windows em bouncing off the ceilings and so on and so forth yeah, that z thank kind of idea now we don't have certain devices, but we will get the color sort in first and then just to give you an idea waiting this lives chasing questions if there already. So when we live the scene earlier for daylight, you had one light diffused and then to that you're bound singling off the card one off the ceiling. Can you talk a little bit about the that decision process for a wind to bounce a light when to defuse a light? Yeah, I think, um I'm you know, sort of being from, um the british school of cinematography I love soft light night and not too light very hard, very hard. I think on day I'll go into this later when we start getting into close ups I mean, I use hard light much more for night seems as you're going to see in a second here but there's a process that I go through when you start on a wide shot, then slowly move in where you you beautified beautify the light is you getting closer? Because if you use hard light on, say, your leading lady in a tv show, if you get writing close on the hard light, what that's going to do is to emphasize all on the imperfections in her skin which every human on the planet had imperfections in their skin to a certain extent s o you tend to soften the light is you go in but you do it in gradual stages so you don't notice but the jumps you know on them so that's the process will go through this afternoon but uh there's not anything to do with the question that was part of it? Yes and do you have a preference between bouncing or defusing when you're softening like it just depends on ease of use? I mean in this case balancing is much easier than defusing like from there as it happens I mean, I'm I'm constantly aware of colors that's that's probably equivalent that ceiling terming a quarter cdo on it so if I want to make them on you till I put a quarter blue on the light you know just to take out the cream miss of the fact that the paint is not perfectly one you know compared to say the wall if you look at the differences and you, if you start looking at things like that, you start to see that was it and almost filled two changes that you could apply to kind of balance amount that's you know, if you put a light on that white wall in there now a light on the ceiling with a quarter blew on it they probably end up looking very much the same in tour the band's back would be very much the same thing so they're what um we don't happen to have one here but you could do several things with this sad so I mean you just basically got the very, very beginnings off a night scene in an office on dh several things here first of all, could we raise the lamp right up so that it it's sort of or actually let's use the flag the way we had it let's put it up forty five degrees and just used the flag to sort of cut into the bookcase a little bit and and this leah and let's take a couple more questions if we could get this practical fired up that would be a wonderful thing a question from eslinger photography when using gels to correct color temperature how are you adjusting your white balance and that's interesting I am I mean the thing is I think I don't I just do it by the way it looks most of the time because I knew what a quarter cdo does and those of the colors I'm going for. I know if I didn't put a gel on the lam it would be very neutral because a thirty two hundred what like one of these as long as the bulb isn't old and worn out its thirty, two hundred and it'll give you a very neutral will give you a very neutral situation I mean s o I purposefully ad gels too to avoid white balance and never use white mellon's on anything because I think there's no point in using jails if you use white balance because if you hold a piece of white card and expect to take the white balance car just by changing the angle of the card it'll change completely the white balance reflection you get for example if you take it outside and you hold it like that that you have some light on it it will give you one white balance if you hold it like that it'll catch more blue sky light and give you a completely different balance so I actually find why balancing off off cards something I never knew and I just go by what looks good and you know, knowing the materials I'm working with them what they do if that helps follow up question gail so since you don't use the cards so we just use the calvin dial yeah absolutely said that that's exactly why we used the kill men come on the five day on dh you know you might um um um you can change your you know that's not set in concrete I mean for example if you wanted a scene and you were so sure that you wanted the scene to kind of feel a bit warmer andi you're shooting say say you'd shot the day before a nude shot in this kind of sort of very late afternoon light I mean one of my favorite lights is when you best light I ever see in l a is when they've had a horrible sort of fire yeah because she gets this is beautiful orange light coming through the smoke case and then you see the sun is a big orange ball it's the most beautiful light of all that you know I'm not allowed to go in set cities find I don't have much control over that but just re examples that you shot a scene the day before and you you shot it later afternoon and you then had no choice but to go back is another time the next morning when the color was all completely different than you could possibly you know crank your you know your degrees kelvin a much higher so that then relatively it would be warmer and matching better