Emmanuel lubezki: Soft side light

[omar robles]

I just wanted to pose a question to the talented DPS in this forum. If you wanted to achieve the Emmanuel Lubezki side light look what would be your preffered method of doing that? I was thinking of using a diffused kino flo on the side. Someone suggested blasting a 2k through a lot of diffusion. Which would you guys suggest?

 

[Stefan Ciupek]

Dear Omar, there are many different ways to achieve a soft side light look. On my last feature film "lost in Sibiria" i used for many of my interiors Arri 18ks Max which i send though several layers of diffusion through the windows into my location. You need to create a big surface of light. The last layer was always a big butterfly, which then was evenly illuminated. The result was a very natural, soft sidelight which still had a strong direction. Then the actors where actually able to move free in the location - the light was always very natural. On one shortfilm, where i didn´t have the big units available, i actually used four 2Ks also going through one butterfly or a big diffusion frame to create one big lighting surface. Sometimes you have to help the sidelight by creating negative fill with a some duvertine or large flags. A diffused Kinoflo works as well in low key scenarios where you dont have to fight the lighting contrast of a window in the background.
But you can also work without any artificial lighting source, as Emmanuel Lubezki did it on "tree of life"...

http://www.thecinematographer.info/articles/126-the-tree-of-life-emmanuel-lubezki-amc-asc.html

i hope this helped.

 

[omar robles]

This helped tremendously. Thank You Stefan

 

[Timur Civan]

Id use an 8x frame with muslin and egg cratecrate, push a 6k already going through another smaller bit of light grid and then get an joleko, and make a hot point on the 8x with it. Right in the center, pointing right at the talent. You get super soft key with an amazing eye light.

 

[David Kruta]

Check out some stills from a film I shot last fall called "Concussion": http://davidkruta.com/#concussion

Much of the soft light I used involved building booklights of various sizes. Either a 1.2K HMI or 2K Open Face tungsten bounced into 8x8 Ultrabounce and diffused through 1/4 light grid, or for closeups and small sets I would use a Joker 400 bounced into 4x4 b-board and diffused through a 4x4 Light Grid.

A couple of the night shots were done with what I call Hanna lights - a very inexpensive method where you attach Xmas lights to a foamcore board.