Pro Moviemaker Autumn 2019

ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LIGHTING

PICK YOUR LIGHT FOR THE RIGHT EFFECT

UNDERSTANDING LIGHT

Whether it’s coming from your LEDs, the sun, street lights or interior ‘practical’ lights in a building, all light has certain properties that a clued-up filmmaker should be aware of. If you learn to consider the properties of the light, then you’re in a great position to understand how your footage will look and, crucially, how you can alter the light or introduce your own effectively. The six key properties of light you should consider are: quality, direction, contrast, intensity, evenness and colour temperature. And you should understand how these properties change and affect each other if you modify the light in some way, for example, by introducing an extra light source. The quality of light refers to how hard or soft it is, and direction can affect the look of your shots. Contrast is something to be aware of and can be managed by introducing fill lights or reflectors, and evenness affects how the light falls off your subject. The closer the light, the more extreme the fall-off. And colour temperature affects white balance as well as being able to create a different mood. Intensity is a measure of how bright the light is. That’s crucial not only to which ISO to use or aperture to set your lens to, but how any lights you have introduced balance with the ambient. Although continuous lights aren’t as powerful as flash, you can use them to create a very bright pool of light if you pick specially designed, powerful units.

Larger light sources like large LED light banks are great at providing soft, even illumination. And harder light sources like HMIs or focusing fresnel LEDs are far more suited for harder-edged, more contrasty light that’s ideal for hair lights or background lights. Of course, if you have a powerful light, then you can use scrims and other modifiers – such as reflectors - to soften it up. HMI lights were once the most popular as they are quiet and daylight-balanced, so can be modified to make them softer. But they are mains only, often need an additional ballast pack and many are not ‘hot restrike’. So if you turn them off, you have to wait up to ten minutes before they can turned on again, and then you have to wait until the light stabilises. That’s why lighting is becoming dominated by LEDs, which are bright, small, silent and can be adjusted to provide different colour temperatures. They also don’t usually require huge ballast packs or massive mains generators to run them. They come in all shapes and sizes, allowing you play the balance of cost and portability against power and features. For many years, some of the most popular soft lights have used banks of large fluorescent tubes, which you could buy in different colours. The market leader for these simple, effective and light units is Kino Flo – and many people refer to all lights of this type as Kinos. They are still popular, but Kino now has what are effectively LED tube versions of the lights that can be remotely controlled, can be tuned via an app, have RGB light control and various modifiers from grids to softboxes and barn doors (as shown below). It’s the best of both worlds.

ABOVE Soft light from a large light source is usually more flattering, filling in any skin imperfections

Dedolight has made a whole range of powerful, focusing LED lights for many years and is the master of pin-point lighting. Many of its lights have built-in ballast and barn doors. But if you want a huge beam of light, which moviemakers often use outside buildings to shine through windows to look like sunshine, then Dedolight has the answer with the rugged DPB70 1200W parallel beam light with a parabolic reflector. It’s like bringing your own sunshine on location with you! The theory of light may seem like a lot to have to think about, but the more you do it, the easier and more natural it becomes. Eventually, it becomes second nature and a real aid in helping you quickly decide what to do with your lighting. For example, where to position your lights, how to modify their output, which colour gel or RGB setting you may need and much more. Once you’ve become a dab hand at lighting and can make informed decisions quickly, it’s so much easier to really focus on your subject. ABOVE Harder light from a smaller or more focused light source can be more dramatic, often with more pronounced and darker shadows

BELOW This Dedolight is a hard light source, and has its own ballast and barn doors for controlling light spill

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AUTUMN 2019 PRO MOVIEMAKER

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