Among the unexpected things the pandemic left in its wake is a higher tolerance for bad lighting. For evidence of this, just check out any Zoom meeting. Faces in shadows framed by blown-out backgrounds look more like witness-protection videos than what we normally see on camera.

Every new technology unleashed on the public is bound to have some hiccups. Ever notice how many teleconference meetings start like a séance, trying to contact departed spirits? “George, can you hear us? We can see you, but can’t hear you.”

For a technology that was previously only in the hands of “experts,” people with zero training have managed better than expected. We’re experiencing a democratization of telecommunications, enabled by plug-and-play components and readily accessible apps. Social media posts are today’s equivalent of pontificating from atop a soapbox in the park, but with a revenue stream. With these new tools, almost anyone can put together a video podcast.

The low quality of most video podcasts makes “close enough for television” seem like the golden age of excellence. They’re cringe-worthy, rather than binge-worthy. As good as entry-level gear has become, production values suffer from a lack of decent lighting.

Newer cameras can make pictures in almost no light, which may ironically be why the lighting falls short. It no longer has to be properly lit to be seen, so it often isn’t. These novice media moguls could considerably up their game with a bit more attention to how things look.

The goal of lighting isn’t merely academic. Good lighting can help video podcasters connect with their audience by making the hosts appear more relatable. We tend to connect more with people when we can actually see their eyes, let alone their faces.

Video podcasting is a big deal, even if the podcasts often don’t always look the part. The top-rated video podcasters have millions of viewers with audience demographics that companies want most. Product placement, compensated endorsements and lucrative sponsorship deals have made this a multibillion-dollar industry.

In this competitive media landscape vying for viewer attention, getting the lighting right provides an edge. Unfortunately, many video podcasts look like they’re made in a closet—illuminated with all the lighting artistry of a bare bulb on a pull chain. Improving on this could be as simple as using a clip-on reflector work light pointed at the host.

One popular “alpha bro” video podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” looks like it spent more money on its neon sign than on lighting the host. Then again, maybe that dimly lit back-alley aesthetic appeals to his audience. Are the deeply shaded eyes meant to suggest some unvarnished authenticity, or just poor lighting choices? Could Rogan spin conspiracy theories as convincingly if viewers could see the twinkle in his eyes?

Mood Lighting
Other successful video podcasters have done a brilliant job of creating visual surroundings that support their show’s themes. Alex Cooper’s popular “Call Her Daddy” video podcast creates a cozy environment for her guests. The right lighting and inviting scenic touches help create a beguiling space for the confessions and gossip that its guests seem to snuggle into. Her show’s curated “look” works by design.

When lighting a video podcast, the questions are much the same as for any other show. The camera shots guide the lighting, so we need to know where the cameras are, who they’re shooting, and where they’re standing or sitting.

Beyond that comes the nuts and bolts of making it work. What types of lights need to go where, and how will they be mounted? Light stands and cables may clutter the floor, while ceiling mounts and cable runs require some additional engineering. In short, it’s like any other lighting project—but on a smaller scale.

Whatever the budget, the basic “three-point lighting” approach is a good place to start.

The illustrated example (two people and four lights) can be done in the corner of a basement, a small room, or a large closet. The size and power of the light fixtures should be chosen to meet the required throw distance. Always adhere to “best practices” for mounting the lights and running power. Remember that people will be under those lights, so use safety cables, sandbags and common sense.

The example illustrated in Fig. 1 is typical for video podcasting. A central camera covers two people chatting. Additional lights can be added to highlight items in the background. If the budget is tight, begin with the two soft lights in the front corners, adding the remaining lights as funding permits.

Remembering that the larger the fixture aperture is, the softer the light will be, so the corner fill lights should have a relatively wide opening. They should fill softly without creating noticeable shadows. Let the work of making a modeling shadow fall to the Fresnel (or other “hard” light) in the center over the camera. Depending on the camera, an overall reading of 45 to 60 foot-candles should be perfect.

As for which lights to buy, you can’t go wrong with quality equipment backed by manufacturers that stand behind their products. Otherwise, “Buy cheap, buy twice.”

Homes Are Different
Lighting residential spaces for video presents different challenges than working in purpose-built studios; the bane of these impromptu spaces is the low ceiling and lack of hanging points. Getting lights secured where you need them always requires some creative mechanical engineering, or you can use stands. Use low-profile fixtures to reduce head bumps.

As for how to control the lights, most provide Bluetooth or other remote connectivity. For simplicity, it’s best if the lights can be controlled by a single app. Because LED lights have internal dimming electronics designed for full line voltage, don’t use external dimmers—they’ll cause damage.

While lighting a “black box” studio set calls for making a completely artificial space look more like a plausible environment, shooting in an ordinary room calls for adding some lighting “magic” to keep the space from looking too prosaic. And because the goal is connecting with your audience, always make sure the host is well-lit and looking good.

