Reverse Engineer this light...

[Scott Crawley]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477302/
Chris Menges, DP

Sorry about the crappy phone photo. ;-)

 

[Christopher Barrett]

I see three lights.

Extreme backlight from the left and low, chin height.
Red light from overhead, slightly left, a little more frontal
Blue light from right, pretty raking, lower than Red light.
There's another Blue light that hits the cheek and eyebrow. Can't figure that one out.

Hard for me to nail the source. They feel slightly softer than Fresnels.

-My best guess....

 

[Scott Crawley]

There's another Blue light that hits the cheek and eyebrow. Can't figure that one out.

I'm thinking that there is an overall wash or fill of blue while the key is orange. Those spots on the jawline, cheek and eyebrow are just shadows cast in blue, from the Jawline, nose and hair respectively.

What really had me wondering is the blue across the wrist on the back of his head. If my blue shadow theory is correct then the blue on the hand is just that, a shadow, but where is the orange on the arm above the wrist coming from? Is that all spill from the topper or is there another orange source on the boy's shoulder in the foreground? You see how it bounces up and fills his neck below the blue jawline shadow? That doesn't look topper to me. You see how the knuckles have a hot spot on them casting a downward shadow? Does that suggest a second orange source from above and behind?

 

[Craig Parkes]

I'm guessing the blue shadow is an isolated secondary in post, that's what it's on both the skin of the hand (where shadows would be, but not in an arrangement that could be lit that way) and under the chin and the edges of the dark spots in the hair on the back of his head. I imagine the original lighting had been warmed to orange with just a selective secondary going on to establish the blue on the skin, you'll notice it is also on lighter edges of the jacket etc which really gives it away as a HSL key rather than a light source.)

Pushed orange colour in the skin could simply from pushing the primary grade towards orange, and why it looks like two different light sources is because of the secondary correction contrasting against the primary look.

So I guess you've got that strong backlight low and to the left, a key overhead pointing on fairly steep downward angle to left of camera (creating the left to right and downwards shadowing on his face from the hair in front of his ear) and a probably some sort of fill from right of camera that is just balancing out the key...