How should the movie look, and what will you have to do to photograph the vision in your mind’s eye? In Chapter 8, you learned how to control shadows, contrast, light intensity, exposure, and color. Now, using these tools as your paintbrushes, you will begin to design what the camera should see.

There is a continuum that may be used to describe how movies look. At one extreme is the realistic look, which tries to replicate how we normally see the world. Realistic movies don’t call much attention to their visual style, because the style is presented as fact, not fiction—even though, of course, you will use much art and technique to achieve a look that appears unadorned. At the other extreme is a style we might call expressionistic, in which the look conveys an altered reality, complete with heightened or desaturated colors, subjective viewpoints, and lighting that would not normally occur. (See How Do I... Light for Mood?)

Neither style is right or wrong; the correct style is the one that best conveys emotion and story. Nor must your film hew to a single stylistic choice—many films contain elements of both realism and expressionism, and comfortably shift along the continuum of style as the story develops. (See Action Steps: Planning the Lighting, below.)

You explored directional lighting in Chapter 8; all directional light must come from somewhere. Among the most important choices you will make is whether the lighting in your movie is motivated (or justified), and by what sources. Realistic films always have motivated lighting—the light comes from a source that is visible, such as the sun, a window, or a lamp. In expressionistic lighting, the light source does not have to be justified.

Whether your lighting style is realistic or expressionistic, or has variations along the way, it needs to stay consistent within each scene. Although this is sometimes difficult, in that different parts of a scene may be shot on different days, it is essential to maintain the illusion of continuity.

Three-Point Lighting

Let’s play with lighting. Imagine you are on a set with an actor; there is one light, and it is pointed at her. The light illuminates the actor from one direction, causing attached shadows to fall on her face and a long shadow to cast behind her.

This main light is a directional light, because it comes sharply from a single direction. It is also the main light in the scene and is thus called the key light. This is not an attractive way to light an actor, because it is harsh and unrelenting. Unless that is the creative choice you want to make, you’ll need to add other lights: fill light and backlight. The fill light is positioned on the side opposite the key light, and the backlight is placed behind the subject. Combined, these three lights form the basic construct of all lighting plots, and are often referred to as either three-point lighting or the lighting triangle. (See Action Steps: How to Set Up Three-Point Lighting, below.)

Three-point lighting is as much a matter of concept as practice. For most of your on-set lighting work, you will probably use two-point lighting (key and fill lights) or even one-point lighting (key light only). Yet understanding the concept behind three-point lighting gives you an instant sense of what each light position may accomplish and provides a ready vocabulary with which to communicate with your director and crew.

For example, now that you know what a key light is, can you find the key light in the scenes from Touch of Evil and Raging Bull (shown in Chapter 8)? In the frame from Touch of Evil, although the main source of light is not seen, it is clearly supposed to be a ceiling light that would be in the upper left, out of the frame. In the frame from Raging Bull, the main light source is supposed to be the hanging light bulb. For the audience to accept that the action is really taking place, the primary light source must be motivated from some place that would make sense in the context of the scene, and in both of these examples, it does.

The Lighting Ratio

Three-point lighting is a basic concept. In the following sections, you’ll discover several lighting possibilities you can use once you have a strong understanding of how the lighting triangle works—possibilities that expand the triangle and give it many variations. But first, let’s take a look at one way you can create different looks without changing the triangle at all; all you need to do is adjust the lighting ratio between two lights in the triangle.

The lighting ratio is the difference in intensity between the key light and the fill light. By experimenting with the lighting ratio, you can achieve different amounts of contrast in your three-point lighting. On any given project, you will choose the amount of contrast that feels right for the particular story you are telling. Using the examples we looked at in Chapter 8, the film 300 has a large difference in intensity between the key light and the fill light; the difference in intensity in 2001: A Space Odyssey is much smaller.

In Chapter 6, you learned about the f-stop on your camera. The f-stop is a way to quantify the lighting ratio and, therefore, a way to quantify the amount of contrast when you’re shooting.

Which of the examples in Figures 9.2–9.5 would work best for the film you’ll shoot for this class?

Continuity and Your Lighting Triangle

As you will recall from Chapter 7, continuity makes the audience believe that each scene is part of a single, continuous event, and that the different camera angles are all being shot at the same time. Of course, this is rarely the case. In practice, you will shoot one setup, then move the camera, shoot another angle, and repeat the process. Sometimes different angles will not even be shot at the same location, as, for example, when you shoot a wide master at a hard-to-get practical location, and then must move into a studio for close-ups or insert shots.

Your job as DP is to make sure the lighting never varies from what you have established in the master shot, so that the audience never has the subconscious feeling of “Hey, that doesn’t look right,” or “Why doesn’t the lighting match?”

If the lighting doesn’t match, you’ve probably made a mistake and inadvertently changed your lighting triangle. Your key light should always come from the same direction, and your fill and backlights should match.

You have great flexibility in adjusting your master shot lighting triangle in order to fit the style needs of the story; your creative decision will be the lighting ratio for each scene. A high-key lighting triangle has a lighting ratio at or near 1:1, as a comparison of key light and fill light. High-key lighting casts even lighting across an entire scene; it also has the advantage that lights don’t require much resetting when you move your camera for new angles. High-key lighting feels brighter and happier than other lighting; for this reason, it is frequently seen in comedies and television sitcoms.