No matter how bright, a light beam remains invisible until it reflects off of something else. That’s emblematic of how lighting depends on what it connects with. From the source to the subject and eventually to the eye, it’s these connections that transform light into visual experience.

Although this column’s usual focus is on equipment and technique, there’s more to lighting than this. To quote the architect Eliel Saarinen, “Always consider a thing within the next largest context.” The better we understand how lighting fits into the existing context, the better the final results will be.

Lighting directors don’t work in a void. Every project involves several specialized departments and personnel, each with its own concerns and responsible for its own turf. Success depends on building bridges of cooperation between adjacent disciplines, which makes our job more than just hanging and focusing lights. Those bridges are connections between technologies and people.

Going from the theoretical to the practical, let’s examine the neighboring fields that make essential connections with lighting:

Engineering
The wide-ranging purview of the engineering department makes it an important ally in everything lighting touches. From providing mechanical and electrical support to sensitive camera adjustments, engineers hold the other end of the brush we use in painting images with light. Here are some opportunities for engineering and lighting to connect.

Coordinate with the project’s video engineer to establish camera sensitivity and set the desired lens f-stop. Only then will you have a logical basis for your target lighting levels. (For a detailed description of this process, check out my December 2024 column, “How Bright Is My Studio?”)

High-resolution images can be unforgiving to mature faces. Video control’s adjustment of “skin detail,” use of lens filters and flattering lighting combine to help presenters (rather than just the cameras) look their best.

Video displays should match the color temperature and brightness of the studio lighting. From the camera’s perspective, skin tones that appear on video walls should plausibly match those of the foreground talent. The brightness of white areas in the displays must be no greater than a white reference at the talent position on the set to avoid blooming. This should be confirmed with a spot meter or waveform.

In the era of increasing automation and decreasing staff, directors may need to activate lighting cues from remote control panels. These control interfaces require engineering and IT support for proper integration.

Directors
“Set the shot. Light the shot. Shoot the shot.” That admonition from film production applies equally to television. You’ve got to know what the shot is before you can light it, which is where the director comes in.

Before a single light is focused, line up the shots with the director, set designer and anyone else with final approval. Use a studio camera and floor monitor to allow everyone to see the same framing. Spike-mark every talent position and camera angle with annotated tape before moving on through subsequent shots.

To avoid confusion, include the camera number and shot abbreviation on the spike marks (e.g. “Cam. 3–CU Left”). These precise positions will guide the final lighting angles.

Scenic Design
From the talent positions to the camera shots, the floor plan quite literally sets the stage where everything unfolds. When the lighting and scenic designers work together, problems can be avoided and opportunities explored before the design gets locked in, as in the following examples.

LED backlit panels may need to be kept free of spill light, while textured scenic elements may require raked light to enhance their features. Coordination on details like these helps guide the design and clarify what additional equipment might be needed.

Some talent and scenic lights need to be built into the set. This requires particularly close coordination with scenic design. A common example of this is the integration of “chin lights” to augment talent lighting at desk positions. A detailed approach for accomplishing this is discussed in my August 2023 column, “Using Chin Lights.”

On-Camera Talent
“If mama isn’t happy, nobody’s happy.” Never forget that our job is not to make
the lighting look good, but to make the talent look good. Anchors care a lot about how they look on camera, which is why they’re usually the first to notice when something’s wrong with the lighting. Acknowledging their essential role, I always meet with the main anchors and hosts in person before I light a show.

Meeting the anchors face to face provides an opportunity to look for deep-set eyes, variations of hair, facial contours, height, etc. Pro tip: Never let on that you’re scrutinizing them for imperfections you might need to mitigate with lighting while you chat about literally anything else.

Makeup and Wardrobe
Makeup and clothing looks different under different light. That’s why makeup and green-room lights should match the CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) of the studio lights. Once makeup artists and anchors can see what they look like under the correct light, they’ll resolve 99% of potential problems themselves.

Wardrobe guidelines have become looser as cameras have gotten better at handling contrasts over the years. A flash of white at the collar is no longer a problem, but an overly bright dress might force a camera adjustment that makes everything else on the set look darker. As for those intricate patterns and weaves, they still cause moiré pattern artifacts. Camera-checking new outfits in advance can avoid such problems.

The Client
Budgets, and those in charge of them, drive whatever project you’re working on. Providing cost-effective solutions that fit their needs and existing workflow will help make your contribution successful and keep your client happy.

Even if you can pull off minor miracles, it will be tough to live up to a reputation for doing so. Manage expectations by being clear about what you can reasonably do within the project’s scope and budget. And once the goals have been met and all items on the punch list have been completed, get a formal signoff of successful completion before walking out the door.

Each of these connections requires you to enter the border areas of other departments that intersect with lighting. By doing so, you’ll find that those relationships will yield better solutions through increased understanding of how lighting connects with everything.