with what you'd shot the day before you khun you can evaluate that by what you see either on your martial monitoring or on your o c d so that would be a reason maybe varying your killed him but I still believe in using calvin rather than white balance because what balance is such an inaccurate means of it's rather like an injun region having a large hand it's the same inaccuracy kind of thing we were shooting a film last year and it was night time I think georgetown in south seattle and some of the street lights in the distance were green which was acceptable I think we were in penniston but the ones that were the problem or like deep purple and made available science fiction e well, that's interesting I mean, the the street lights that I know sodium vapor which is almost a pure yellow spectrum and then the mercury vapors which were blue greens I'm not sure what the purple ones are maybe there maybe they were the mercury vapor ones you yeah, it could be the street is that right now they want kind of colorado they are they the usual knees looking bluish, someone similar, somewhat smooth mercury. Yeah, but they're very right outside my house recently. Two weeks? Well, well, that's interesting. And I mean that that's when I I think on the five days I tend to take the color saturation down a couple of notches and that makes it a bit more monochromatic. And then if you're shooting a scene, you know, just try and get your actors to end up near a store window where that you khun you know, like them with proper lighting and things like that because you know, street lights and usually either in the wrong place they're creating some ugly shadows. They have a weird keller and you can't control them very easily, so if you khun use that laura's background and then actually issued the meat of the scene even if they've walked through that or got out of a car and taken a distance of travel if they could end up near a doorway where you khun justify bringing light that you can control onto them, you'll end up with a much nicer looking scene and then it's not too difficult people often I you know, I often e I mean, on one house we don't have quite so many problems because we tend to get street like shut off or we cover them in black black wrapping them we just put up our own lights on condors, but in certain situations, you know, we might not be able to do that, and so I'd try and talk the director in terming the actors at least even if they started in that un cosmetic light at least when they stopped for dialogue or stop for a moment they stopped near a store window and again that's something you work with your art department on things like that um um you know, but it is difficult because, you know, of course you know, sort of, uh, city lighting is not some put up to kind of look pretty it's put up to save bucks and, you know, sodium and vacuum mercury vapor lighting are incredibly cost efficient, but melodies of the new wave of being even more cost efficient running I can't remember what the statistic is, but I think him led lighting is a third the price of the career of a print sodium they've been lighting so it's something that we're going to see more and more often also the fact that the if the fixtures that designed well it's like you know my body it might wash city mills who were working making huge strides on beautiful light fittings way actually shot a film of him but we just didn't have time to put it all together it's a real shame is going to kill me when I get back to l a but um it was, um you know they've done so much work to come in get the green and to the leads they're they're um they're not easy limbs to work with and it's a lot of people have poured a massive amount of money into research to kind of get them working prob a pity for photographic lighting and in fact they're just coming theyjust designed them a six fifty watts one where on led replaces the bulb in a fix your about that size and it will be about the same brightness but it'll probably pull about one hundred what's so it just goes to show where we're going um waiting you know what I was talking about this is can I do one thing the vertical flag let's put it to forty five degree angle so it's just not straight up and down and it runs kind of across the set kind of in this kind of direction you just take it, keep going to the golan left on it yankee yankee game kicking and then just lower the whole thing down. And we bet if we may she just right on trying, coming in, reversing the flag and come in from the other side and then, well, I just want to is this practical working? Or is it workable? If we could get some, we'll take a few more questions we'll get this practical working. What I'd love to do is to put a really nice last shadow down here, and then we'll blow this desk up with the practical and bit by bit well, we will build a nineteen. A question from dean stir is do you ever use a color temperature meter? Um, you know what I do but mostly to check eight jim mose because h a miser phenomenally famous for kind of uh, when the bombs started to get a little bit old, especially when their rental they can go green or magenta and that's that's, one of the most horrible kind of color ships that you can capture or neither film or digital is this shift in green and magenta because magenta is such unnatural color it's not found in nature very much on dh it's a really it's my least favorite kellerman gender because it it's just plain ugly on dh and when you get into the situation where you have a lamp that slightly magenta lamp that slightly green