Epic + HDRx still needs lighting

[Paul Nordin]

[Rant]
At the risk of stating the obvious, I just have to get something off my chest here. So many people are stepping into the world of Red/Epic with the false belief that with Epic's great dynamic and low-light capability and HDRx, they can now shoot without any thought to lighting. I've been watching people post examples of work that demonstrate that belief in action. In fact just recently. IT's a myth!!! Don't believe it!

The results are wonderfully exposed backgrounds and flat slightly underexposed boring faces.

Great care must be taken to capture properly exposed faces using natural light. And part of that care includes using light control instruments to keep things in balance.

Sorry for the rant, but I just hate seeing footage put up as examples of what the camera can do that exhibit this trend. Perhaps its because with some money, people can start shooting with Epic or Red MX. But only with time and dedication can someone gain the skill to light a scene beautifully. Maybe that’s too cynical, but I would encourage all newly minted DPs to remember that a HUGE part of the craft of cinematography is lighting!

I LOVE wonderfully lit scenes. And, I've rarely seen any but true artists of our craft able to do that using natural light only...especially in narrative work for a lot of reasons including logistics. Poorly lit scenes that are shot with under lit subjects just because they were trying to hold the background stand out to me as lazy.

Contrast ratios on faces still matter.

[/Rant]

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I agree... natural light -- God's light so to speak -- is often beautiful in its variations, but real-life artificial light is often not. Just because one didn't actually turn on that light doesn't make it superior. In fact, a lot of dealing with real-life artificial lights in an urban setting involves turning a lot of them off. Anyway, even if you decide to never provide any additional lighting to a scene, that doesn't negate the need to control the light that exists and to apply your eye to finding the right camera angle, exposure, etc. so that it looks attractive or dramatically appropriate.

As you say, contrast ratios, direction, texture, color, of a light still matter whether or not it is natural, practical, or created.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Yes to all that and I would add my 2 cent... there are no definitve rools for lightning.

Pat

 

[Tobias Ashenheim]

i know people who have sold their camera eqpt to buy lights, dont know if it makes you more hireable, but i guess they get to know the potential of their lights perfectly.

Coming from fine art, i really do understand light and aesthetics, but i do wish there was a basic 3d program for lighting, with real equipment and parameters you could fiddle on. i still feel like i dont have wonderful confidence lighting under pressure, no matter how much I light. im starting to feel like there'll always be a slight inherent feeling of "thank god, i blagged it!"

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I started out shooting Super-8, which required quite a bit of light when using K40 and E160 stocks. But as a beginner, I basically had light bulbs to work with -- 500w photofloods at the high end, and everything below that -- and some reflector dish fixtures from the hardware store. But I also had one bright light, a 650w open face quartz movie light made for consumers in the 1960's. I got it in a garage sale for $5, little did I realize that the bulb alone was worth $20...

So I learned lighting basically with this one bright light and light bulbs. Then in film school, I had access to tungsten 650w, 1K, and 2K's. It was a good thing basically getting access to only a few lights at a time in my life as a beginner because I learned everything I could do with that one light before I moved on to something bigger.

There was this old add in AC magazine that I always remember, it was Julio Macat saying that if he could only use two lights on a movie, it would be a 150w Dedolight and a 20K tungsten fresnel. He wasn't being too serious of course but it struck me as summing up the two ends of the spectrum of lighting, the small and large brushstrokes so to speak. You need a tiny light to do little things -- accents, edges, etc. -- and you need a huge light to do big things, like recreate the sun, light a field at night with one source and one shadow, create a giant soft source, etc. In part because to either recreate or control nature, you need to work at both ends of the spectrum, the small and the large, because that's what real life throws at you.

Anyway, for the beginner, I still suggest they just get a few basic movie lights and put them through the paces on a couple of projects, because then they'll learn what they can and cannot do, so they'll start to understand the qualities they should be looking for in other lights.

When I was starting out with my little Super-8 films, people often noticed the lighting because I figured out what do to with that one bright light I carried with me -- I could create strong backlights, a nice bounce source, a hard rake on a building at night, etc. And for anything else, I used things like Chinese Lanterns.

 

[Sam Taylor]

i know people who have sold their camera eqpt to buy lights, dont know if it makes you more hireable, but i guess they get to know the potential of their lights perfectly."

I like this idea! I think so much of what we do is "all about the light"

In fact I think this whole thread is really good, and I am surprised that there were not more comments!

 

[Daniel Reichenbach]

David, in Big Sur you prooved, that not the huge light equipment is what count's but put the light at the right place. EPIC helps a lot for this approach and I love it to reduce artificial light as much as possible and mix it with natural light. I know, this is only possible, when you can work fast and don't worry about improvisation in a small and perfect orchestered team.