We tend to think LED lights will last forever—they don’t, although 50,000 hours, plus or minus, is a very long time compared to legacy light sources. Assuming some driver component doesn’t suddenly fail, LED lights die more subtly; they slowly fade away. The challenge is knowing at what point they need to be replaced.

LEDs don’t burn out the way incandescents do. Instead, they tend to degrade gradually like fluorescents, but without the telltale tube-end blackening. At some point, following many hours of service, they will wear out and need to be replaced. That point is now being approached by the earliest adopters of LED lighting.

The lighting industry’s benchmark for the end of service life is defined as when LED output drops to 70% of its initial brightness. This is called the “L70” standard, where the “L” stands for lumens, and the 70 is the remaining percentage of its original brightness. Once output drops to that level, they’re declared “burned out.”

That brightness criteria only tells part of the story about how LEDs die, however. LEDs don’t just fade away; their color balance and fidelity can change over time.

Tuning Into Colors
Bicolor and full-color LED fixtures produce their intended shades of light by mixing several spectrum-tuned LEDs in combination. The mechanism for generating usable light from an LED is this: High-frequency (blue and UV) light stimulates the phosphors to emit a lower frequency of light. Think of it as changing largely invisible energy into colors we can see. The various phosphor “recipes” are “tuned” to produce different colors. Ah, science!

The resulting blend of light can remain correct for a very long time, but not forever. That’s because the phosphors slowly break down from heat and material fatigue. This is less of an issue with remote phosphor lights because their light-emitting layer is some distance from the LED chip’s most intense energy. The trade-off is that remote phosphor lights are limited to a single color temperature.

As phosphors wear unevenly, the color changes. Those “white” presets no longer work as intended, and color fidelity drifts. Some manufacturers (like ETC) already compensate for LED “droop” (or reduced output) caused by heat by adjusting individual LEDs in response to fixture temperatures in order to maintain proper color balance. A similar approach might one day address phosphor aging as well.

First-generation LED studio lights were fairly primitive compared to what’s available today.

Early LED fixtures strained to meet our industry’s high standards for color quality. A major hurdle is that LED lights are discontinuous spectrum sources, much like fluorescent. Sawtooth gaps in their spectrum profile can make flesh tones look splotchy and unnatural. More “full-spectrum” lights put their energy into higher color quality at the expense of brightness. In the early days of LED lights, the efficiency was too low to do a decent job of both. That problem’s been solved.

Too Many Metrics?
As color quality has become more important, so has our need to evaluate it. In fact, there are so many different metrics that it can be confusing. Of the many competing scales for color fidelity, including TLCI (Television Lighting Consistency Index), SSI (Spectral Similarity Index) and TM-30 (my current favorite), it’s CRI (Color Rending Index) that’s probably most familiar. We’ll use that as we discuss standards.

Every respectable LED studio light sold today has an excellent CRI score in the mid to upper 90s on a scale of 100. Excellence is now so common that you can find 90 CRI “bulbs” for your table lamp at the grocery store. Our studio lights should be at least that good. So, how do we ensure our lights measure up?

While an illuminance light meter can measure intensity, you’ll need something like the Sekonic C-800-U Spectrometer to know if the color fidelity is up to snuff.

Consider it a pass/fail test—anything less than 90 CRI is a “fail,” particularly for the important R9, R13 and R15 chips, which impact flesh tones.

Few LED lights from 10 or 15 years ago will clear this hurdle because the bar has been raised. LEDs are brighter, more efficient and have better color quality than ever. Improvements in LED design mirror the early days of computer chips: Each new generation outperforms the last.

“Close enough for TV,” like “state of the art,” is a moving target.

Better Resolution Needs Better Lighting
The urgency to upgrade your lights will be influenced by what’s considered “good enough.” Nothing’s entirely obsolete if it can still provide some service. After all, when fluorescent studio fixtures were first introduced, 80 CRI was considered “fine.” Today, what defines “close enough” when your audience is watching on 4K OLED monitors?

Can I just upgrade my old fixtures?

From an end-user perspective, it would be great if you could upgrade light engines as they fail. Unfortunately, the industry doesn’t work that way. With few exceptions, such as some Brightline, Kino Flo or Rosco fixtures, there’s often no way to repair, let alone upgrade, the light engine.

That inability to upgrade, or even repair, is a neglected issue in the broader lighting industry. Sadly, most fixtures are destined to be trashed when they reach the end of their useful service. Manufacturers should be encouraged to do better by our willingness to pay the price for fixtures that can be repaired or upgraded.

If your older fixtures are still working, perhaps they can fill secondary roles on your next studio set—if not the more critical task of lighting talent. Using “old school” color-
correction gels can help extend their usefulness. But remember that 10-year-old fixtures are unlikely to make it to 20 unscathed. Should your lights fail the test today, it’s time to plan and budget for their replacement tomorrow.