and they're both doing things in the same said or in the same shot it's very very difficult to correct that and so it's important to have a cover temperature meted to check a gym eyes particularly that doesn't really happen with tungsten lights in my experience and I don't think it happens very much with with key knows but it's certainly a danger with agent mayes so that's the time when I would use it but jim callate temperature meters make my brain hurt so I tend to give it to my gaffer and shaking you're going to figure out what's wrong with that because they can't be quite complex working at the villages you need tio to adjust you know because again on don't trust your eye color temperature meter will be much more accurate than your eyes because you're I will eventually adjust to the great I mean you know if we just put the house lights on here for example after about ten minutes and there was nothing else on be nobody that would notice that the the chimps here would be green and they're really ready green you know, it's, just your brain sort of compensating on doing too too good a job, basically. So where were we cool now? We got a practical going. No, it was starting to cook a little bit when we put a m and watch what would be lovely to use is she? I don't suppose we have any was jason let's get out while we're taking a few more questions, we'll get jason to get it a little bit of kukla racial or we could take a piece of foam core or if you guys have got a box catcher or something just, you know, no all or or a branch delores will put it in front of that lamp, you know, so well, we're talking, we're just basically building a little night situation here so way, getting that bit by bit s o anymore questions. There was a question from sent e o in the chat room who would like to know if you could talk about the changes you make it in lighting when moving wide shots to close ups? Yeah, we're going to go into this after lunch a little bit, but just briefly for right now is I always soften the light is I come in, I work on getting light into the actor's eyes because, um what can hurt you enormously directors that insists that you shoot a big wide shot and then they use a very long lens to shoot a close up but the same time I really hate that sometimes you have to because you're under so much pressure to complete a schedule that you have no choice but when when you shoot to close up out of a wide shot you know you lied so naturally all ten, ten feet away and there's not an awful lot you can do to beautify the light I tend to beautify the largest I move in and by that I make it a bit more cosmetic a little bit softer I give it more shape and I get light into the eyes I separate the actor from the background I d focused the background so the eye goes straight to the eight because that's where you want your audience to be looking so that would be the general process and we'll kind of illustrate that after lunch one son we have our actors coming in great. Thank you. I have a few questions gail about the practical lights in there. Um do you replace bulbs in the practical lights to high wattage lights or do you leave them at sixty y good question very often I replace him when with them high wattage ones and then put them on dimmers so that I condemn them too what looks nice way sort of not in our home base here, so we don't have some of them or sophisticated things we might have a dimmer, I don't know, but I would tend to put a one fifty for example and then debate right down, so because obviously wrapping practical lambs with gels is a bit of a pain in the a and and much better to do that with the demon on dh and also we use quite a lot of globes called fed of floods, and they have a very a short life span says it was a good idea to have them to bring them up slowly on a dimmer and then take them down on a demonstrated don't get what I call, you know, sort of filament shock when you suddenly whacked him with the full one twenty volt power if you bring them up slowly, it's like in your house is always a good thing to have oh, how system on dimon's, you're like boldness of the last ten times longer you bring them up slowly that just switch them on, um, way need tio way need to make him that needs to be a little bit bigger. We need a four by four on the whole this need to be a little bit bigger, sorry, guys, that should have been a bit more specific I'm not being uh I'm sort of very sort of bling consume every single thing in big lake team my poor guys over here I'm sorry guys so question from doubled who had said that he thought you said earlier that you avoid diffuse asian because the image falls apart easy easily on a dslr can you talk a little bit more about that? Oh I'm joined that diffusion on the lens not not on the lighting for example when I shoot on film and I shoot on the elector which are our main main cameras on on house I use filtration like promise or hollywood soft soar on things like that just to soften the image slightly make it slightly more photographic slightly more sin a man taken less video like and for television but I would never do that on a five day and because the images already so compressed that if you start beating up or defusing on image that's already fairly french fragile and ah lo different guys you have to keep that down in chinese putting putting diffusion on hd dslr lighting is have been coming from putting diffusion on h dean dslr cameras is really not a very good idea because you know, because of the compression you'll end up with destroying the image even more so if you need