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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

Hi David,

Do you have any tips on achieving eye lights? What are some of the ways you have achieve them, especially when the key light is profile or the subject under lit. Would a little dedo light work well in your opinion?
 
Any light near the lens can create a reflection in the eye; I don't have one particular technique, it partly depends on the focal length and the nature of the dolly move. These days, I often have a Rifa 44 near the lens for fill and to create an eyelight but on some moving shots, I sometimes put an Litepanels Micro LED or Croma LED on the camera.
 
David, do you know of any lighting techniques that illuminate subjects with both soft and hard light from the same source or lights in nearly identical positions? I had a chance to observe some of the lighting of Andrew Lesnie while PA'ing at a studio shoot recently and noticed he was rigging a lot of hard and soft sources from very similar positions. The result seemed to be a softer wrapping light on the actors faces with the addition of more subtle but defined shadows.

I experimented with a 2k Fresnel, sending it through 2 silks very close together with a small gap to let some hard-light through and was getting some interesting results but I was wondering if there was a more efficient or established technique to do this and whether it's a method you use to light subjects.
 
Well, there are two different things you are describing -- one is a shot with a mix of soft light and hard coming from the same direction as would happen inside a house when the sun comes through a window mixed with skylight. The other is using a technique that causes some of the specularity of a hard source to come through a diffusion material, which gives you a soft light but with a faint hard light coming through, causing some sharpness and definition to pop out on a surface (like skin).

For example, in the first case, David Watkin once described doing a scene in a church that had a lattice-like pattern of diamonds in front of the daytime windows -- for the close-ups, he took a large sheet of diffusion and had a diamond pattern cut into it so that he got a hard pattern on the actor's face but also the soft light from the source hitting the diffusion.

A similar example would be a "soft topper" when you hit the actor with a bright hard source representing sunlight and then bring a diffusion frame partly down over it from above to create a shadow cut across the actor and soft light above the hard light. In those cases, I've even clipped CTO gel to the bottom of the diffusion frame, hanging below the frame, to color the hard light but not the soft light, since sunlight is warmer than skylight. I've even clipped CTB to the diffusion frame to cool off the soft light.

Now in terms of using a diffusion material that was not a perfect diffuser but allowed some faint specular light to come through, such as some thin silks and muslin cloths or curtain sheer material will do, the effect is interesting because you get a faint hard shadow from the source passing though the material, and a hard light creates some feeling of sharpness on the subject and some tiny bright highlights on surfaces. Some cinematographers have even taken diffusion material and cut some slashes through it with a razor blade knife for a similar effect, or cut a small hole in the center of the frame.

As for Lesnie aiming soft and hard lights from similar directions, I don't know the specifics, he could have just been highlighting parts of the set with a hard spot and using a overall soft light for ambience or fill or to represent skylight. Sometimes I've soft-lit a set but have to bring up an area of the set way in the background (like someone standing under a dark archway) and while I'd rather soft light them, in order to not just fill up the set with more light, I've used a projected hard light knocked down in brightness that I can cut it to just the small area that I have to fill, knowing that when I move in closer, I can switch to a softer light.
 
Okay great to know. So would this technique only be necessary when trying to slice partial shadows across actors (ie diamond shape)
or would it still create a unique event when hitting the entire actor with hard light (in addition to the soft light)
 
Jay Cowley said:
Okay great to know. So would this technique only be necessary when trying to slice partial shadows across actors (ie diamond shape)
or would it still create a unique event when hitting the entire actor with hard light (in addition to the soft light)
Click to expand...

If the hard light hitting the entire actor is brighter than the soft light, then the soft light is just working as fill because it would be overpowered by the hard key -- if you were faking sunlight on a soundstage, for example, you'd have a mix of overhead softlight for skylight and strong hard light for sunlight.

If the hard light hitting the entire actor is very faint compared to the soft light, then it would be adding a faint hard shadow and specular highlight to the actor, sharpening the soft light effect a bit.
 
Hey Mr. Mullen,

As others have said before me, your posts and this entire thread are invaluable and greatly appreciated.

I have some questions regarding digital studio shooting and daylight vs tungsten.

1) In a scenario where there are 3-walled sets and there isn't a regular grid pattern for lighting, what would you say is your preferred method for lighting a regular dialogue scene in a living room for a wide and regular coverage:

a) Kino flos all around, right off frame,
b) a mix of Kinos and bounced 1k baby tungstens and/or 650w tungstens
c) only bounced tungstens (off white foam core)



2) Regarding the usage of tungsten vs daylight in this same 3 walled set where there are no windows... Considering it is a DAY scene I light all tungsten and there are no practicals and balance the camera to tungsten, I'd get the same effect as lighting daylights and balancing all to daylight, so what is the benefit/negative of using one or the other (tungsten vs daylight) outside of the what the digital camera prefers (i.e. disregarding the argument that REDs prefer daylight)?

3) In the same scene above, would you suggest shooting with forced hard "window" patterns even though there are no visible windows in any of the shots (or in the set itself).


Thanks in advance for your input.
 
Emin Mihat Hye said:
Hey Mr. Mullen,
1) In a scenario where there are 3-walled sets and there isn't a regular grid pattern for lighting, what would you say is your preferred method for lighting a regular dialogue scene in a living room for a wide and regular coverage:

a) Kino flos all around, right off frame,
b) a mix of Kinos and bounced 1k baby tungstens and/or 650w tungstens
c) only bounced tungstens (off white foam core)

2) Regarding the usage of tungsten vs daylight in this same 3 walled set where there are no windows... Considering it is a DAY scene I light all tungsten and there are no practicals and balance the camera to tungsten, I'd get the same effect as lighting daylights and balancing all to daylight, so what is the benefit/negative of using one or the other (tungsten vs daylight) outside of the what the digital camera prefers (i.e. disregarding the argument that REDs prefer daylight)?