Educating your management team on the predictable life cycle of LED lights can help dispel the notion that they last forever. People less involved with lighting may not yet understand how much the technology has transformed. It’s no longer just replacing a burned-out lamp; it’s replacing the entire light fixture—at least for now. That may change over time, but the reality today is that LED lights don’t simply die—they fade away.

If you’ve ever done single-camera production work, you already know how important lighting is. Taken together, lighting and camera skills comprise the foundation of visual storytelling. And, since you’re reading this column, you already know lighting is much more than just flooding an area with light.

While lighting someone for a one-camera shoot is relatively straightforward, the degree of complexity increases as more cameras and angles are added. As with juggling, the more balls you’ve got in the air, the trickier it gets. To help simplify the task, we’ll look at a method for dealing with this challenge that doesn’t sacrifice portrait-quality lighting.

To narrow the scope of this topic, we’re only concerned with multicamera television shows. Cinema and episodic television lighting is very different from what we generally do. For starters, cinematic production uses “motivated lighting” as warranted by the story.

As visually stunning as that can be, it’s something rarely used on a news or talk show. Instead, we more commonly work with something best described as “nonmotivated lighting.” Motivated light originates from “natural” or “practical” light sources consistent with the filmed scene, whereas nonmotivated light originates from anywhere that suits our needs.

Storytelling With Light
Our objective is to present on-camera talent in the best light possible, letting them, rather than the light, tell the story. The goal is to provide attractive lighting that supports a well-exposed camera image. When done right, people look good and the video engineer doesn’t have to chase the iris setting when the shot changes.

Lighting one person for a single camera angle isn’t complicated. The well-known “three-point lighting” method serves as a good starting point for attractive portrait lighting. This technique forms the fundamental building block for television lighting.

But the pillars of three-point lighting can get a little shaky when the number of cameras increases. An example of this would be adding a second angle to cover an anchor camera turn during a long read or an alternate shot with a graphic. The solution is not to just repeat the three-point pattern like a cookie cutter for each additional angle. This is where we need to adapt the fundamental building blocks of lighting to better suit our needs.

For any particular shot, there’s always a perfect key-light position. The problem arises when two camera angles on the same talent position must look equally good without further adjustment. Fortunately, there’s a way to accommodate this without sacrificing good lighting.

Before we discuss this approach, let’s cover some solutions that seem attractive, but don’t work as well.

It’s a fairly common practice to place the key light directly over the camera, so why not just add a second key over the second camera? That approach doesn’t work here, because both cameras would see the second key light. This would result in a confusion of shadows on the anchor’s face, rather than a single modeling shadow. So, “no” to a second key light.

Another possible solution is to flood the set with a mush of shadowless soft light. Although this “forgiving” approach would illuminate the subject for multiple camera angles, its very flatness makes everything look two-dimensional and, frankly, dull. So, another “no.”

Yet another possible approach involves using separate key lights that are alternately faded between as the anchor turns from one to the other camera. This is tricky and requires a lighting console operator working in perfect coordination with the camera shot change. This is notoriously difficult to pull off without detection and best avoided.

Split the Difference
I suggest using the following simple solution to key-lighting an anchor with two cameras. Split the difference by placing a single key light between the two camera positions.

Normally, “split the difference” implies a compromise. In this case, it’s not. That slight offset of the key light helps provide beautiful modeling. Back when I was drafting lighting plots by hand, I would use a protractor to help guide light placement. As is the case here, challenging lighting problems often yield to simple geometry.

Although some TV lighting designers opt for putting their key lights right over the camera (which is a zero-degree offset), my preference is for a side/horizontal offset somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees.

As you can see in Fig. 1, the two camera shots are relatively close to each other (roughly 28 degrees apart) with the key light placed precisely between the two cameras. That puts the key light at a 14 degree offset from both shot angles. This results in a good modeling shadow for both camera angles and makes visual sense on the shot change between them. And since only one key light is involved, as shown from behind the anchor in Fig. 2, the modeling remains consistent with no confusion of multiple shadows.

As for how steep the key light should be, there are multiple factors to take into account. Consider how the light angles will impact facial features (such as deep-set eyes), reflections of light fixtures in video displays and LED walls, or light washing out backlit scenic elements. These can sometimes present conflicting goals, influencing the lighting choices that must be made with every fixture placement decision.

According to one very successful master of network television event lighting, the ideal vertical angle is 22.5 degrees. That turns out to be exactly half of 45 degrees, which isn’t a coincidence.

There was a time when 45 degrees (both above and to the side of the subject) was considered the ideal lighting angle. But the industry and tastes have changed since Stanley McCandless first suggested his method of stage lighting. Contemporary tastes in this age of screens lean towards less acute light angles for their more forgiving impact on close-up shots. And in our corner of the visual arts, it’s important to keep the drama off of the faces.