to put the fusion on it's it's much better to do it in post whether that be after effectual whichever keller program you use you know that's what I meant by that I'm sorry if we are if we have already covered this gail but dave wow. Chuck is asking what is the difference between using gels versus filters for night scenes? Um well, the thing about using jealous his on does she mean on lambs or on cameras? Do you think well let's just you me? I mean you yeah, the thing is a filter makes an overall change and so I really use filters on cameras unless you want to make for example, if I use a tungsten balanced film stock and I want to go outside I would need tio use on eighty five filter on the camera, which we do quite a lot just to you know, which is exactly the same as a four cto. It has a twenty, four hundred degree calvin shift s o it turns daylight with like a four cto back into tungsten thirty, two hundred degrees kelvin in general, so that would be the reason for usually a filter on the camera but that's just an overall change, it does the whole thing to the picture. Most film stocks now you could really effectively do that imposed for easily anyway just about um certainly north on the five day because that would be too much of a shift uh to be able to correct the advantage amusing jails on lamps is that you often you know you might be simulating a red light from a club you might be creating moonlight or a mercury vapor look from high condor with an age in cage a mayan in which case you might have a half blue and and or a four blue and a half green or you know a combination of blue and green you can give it an edge so use jealous to kind of correct individual components off a shot where is a filter on a lamp is just an overall change now way getting their lead some just open up some of the holes a bit more sorry we will eventually get there I promise just just may I'm joined some of the holes together and so we'll take a few more questions for you this a little bit of a process question what do you think of three d films? Because I know you liked up the field and that's what you could really them you want a problem from them? A few should have uh big movies in the theaters and things like that I think they're kind of fun but I find it sort of gimmicky you know and people tend to construct the films in the most part to take advantage of them and it's got nothing to do with the story and it's not something that really impresses me too much, I mean, when you know the old finger poking out at the audience something you know, how many times have you seen in june and I mean, all the bats coming at you and stuff like that it's just like, you know, I'd much rather somebody returned to that for a very, very short period of time in hollywood, they tried what they called smell ese on dh they used to, you know, they do these amazing scenes with sort of people firing guns at each other for half and erin, they pumped the smell of gunpowder into the theater, and then then on then there'd be a scene where people ate hamburgers for half an hour it's meant come at the smell of onions into the theater, and I think it's a bounce is valid. Is that to be honest? I mean, it sounds a bit cruel because people have doing some wonderful things in three d and I think it's all incredibly clever, it just doesn't do an awful lot for me because I'm more interested in story telling them then bells and whistles, you know, and then you have to pay more to go see it on dh and also the other very sad thing is that wearing the glasses, it makes the screen rightness ovary dim, you know, compared to you know, watching a regular movie this might be similar but what do you think about like the hobbit I believe is shooting it forty eight frames a second. Some people talked about sixty or one hundred twenty yeah it's kind of interesting it's um um I mean peter jackson's and incredibly clever director and very, very smart and maybe it will be interesting I mean, I e I mean like I makes and that sixty frames I think sixty f b s and I love the large image quality I mean, I love large format photography so you know that's really nice but you know, the trouble is that you will see it one or two cinemas that can show it and then the rest of time it would just be your regular film because there's no way in a million years that every cinema in every city is going to convert to these random systems I think at some point in the future probably we will have much better of projection and it'll probably be laser projection or something like that and it will probably have much more dynamic range between the darkest darkness on dh the brightest bright because it's nowhere near real life the brightness that you see in the theater I mean, you know, sunlight issue literally if it was really literally squint happen you never do that so I I suppose the dynamic range is something I'm much more interesting and that will probably, you know, get back from bachelors laser projectors improve and things like that you know, the great thing about laser projects is is because their computer driven and things films can be pumped down a line from a distributed they don't actually have to be dealing with huge rolls of film on I don't know if you've ever been into a movie theater projection room where they project movies but realism literally that big and they're on what they call they call them platters or cake cake stands or something but literally you know, so that wide I mean, instead of having the films as individual roles, the whole film is someone big real and it's um, you