ROUND TABLE LIGHTING SPECIAL
Tim Kang Principal engineer
A panel of industry experts examine the latest developments and consider what could be next
for imaging applications, Aputure Raphael Kiesel Senior vice president, business unit lighting, ARRI Group Sascha Jazbinsek Head of innovation, SUMOLIGHT
Definition: From your perspective, what recent advancements in lighting technology do you believe hold the most promise for enhancing film production? Raphael Kiesel: The efficiency of a production is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, future lighting solutions must include technologies that increase efficiency for the whole production. This affects pre-production (eg improving planning with a digital twin), the production itself (eg moving heads) and post-production (eg the availability of lighting fixture metadata). Dave Amphlett: Lightweight, portable and battery-powered fixtures continue to enable both speed and flexibility in the workflow. For example, Rodlight’s Spectron Series of inflatable LED tubes are ultra lightweight and feature a CCT range of 2000-20,000K, perfectly embodying these technology advances. Control and the granularity of the control that fixtures offer also continues to advance. In particular, pixel mapping and sector control enhance the effects fixtures can produce and allow for subtle, nuanced design opportunities such as cloud effects or colour-temperature graduation. The scope offered by IP control through networks will be increasingly essential to enable levels of control that aren’t possible with DMX. Tim Kang: At time of writing, we can now create living and interactive lighting environments, not just simple set- ups. The most recent advancement in lighting tech is not just new toys, but a new fundamental philosophy and perspective on our craft. Since co-founding the American Society of Cinematographers’ Motion Imaging
Technology Council (ASC MITC) Lighting Committee in 2019, I have advocated for the motion picture lighting industry’s adoption of the CGI rendering lighting technique known as Image-Based Lighting (IBL). This well-established virtual lighting technique uses calibrated photographic colour information to generate subject and environment lighting. VP popularised IBL as a method to motivate light with LED displays. I have tried to clarify IBL to the production world to mean: a fundamental lighting philosophy that uses any image, like a pattern painted live or a light card, as a lighting source, and a lighting control methodology that employs an entire environment of lighting fixtures, not merely displays, to generate IBL onto a scene. Via technical specification research, standards body work participation, public seminars, manufacturer lighting product development and educational training, we have developed clear technical steps to turn lighting fixtures into colour-accurate and video-driven lighting pixels. Upon this foundation, the entire craft of entertainment lighting can formally shift its mindset from pixel mapping as a live entertainment effect towards physically – and accurately – executing creatively intentional lighting environments and concepts. Sascha Jazbinsek: IBL, in its broad sense, has yet to reach its full potential. Small studios are continually evolving by combining video walls or back- projection with IBL fixtures. There appears to be a demand for ICVFX (in-camera visual effects), but to truly cut costs, productions often opt for these smaller set-ups for specific scenes rather than shooting entire movies or TV shows in
Dave Amphlett Technical
director, Panalux
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