A few techniques that inform lighting remain timeless today. We still use the Renaissance painters’ invention of “chiaroscuro” to create a sense of depth. Where they used paint, we use light, and those highlights and shadows are determined by where we place the key light.

Much like Darwin’s natural selection, the world of lighting occasionally introduces new variations to existing tools and practices. One such evolutionary step has updated the humble reflector.

Using lighting modifiers, like reflectors, is as old as photography itself. Everything from bedsheets to scraps of aluminum foil have been used to redirect light. Reflected light remains an extremely useful tool.

In the era of slow film stocks and insensitive video cameras, using reflectors was all about getting an exposure on shadowed faces. On-camera talent probably felt like they were being assaulted, rather than illuminated, by light. But today our imaging tools are more sensitive, and lighting techniques have been refined.

Reflected, Rather Than Direct
As with many advances in the industry, necessity, along with frustration, are often the mothers of invention. This desire for better tools has inspired an innovation in reflective lighting.

Award-winning Austrian Cinematographer Christian Berger AAC, and his gaffer, Jakob Ballinger, wanted a less-confining method of lighting; one that was efficient and permitted more freedom of movement for the actors within a scene. Out of this desire grew a method of lighting that used reflected, rather than the usual direct lighting. This was the genesis for new reflective lighting tools. Gaffer Jakob Ballinger went on to refine the resulting reflectors and bring them to market as the founder and CEO of The Lightbridge.

There are now several manufacturers (including Dedolights Lightstream, Godox LiteFlow, and others) that have emulated the kits offered by The Lightbridge.

Reflective lighting kits typically consist of an assortment of reflector sizes with varying degrees of diffusion. The reflectors have specialized mounting hardware that can be fitted onto standard light stands and grip equipment.

The current reflector sizes range from 7 cm X 7 cm (2.75 inches), best suited for tabletop work, up to 100 cm X 100 cm (39.37 inches), which is roughly the same size as legacy reflectors. Levels of diffusion range from a mirror-like reflection to a “super white” in five graduated steps. Reflectors can be used alone or in combination for the desired effect.

Reflective lighting systems provide several real advantages over more conventional direct lighting methods in some situations, but the technique does takes some getting used to.

Anyone around large windows has witnessed the natural flow of light throughout a room. Light bounces off the floor, ceiling, walls and objects in a way that suffuses the space with light well-beyond the area near the window itself. That’s the nature of actual sunlight.

Sunlight and sky light originate from a great distance away, so that the light that reaches us is relatively unaffected by the inverse-square law. The result is that the exposure remains consistent over a large area. That imparts an even brightness that close-in lights can’t match.

Inverse-Square Law
Without delving too deeply into the inverse-square law (which states that the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance), brightness changes dramatically when you move towards or away from a nearby light source. Reflectors make the inverse-square law work to our advantage by increasing the throw distance from light to subject, thereby reducing unwanted changes in exposure.

Light rays become more parallel the farther away the light source is. The more parallel the light beams are, the less impact the inverse-square law has on changing the exposure over distances. That makes reflected lighting behave more like natural light, allowing it to spread throughout a space with a more consistent intensity. And in doing so, the production lighting looks and acts more like natural light.

That ability to nudge the inverse-square law is a major advantage when working in small spaces, where conventional lights have to be relatively close. Therein lies the advantage provided by these reflectors.

Smaller Footprint
The process of lighting with reflectors is more additive than subtractive, compared to direct lighting. In practice, you tap into the beam of light with a reflector to diffuse and redirect the light where desired. The reflected beam of light, even when diffused, holds a relatively tight pattern. That, in turn, reduces the number of flags needed to contain the spill light. The result is that using reflected light results in a smaller footprint of equipment because there’s less spill to “clean up” with flags.

Although any focusing lighting fixtures can be brought into play with these reflectors, parallel beam fixtures are particularly well-suited to the purpose. Among them are The Orbiter Beam by Arri, Dedolight’s Parallel Beam Intensifier, Mole-Richardson’s Molebeam, PANI’s Panibeam and Godox’s BeamLight. All of these have extremely narrow (roughly 5°) beams of light.

While parallel beam fixtures are often quite large, using them in conjunction with reflectors actually takes up less space than conventional lights. The large lights can be set up out of the way (even outside of the rooms), while their beams are focused on the slim reflectors that actually light the scene.

The reflectors themselves have a small footprint, so they can fit into spaces that wouldn’t accommodate a conventional fixture. Because light levels remain more consistent throughout a broader area, less time is spent adjusting the lighting to compensate for movement within the set.

Reflected lighting systems provide a useful solution that works in places where direct lighting can come up short. This approach may not lend itself to large TV studio sets or “man on the street” news pops, but for maximum flexibility in locations where you want a low equipment profile, this is a great tool to have in your kit.

In the right hands, using reflectors imparts a quality of light that doesn’t appear so obviously lit by artificial means. It’s almost like a magic trick, enabled by finagling the inverse-square law with a look that appears to arise naturally.