know, the technology is changing all the time, but at the same time less and less people are going to the movies because we're getting bigger and bigger plasma screens at home and, you know, or even projectors that can, uh, project fantastic quality images I mean, we you know, watching house yeah, you know, that way you know, studio, we have a little cannon projector, I can't remember the model name of it, but it's absolutely phenomenal on projector a picture about, you know, some ten feet wide and eight feet tall and it's absolutely magnificent you know, it's all of these things will be become within reach and so those things are things that attending to make people not go to the movies so much so you know, maybe that's what people are trying to do with three d movies is to try and get audiences come back from or oven experience time film they told you at one time you know, sort of making a huge reid films with like six hundred people you know, putting them in giving the theaters and things like that but whether it will ever happen I mean that's huge investment you know who knows? So wei are thanks for all that hard work guys and but we're basically starting to build a bit of a scene here you can see a tiny bit of variation and using the cooker loris it's it's a very traditional kind of hollywood device and it's been around since the lord knows when but you know was basically it's to simulate sort of lite moonlight coming through trees, that kind of idea and we have huge ones on house that we used to just sort of break up the light a little bit and because there's nothing worse than just having a big band slab of light across the plain white wall you can if we could just, uh just take that the flag out a little bit and just open it up a little bit so we can see if you wouldn't mind just to see a bit more of an effect from that. Yeah, there we go. You know, it's, it is sort of breaks the light into, you know, pools of light rather than just a big, flat area makes it much more interesting. So that's, one device we use, we know, starting to build, you know, whole thing going on here the next, the next thing that we should try and do is community that's going a four by four? Uh, not a nope. Eleven or something like it to fifty or something like that. If we go to four by four to fifty and maybe a redhead with a quarter cto. Okay, yeah, we'll just get this going and I see, you know, well, that's happening. Let me just take a few more questions and because we are going to break for lunch, that is because I'm starving. Gail a question from a line ix lennox danish, is there any particular shape that you're cutting into that board? And if so, how do you choose what shape to cut? I know that looks like somebody demented has been at it, but it's really, whatever you like him in them. They can be really any shape I mean you can make your own I mean on house they tend to be much more curved and they cut with the jig's or as opposed to you know this is just hashed together by the guys and actually very it's very nice of them to do it. How fast did that yeah I mean it's great you know but it's basically you know in a low budget situation why don't you just want to break up a wall or some light on a war you can literally use an old piece of cardboard and that doesn't really matter it just depends on what you want the ones we use on house they come in much bigger sizes eight by aids and you know they tend to be much more sort of curved the shapes on dh more variation in them and them and then obviously the distance between the lamp and the cooker loris is important so the good thing about the big one is that you can have the further away from it and still cover a larger area and then make the shadows sharper and things like that so way getting that bit by bit on duh go after after lunch will we'll get into simulating the light coming from this practice gone so way probably got time for just a couple more questions that dimension if there are any ball where is everyone asleep there's quite a few more questions gil person person's name is and they would like to know if you've been have em can you please give a quick, simple way to create shape and texture with lighting on a subject? I know you talked about creating shape yesterday people are really curious about when you talk about that what you mean, how do you accomplish that? Well, it's really the angle of light that you choose to attack a subject? I mean, obviously if I'm a camera and I've got a light right above my head and it's going straight up, you guys is going to be incredibly flat. So mohr ran the side ugo them or text you going to pick up it's like you couldn get texture edge of a flat piece of paper if you like it in a in a shop enough slice angle on game show that time after nineteen most time to get into that with me create shaping the set after lunch but is basically not not using flat light, you know, using light to create shape nearby going around is an angle I mean that's what I kind of meant hopefully that made sense I think it does. The question keeps coming up so right showing question from brian harley gail, can you talk about motivated and unmotivated sources? When is it ok to cheat? I like to cheat with back my back lights simply because back lights look good I think it's I mean, it depends I mean again it's all about your past on changed him and well, we all cheetahs dps because one of the things that I think is to be avoided is too you know, have your have your actors blend into the background to too strongly, you know, if separation of your