GDES 73 Lighting Tips

Seeing the Light

1. Brightness
• How much light you have affects the mood and clarity of the photograph
2. Size
   • A large source produces a soft light and shadows. The smaller the light source, the harsher the light becomes, and the more distinct the shadows are.
3. Color
• It can add to the mood and expression of a photograph, but it can also ruin an image by discoloring the subject or background.
4. Number of light sources
   • Working with multiple sources allows you to sculpt your subject.
5. Distance
• The distance from the source to the subject controls both the relative strength of the light and its relative size.
6. Direction
   • It allows you to interpret the subject in many ways. It can reveal texture or smooth details.
7. Quality:Hard, Focused or Diffuse(soft).
   • Lights can be direct or hard, focused like a spotlight, or they can be soft and diffuse.
     • Hard light:
       • produces strong, dramatic highlights and shadows unless diffused by user.
       • can be used relatively far away from the subject.
       • generally requires fill light to soften shadows and control contrast.
       • brightness and spill are fairly easy to control.
     • Soft light:
   • consists of a relatively large, indirect light source (ex-an overcast sky)
   • produces gentle, flattering highlights and shadows.
   • needs to be closer to the subject.
   • tends to spill and reduce contrast.
   • requires little or no fill light.
   • works well as fill because it does not introduce hard shadows.

Lighting Equipment Check List

You should have the following items on-hand and easily accessible during your shoot:

• 2” cloth tape—to tape down cables so that people won’t trip over them.
• Power cables and heavy-duty extension cords (25', 50', 100').
• Three-prong to two-prong adapters for older locations.
• Clothespins—used to attach lighting gels or diffusion to barndoors
  and so forth.
• Heavy work gloves—for handling light globes and hot equipment.
• Lighting gels.
• Diffusion materials.
• Reflectors.
• Bounce cards—often nothing more than a big piece of white foamcore, bounce cards can help you get more mileage out of your lights.
• Duvetine, black felt, or black garbage bags for blocking windows.
• Kino-Flo bulbs—these color temperature-corrected flicker-free light bulbs are used to replace standard fluorescent light tubes in location fixtures.
• Clamps with rubber handles(grip clips)—similar in function to clothespins, but with more grip.
• Extra light globes—650W and 1 K bulbs to go with your light kit, household bulbs in high wattages, and so forth. You should have at least one extra globe for every light in your kit.
• C-stands.
• Flags and nets.

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Lighting Tips

Most Light is measured in terms of color temperature, which is calculkated in Degrees Kelvin(K). Indoor tungsten lights have a color temperature of 3200 degrees Kelvin, whereas daylight has an approximate color temperature of 5500 degrees Kelvin. The main thing to remember is that daylight lights are much stronger than tungsten lights; the daylight lights will overpower the tungsten lights. Flourescent lights can be anywhere from 2700 to 6500 K. Sodium vapor (streetlights) lights are yellow orange and are around 2100 K. You can use CTO(color temperature orange) or CTB(color temperature blue) to change lights back and forth between tungsten and daylght balanced. You also put gels on the windows instead of the lights. Neutral density filters cut down on the intensity of the lights, without changing the temperature.

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Lighting for Blue and Green Screen

Choose your compositing software before you shoot.
Different apps have different needs.

Place your subject as far from the blue/green background as possible.
This will help you avoid spill-reflective blue light bouncing of the blue screen and onto the back of your actor, resulting in a bluish backlight. this can make it hard to pull a clean matte later. If you can't avoid blue spill, try to make up for it by adding a hotter orange back light to cancel it out.

Light your subject and the background separately.
This will help avoid spill.

Light to minimize video noise.
Video noise can make pulling a matte difficult. Use enough lighting and disable automatic gain if possible.

Try to make sure the blue/green screen is evenly lit, so the blue or green tones are as close as possible throughout the background.
A spot meter can come in handy.

Avoid blue or green in your subject/foreground.

Dress the floor.
If the actors feet are in the shot, it will be easier to dress the floor with something like carpeting rather than attempting to composite it later.

Screen correction shots.
Most compositing software apps use a screen correction shot to make creating a matte easier. Either before or after each take, get a few seconds of footage of the empty blue/green screen with the same framing of the action.

Pay attention to shadows.
Shadows can tend toward blue, which can make creating a matte difficult.

Light to match your CGI material.
If your going to be compositing live action and CGI environments, be sure the live-action lighting matches the CGI environment lighting. If your digital background has an orange hue, it will look strange if your subject is lit with a blue backlight.