3) In the same scene above, would you suggest shooting with forced hard "window" patterns even though there are no visible windows in any of the shots (or in the set itself).
Click to expand...

It has been traditional to light stage sets with tungsten mainly because they are cheaper to rent in large volumes (though they use more electricity and generate more heat). They are also easier to run through a dimmer board and adjust with dimmers in addition to scrims.

Advantages to using daylight fixtures: they are naturally bluer than tungsten practical lamps in the frame, creating a mixed color temperature look (which is why some people will add some blue gel to tungsten lights outside of windows when they want that mixed look on a tungsten-lit stage set) / you can use large tungsten fixtures to create orange late afternoon sunlight effects if the camera is balanced for daylight, and fill with daylight for a two-toned look / daylight fixtures tend to be more energy efficient.

Other than noise issues, yes, it doesn't matter if you light with tungsten and white-balance to that or light with daylight and white-balance to that.

One issue is that in a night interior scene with tungsten practicals, tungsten fixtures will naturally match better in color -- 3200K fluorescents and LED's look slightly off in comparison. However in a daylight situation, you can mix real daylight, HMI's, daylight fluorescents, and daylight LED's a lot easier, either because we expect that daylight is a mix of colors or that these fixtures are more accurate in recreating daylight than in matching tungsten.

For this reason, if lighting a set I don't mix types of key lights on faces -- i.e. I don't light one actor with a 3200K fluorescent or LED key light but another with a tungsten key light, they will have a different color quality to them. However, it's fine to mix types of units for fill or backlights because the color on the faces is less critical or obvious. So if I am using Kinos as a key light in a scene, then every key light is a Kino.

Now as to whether to use a Kino or a tungsten bounce as a key, that's more of a practicality issue, the Kino is probably more controllable in terms of spill than a bounce -- easier to flag or add an eggcrate to -- but the bounce could be softer if going into a larger white surface, and more easily adjusted in intensity.
 
Emin Mihat Hye said:
Thank you very much. And one more question, from the following list (I'm about to make a purchase), which PAR would you say is the most useful (the one you would use). I noticed these in one of the photos you posted of Big Sur set.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/searc...&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=
Click to expand...


ETC makes PAR's, but I was referring to their Lekos -- I usually use the 750w Source-4 Leko with a set of lenses (19, 26, 36, and 50 degrees.)
 
Hi David

First off love your work and appreciate that you will take the time to answer questions!

I am about to shoot a music video in the mountains in snow next weekend. Epic 5k 6:1 Zeiss Primes (may be able to get Red Primes instead) Lighting includes Arri 1.2K HMI, 400W, 200W Joker, Bounce, 4X4 Silk and Hazer along with a dolly and small jib.

I have yet to shoot in these conditions and just wanted to know if you had any words of caution with the Epic or tips/tricks lighting in snow and with a hazer?

Almost all of it will be shot at 96fps daylight with a couple twilight and night (fireside) shots.

Also would you recommend 8:1 over 6:1 for these conditions?

Grateful for any words of advice. Thank you!

Christina
 
If you can you should use the lower compression rate.

The main problems will be battery life due to the cold, and condensation on the lenses unless they are acclimated to the temperature. You get a lot of bounce off of snow when lighting, sometimes you can use less than you think if doing a night scene. I'm sure some of the other outdoor winter shooters here can give you more advice.
 
I don`t think you can shoot at 8:1 or 6:1 compression ration when going 5K FF 96fps, the lowest compression ratio you can go is 12:1 due to the SSD read/write speed (unless you are using the 512GB one, in wich case, I believe you can currently go to 11:1)
 
People who have worked with Slocombe say that it was true. Now, I have no idea if he tells his gaffer to light a set to "x" amount of footcandles, which would make the guess after lighting easier to do, but of course that suggests his gaffer had a meter. But certainly if you work often enough, you can get pretty good at guessing the exposure -- Slocombe knows how much light a 5K puts out at different distances, he knows how bright a set must look to achieve a certain stop on a certain speed film stock. And outdoors, experience tells you what the exposure would be in different daylight conditions.
 
hi david

is it advisable to take optimo 16 - 40 T2.8?
does it have any versions?

thanks.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
People who have worked with Slocombe say that it was true. Now, I have no idea if he tells his gaffer to light a set to "x" amount of footcandles, which would make the guess after lighting easier to do, but of course that suggests his gaffer had a meter. But certainly if you work often enough, you can get pretty good at guessing the exposure -- Slocombe knows how much light a 5K puts out at different distances, he knows how bright a set must look to achieve a certain stop on a certain speed film stock. And outdoors, experience tells you what the exposure would be in different daylight conditions.
Click to expand...


Slocombe did own a light meter, however he almost never used one. One time he did use a meter on a commercial in 1987, we were shooting at 8 fps on a down shooter. The film was so over exposed that Jim Timms from Studio Film Labs called me & said " I can't print your film it's totally out of range!" I replied "have you heard of Dogie Slocombe? he lit the scene" (no gaffer). " OK we will recalibrate the printer" was the response!

TBH if I am shooting film & using lights I have used before, I know what the exposure will be, it's not very difficult. Outside in daylight is even easier, Kodak used to have a chart giving exposure Sunny Day / Cloudy Bright / Overcast etc!
 
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