As with any new technique, working with reflectors may feel a bit odd at first—but the natural quality and consistency of usable exposure provided by this style of lighting make it worth exploring.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

Back in the age of incandescent lights we only had one color temperature to choose for studio production. Until fairly recently, studio lighting was almost exclusively incandescent. There were a few exceptions—if you didn’t mind lousy color quality, blistering UV, open flame, smoke, or neurotoxic waste, but incandescent was simply the choice. If you could overlook its lousy efficiency and enough waste heat to grill a steak, heating a piece of tungsten until it glows white-hot is a pretty good way to make broad-spectrum light. 

And yet there was something sublime about a light source that is the physical embodiment of a theoretical blackbody radiator, upon which Lord Kelvin based the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) scale. Whatever the shade, skin tones look great under the warm glow of incandescent. That positive quality is still worth pursuing today.

Before the BBC settled on their standard for high definition color, they polled the public to find out what they liked best. All else being equal, most people preferred warmer colors that were well-saturated. That preference has been baked into our DNA since we discovered life was better around the hearth. 

Why Studios Chose 5600K for LED
The comforting glow of a fire and candle light notwithstanding, why did we abandon the warmth of incandescent for “daylight” fixtures in our studios? The change was driven by twin technological advances in LED lighting fixtures and flat panel video displays. 

LEDs have a large efficiency advantage over tungsten, but it was the daylight (5600K) versions that became the dominant choice in studio lighting. This was due to the superior output and color quality of the early daylight LEDs as compared to incandescent (3200K) ones. As LED technology has advanced, the performance advantage of 5600K over 3200K LEDs has mostly disappeared.

Another important advantage of 5600K LEDs was their ability to closely match the default color temperature of video displays that were becoming popular on studio sets. This contributed to daylight-balanced LED lights becoming our new choice of one.  

Is 5600K Still Our Best Option?
Today’s LED lights provide high-output and excellent color accuracy across the spectrum. They’re not only nearly a perfect match for incandescent or daylight—they can also produce the color temperatures in-between (provided they can hold the Planckian Locus, which is another topic). And where fixture selection used to be either daylight or incandescent, bi-color and full-color fixtures are rapidly becoming the industry norm. 

Now that it’s no longer an “either/or” choice, we can choose which color temperature we want based on what’s better for the subjects—and that’s something new. 

Choosing a Balance That Compliments Skin Tones
Color visibility depends on the light source containing the colors we want to see reflected. High quality “white” light contains all colors, but it’s the balance of red that has the greatest impact on skin tone. Here’s why.

All skin tones have similar undertone reflectance past 600 nanometers because that’s the spectral profile for blood. The bright red part of the spectrum, represented by the R9 chip of the extended Color Rendering Index (CRI), is essential for good skin tone reproduction. And although red is present in all CCTs, its relative amount varies depending on which color temperature is used.

Every color temperature has its own Spectral Power Distribution (SPD) profile. As you can see in Fig. 1, LED daylight (5600K) is more heavily weighted towards blue, while the “incandescent” LED (3200K) is weighted towards reds. But note that the 4400K SPD shows a relatively neutral balance that’s between daylight and incandescent. “White” will look nominally the same, but individual colors will track somewhat differently depending on the color bias of the particular SPD profiles being used. We can use this to our advantage.

That raises the question of why, other than LED development history and its legacy equipment, are we still choosing 5600K for new installations?  

Our understanding and use of warm colors to enhance skin tones isn’t new, but we’re still discovering how to apply this information in the age of variable CCT lighting. A number of manufacturers are already incorporating this color science to their light fixtures.

Some companies, such as Creamsource, ETC, and Rosco DMG Lighting, are building fixtures that incorporate deep red LED emitters and broad range phosphor-converted red LEDs to improve how people look under their lights. To use an audio analogy, including deep red spectrum light for skin tones is like adding a tweeter to a speaker system for improved high frequency sound. 

If red is the point, why not return to 3200K? Because there’s more at play.

LED video walls and monitors have their own distinct CCT requirements. They don’t currently do well at 3200K, particularly in the brightness range that matches today’s studio lighting levels. With a default white-point of 6500K, their bit depth suffers at low intensity settings. Yet there is still room for some adjustment. It turns out that 4400K provides for additional skin-tone-friendly warmer light, while not straying too far off the default color temperature of video screens. 

A “Goldilocks” compromise of 4400K? “Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right!”

It turns out that 4400K brings back into play some of the warmth we used to have with incandescent while avoiding the muddiness in the blue/green range that can be associated with lower color temperatures. Best of all, 4400K still plays friendly with the video screens.

Another advantage of this approach is that using 4400K “neutral white” employs both sets of the bi-color LED emitters, leveling out their respective wear over the fixture’s life.