anxious of the backgrounds incredibly important so if that means that you have to cheat unused bank line, then all very well and good because there's some things that are worse than now, you know, if you're at and t looks like he's glued to the background and there's no contrast, guys and then we're gonna have to do that. I decide that and, you know, so it's terribly important to think about separation and were active from the bank run, whether that means, uh, you know, using back like that's fine. So I was thinking it's nice to kind of justify to yourself where a light might be coming from so that you can then lie to yourself and exaggerated to yourself because I think if you can figure any kind of motivation and will make your lighting and not more realistic to my mind but some people don't give a damn, you know, bob bridges and his wonderful deby. He just puts his light wherever it kind of looks great. I mean, he has shafts of light coming down on top of actors heads and he does some beautiful work. It's, just old personal taste. And I'm not saying that the way I like to light is right for everybody, it's just the way I work. And what I like is an aesthetic. Can you kill? Maybe before we go to lunch, can you? Just from dayton d j l in the chat room. Can you just quickly review what is currently in place? I'm right out yet. Generals and flag. Yeah, absolutely. What we have is just starting over that we have just a regular little desk lamp with its own lights or so that's. Probably sixty. What little courts like over in the corner, the light that's lighting the bookcase. Here is this sort of rather old fashioned woolridge ids and two k of them, which is coming through what joe did we end up with this and a half creating a four blue it's a half green in a four blue just to kind of create a little bit of moonlight coolness or mercury street vapor lighting, if you like. And then the only other light that's working on here is there's a tiny bit of amin's coming into the set from the open door there that spans ng off that white war which believe it or not is having an effect on the set it's lighting up all of that wall over there and we have probably sixty one I see this exploration it's not even not even a tungsten ball but we'll change this to a tense time bob and then simulate that so so far we basically got a a serious of very simple elements in place but where we've only just started working this out so you know it's a work in progress so that's kind of where we are for the moment and we will continue after lunch do you want to take another question she was young a great um somebody had asked um what are uh sorry what our methods of separation that you like other than backlit um it's a lot more easy in caliphate all agree that it was in black and white because you always had to do it to him you always had to do it in in in black and white you had to do it tonally where is in in in color you have the added ability to separate your character in the back room by the use of color shift you know different colored war different gallant skin so on and so forth something I like to use a lot is smoke for certain situations because it creates a softness in the background and creates an artificial depth. So those are some of the techniques I love, this kind of formula that almost never fails, but to work, which is a three quarter front, three quarter bank kind of diagonal line between your key light on your bank edge, rim lighting and that's something that on awful lot of dp is use, and I've seen other dps use and, you know, that gives you a glancing light off one cheek and then a three quarter front that just wrapped slightly to the other side of that. Those on that side is of kind of lighting, technique and it's you see it all the time because it works well. And, um, so, you know, a bank edge separation is always good. You known them because it could be a window that's just out of shot on. If this window that you've seen before in this set, then you have a good justification for it. But there's shortage of things with a three quarter front three quarterback set up what would be the typical ratio of intensity? Well, depends, depends totally, for example, african american skin is much more reflective because it's dark eso you'd probably want to knock it down a little bit it's. True, I don't think there's a rule of thumb on that at all. I think it's, just down to your eye, it pop soundtrack. You, the three quarterbacks like than just dim it down and it's, really just your own is that shake up what looks good and you you should find a very real a relationship between the two that works really well again. It also depends on the moodiness of the scene, you know, completely and the justice, if you want to find a justification, what that might have bean for for that, you know, there could be a very gloomy back window back bedroom, like coming through from afar room that just just gave you just a tiny bit of an edge separation, you know, so again, it's depends on the scene in little bend.

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Ratings and Reviews

Kenna Klosterman
 

Watch this AWESOME behind the scenes video of the Gale Tatersall workshop from in-person student Jenny May Finn on YouTube: http://youtu.be/3WbR4VC1id8 Thank you Jenny May for sharing how fabulous it is to be part of the studio audience!

a Creativelive Student
 

It is a very good class, with a lot of information and exercises. It´s better to watch more than a couple of times.

Student Work

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