Low-key lighting has a more extreme lighting ratio between the key and fill lights—perhaps as much as 8:1 or 10:1. Low-key lighting emphasizes shapes, contrasts, and contours, and heightens dramatic tension and mood. Most scary movies use low-key lighting to increase suspense, and you’ll often see low-key lighting in dramas as well.

The use of high- and low-key lighting is not dictated by genre. Many movies use both kinds of lighting triangles in different scenes, depending on what is happening to the characters.

How Much Light?

The amount of light you throw on a scene does not equal the amount of light your camera captures. As you learned in Chapter 6, you control the amount of light that falls on the optical sensor or film by adjusting the camera’s f-stop. In other words, you could have a very bright scene and make it look dimmer with a higher f-stop, or have a dim scene and make it appear brighter with a lower f-stop.

As you adjust the lighting levels, you will also be impacting the depth of field with which you can shoot the scene. You learned about depth of field in Chapter 6, and how it contributes to storytelling: a shallow depth of field isolates objects or characters; a deep depth of field—which puts everything in focus, whether near the camera or far away from it—gives the audience a broader viewpoint on the entire scene.

To achieve deep depth of field, you need to let a small amount of light into the camera, such as an f-stop of 16 or 22. This means you will need to overilluminate the scene, throwing much more light than would be normal, for the scene to appear realistic and for the camera to capture sufficient detail at every distance. Conversely, shallow depth of field can be achieved with less light and a more open lens, which will have a lower f-stop number.

In any depth of field choice, you will frequently face an exposure dilemma: some elements of the scene will be at one f-stop, and others will be at a different f-stop. There are different approaches to this problem. One is to adjust the lighting levels, moving from a low-key to a high-key style, which will even out the exposure variance. If you make this choice, you need to make it at the beginning of the scene and keep it consistent as you change angles.

The other choice is to adjust your camera’s exposure for the most important element in the scene—the character or object that, from a storytelling perspective, should be the prime intention of the frame—and to light that character or object properly. This creative choice, which is both an exposure and a lighting decision, will keep you from falling into the trap of averaging your exposure between elements, which results in none being properly exposed.

Adjusting the Lights

Once you are on-set, whether outdoors or indoors, setting up the lights is a multistep process (see Producer Smarts: How Long Will Setups Take?, below). You may do it the morning of your shoot or—in the case of large and complicated locations, which will require a lot of lighting equipment—a day or more in advance. This is called pre-rigging.

On your student film, you may be the only one to work on all facets of lighting. In a large studio feature, the electrical and grip departments work with the cinematographer to achieve the desired look, and it’s helpful to know the names of each job function. The gaffer has traditionally been the head of the lighting department, responsible for designing and implementing the lighting plan and electrical power needed to supply it, which is why the gaffer has also been referred to as the head electrician in charge of lighting. More recently, the person in charge of lighting has often been credited as the chief lighting technician on major Hollywood productions. Either name refers to the person responsible for the film’s lighting plan in modern filmmaking. (The name gaffer dates to nineteenth-century England, where it referred to the supervisor of a work crew.) The best boy (electrical)—the gaffer’s key assistant—is usually on the electrical truck, dealing with such logistics as equipment, crew schedules, and rentals. Electrical technicians set up and control the electrical and lighting equipment, from lighting instruments to electrical generators and other sources of electricity that may be used.

Lighting grips are also part of the lighting crew. They specialize in rigging everything related to lighting—from adjusting set pieces to putting the camera into the correct position to setting up flags, bounces, and silks. Note that lighting grips might sometimes be a separate team from the camera grips that we mentioned in Chapter 6, although on a student production, the same small team may be required to do all rigging work for lights, cameras, cables, and more. (The word grip has its origins in nineteenth-century theater, where workers had to “grip” the scenery and curtain ropes.) The key grip heads the grip department and works closely with the DP to set up and break down the elements for lighting. The best boy (grip)—the key grip’s main assistant—also keeps the grip truck and equipment organized. Dolly grips set up and take down dolly track, camera dollies, and cranes, and push the camera along the dolly track for tracking shots. Whether working for the electrical or grip department, the job of best boy, whose name dates from the old apprentice system and refers to the master’s oldest and most experienced apprentice, is not gender specific.

Once your lights are set up (rigged), you will do a preliminary focus, setting your key, fill, and backlights, and any other spots or specials. This means adjusting the position of the lights so that they illuminate the scene as you want it. Always start with your lighting triangle and build outward from there; background lighting is a good addition, because your main focus is to light the actor, not the set. At this point in a professional production, the director still hasn’t seen the set—you are just getting things ready for the director’s approval.

Now it is time to show the director what you’ve done. The director may ask for some adjustments and may further explain how the scene will be blocked, which will help you ensure that the lights are well placed. Usually at this point, the director will call a rehearsal with the actors, and they will do the formal blocking of the scene. Watch the blocking carefully so that you can reset lights, if necessary, to work for the scene.

You must also pay special attention to where the actors will spend most of their time during the scene. Your previous focusing of the lights was only approximate; now, with the real actors in place, you can fine-tune the lights to their specific heights and positions. You may place tape marks on the floor so that the actors can “hit their marks,” and the lights will be there for them. Many professional productions excuse the main actors at this point and use stand-ins, who must be the same height and physical build as the actors they are doubling. The stand-ins will remain in place as long as it takes for the cinematographer and lighting crew to adjust the lights. Although this may seem excessive, it is actually quite efficient: while the stand-ins are working with the lighting crew, the principal actors will be getting their hair and makeup ready for the shoot.