Bi-color and variable color temperature LED lights are rapidly becoming the industry standard. And with that advent, mid-CCT options are now feasible. That opens up new options to choose whichever CCT is most useful in presenting our stories and characters. And with that new capability, we finally have more color temperature options for our studio lighting. 

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

Lighting experts approach their work in much the same way physicians do. Both use an Empirical-Rational approach, which has guided medical professionals since the days of ancient Greece. The method involves first listening to the patient’s (or client’s) complaint and observing the problem, then, through the lens of a well-informed and specialized insight, they diagnose the cause of the problem. Assuming a cure is achievable, they then recommended a course of treatment to correct the problem. This approach works for almost anything.

Since lighting problems, unlike some physical maladies, don’t heal themselves, nothing gets resolved until someone first notices the problem and reports it. If you don’t have someone on staff who regularly checks the lighting, there’s another dependable source who will probably tell you when something’s not right—the anchors. 

I’m certainly guilty of delivering an eye-roll upon hearing a complaint instead of listening properly. What I’ve come to realize is that every legitimate complaint should be welcomed as useful information in a puzzle that needs to be solved. And who doesn’t enjoy unraveling a good mystery? However, as Agatha Christie would note, things aren’t always as they appear. In one case, insistent calls from a general manager about “bad lighting” turned out to be a poorly adjusted monitor in their office. The resolution required more diplomatic tact than lighting skills.

The reports that I get about lighting problems often include images, which attest to something gone wrong. They typically come from news directors and chief engineers who know what they’re talking about. An interesting common thread is that the initial complaint often originates from on-camera talent. 

Viewer Scrutiny
Anchors are good at spotting problems. They’re the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” providing a warning system for spotting problems. With an understandable pinch of self-interest, anchors care about how they look because their audience cares. Loyal viewers can spot (and will complain about) a hair out of place on a wide shot. This level of scrutiny can spot problems that might otherwise elude the scrutiny of scopes and meters.

As for lighting equipmeånt problems, there are fewer issues today. The advent of LED lighting has increased day-to-day dependability. Although solid-state lights are more complex than incandescent, they require no daily maintenance once they’re up and running. Compared to replacing burned out tungsten-halogen lamps every few hundred hours, LED lights are nearly maintenance-free. We’ve entered a period of “set them and forget them” with LED—at least most of the time.

As for complaints from on-camera talent, a common one is about how bright the studio lights seem. This is often heard following re-lights with daylight-balanced LED. Daylight color temperature light (5600K) seems brighter than incandescent (3200K) because our eyes evolved under daylight. Fortunately, we can ease this discomfort by adding a “comfort light.”

Human eyes can handle a remarkable range of brightness. Between our eye’s automatic iris and adaptive changes to its light-sensitive cells, we can see a brightness range of a million-to-one. So where does the discomfort come from?

Today’s studios are lit at a relatively low level—around 60 fc (foot candle). This is lower than many retail stores, let alone exterior light levels, which can reach 10,000 fc. Intensity isn’t the problem here. It’s the “relative” brightness as compared with the visual background that makes studio lights seem bright. That makes it a contrast, rather than a brightness problem. 

For Example
In broad daylight, car headlights don’t look bright. Yet the same headlights are blindingly bright in the context of a dark road. What’s different is the “relative” brightness between the headlights and their background. 

That’s what’s happening in a dark studio with talent lights. The contrast of the lights with the studio’s darkness make them “seem” bright. You may not be able to change the brightness of the lights on an anchor desk for numerous reasons, but you can control the depth of darkness by selective lighting. The solution is to simply light surfaces behind where the anchor is looking.

Comfort lights should focus on vertical surfaces within the anchor’s sightlines. 

Comfort lights ease an anchor’s visual task by brightening the dark areas that are within their field of vision. Comfort lights should be focused only where the anchor is “looking,” rather than what the camera sees. This technique retains the intended lighting on the anchor desk, while easing the anchor’s task of looking at the camera and reading the teleprompter under studio lights.

Specifically, comfort lights should be focused on vertical areas (preferably with a medium to high reflectance value) such as the back wall of a studio. They may also illuminate the cameras themselves and even the floor crew, provided the lighting angles are steep enough to avoid lens flares and visual glare for the floor crew. These additional lights can sometimes do double-duty by lighting behind-the-scenes “bump” shots. Relatively low intensities (20–30 fc) will achieve the desired results, assuming average reflectance of the background being lit. 

Because comfort lights aren’t focused at critical on-camera areas, top-quality lights are not required. So long as they don’t flicker or tinge the studio with undesirable colors, almost any working light will do. Even zoned work lights could work. What’s important is visually opening an otherwise dark cavern with light. As for the surfaces to be lit, neutral colors are best. Avoid comfort lighting highly saturated colors, such as chroma-key walls, to reduce possible color contamination of the main set.

Not all lighting problems can be resolved as easily as the example involving comfort lights, but all can be addressed once they’re recognized. And once pointed out, a methodical approach can provide the appropriate prescription to cure whatever ails your lighting.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting. He can be reached at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

The sun has set on incandescent, and the last of the fluorescent tubes are being snatched off the shelves as they too fade to black. HMI still plays a role in the larger fixtures, but their days are likewise numbered. As for LEDs, it’s been an uneven and sometimes clumsy ascension, but there’s no doubt that they’re the current king of light.

The industry stubbed a few toes while fumbling through the gloom of LED’s infancy, but we’re now getting the lighting tools that work the way we do. 

Trendsetting
When ARRI’s original SkyPanel S60 first came out in 2015, it set a trend: With its RGBW light engine and built-in effects, it heralded new possibilities for what a light could do. Like most early iterations of any new technology, it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It even met the economic utility of staying serviceable long enough for the rental houses to amortize their investment. Well done! But that was eight years ago. What’s next?

LED components are still improving at rates reminiscent of the early days of computer chips. Other manufacturers have taken advantage of those advances, making the original SkyPanels look dated today. ARRI was apparently just biding their time working on their updated fixture. Sharing little more than the root name—the SkyPanel X is completely new.

ARRI’s new panel follows the practical 2x1 form factor. Rather than offer stair-step increases in fixture size—as they did in the past—they’ve taken a module approach. Different yoke configurations handle one, two or three heads. This approach simplifies everything from manufacturing on down. 

To paraphrase Darwin, it’s not the brightest light that succeeds in the wild; it’s the most adaptable. ARRI has created an adaptable light by incorporating the best qualities we’ve seen in several of the best lights, rolling them into a single package. With this measured evolutionary step, they’ve raised the bar again.

The new SkyPanel X won’t be for everyone, but it will likely become a “must have” item at rental houses and large studios. These lights offer some exceptional features.

ARRI is abandoning their RGBW light engine for the broader color gamut of RGBACL (Red, Green, Blue, Amber, Cyan and Lime). This brings their SkyPanel X light engine into line with their Orbiter monolight. This change fits well with the larger landscape of products that ARRI is known for—their cameras. This is where things literally come together.

Unique Advantage
LEDs are discontinuous spectrum emitters, unlike incandescent and natural daylight. Camera sensors are, likewise, discontinuous spectrum sensors. By manufacturing both the lights and the cameras, ARRI now controls both the paint and the canvas. The spectral frequencies of the light can now be tuned to match the cameras. This gives ARRI a unique advantage. And they’re making use of that.

With the greater range provided by their RGBACL light engine, SkyPanel X uses software to match the color gamut of various Arri cameras. Although the current software is programmed for ARRI cameras, they could match the LUTs (Look Up Tables) of any camera.

Another advantage of an RGBACL LED package is the ability to accurately adjust for a wide range of CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) while staying closely within the perfect Planckian locus of accuracy. Bicolor, RGBW and RGBWW fixtures are limited in this ability with their smaller color gamut and fewer possible metamer combinations. SkyPanel X should be able to cover a CCT range of 1,500K–20,000K, which is huge. 

SkyPanel X now boasts an integrated power supply, IP 66 (Ingress Protection) rating, the enormous color gamut of RGBACL LEDs, wireless control (LumenRadio CRMX2), and modular scalability with their multiple-head yokes. Old accessories can even be used with an optional adapter, along with new ones, including an unusual, lensed adaptor they call the HyPer Optic.

To some extent, SkyPanel X is both a soft and hard source light.

The HyPer Optic puts a lens in front of every LED chip, collimating the multiple beams into a single round shaft of light. It’s a nice trick that increases the utility of the fixture, but don’t expect it to take the place of a Fresnel. Although it’s effective for pumping light through a window or into a bounce at a distance, you’re less likely to use the HyPer Optic directly on someone in the same room for anything “natural.”

Many of today’s LED fixtures draw so little power that you can almost ignore load calculations. SkyPanel X is not one of them. While the RGBACL light engine provides a broad color gamut, that flexibility comes with a trade-off in efficiency. A single SkyPanel X pulls up to 800W, which is double the original version’s draw.

ARRI boasts that the triple-headed version is as bright as a 2400W HMI. Well, it also pulls 2400W. Based on early data, it still has an acceptable 65 LPW (Lumens per Watt), which is OK in a fixture with the color agility of a six-chip light engine. But if you only require “white” light for use in a conventional studio, there are other fixtures that will be a better fit for cost and energy efficiency. 

Still, I’m impressed with this fixture while acknowledging that nearly all its features are already out there. What the SkyPanel X notably does is combine them into a singular modular light with excellent build quality and high usability. This fixture has undoubtedly set a new bar for other manufacturers to hurdle. As with the original SkyPanel, we not only get a great new tool, but this new version will also encourage the competition to adapt and become even better.  

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

About 20 years ago while attending a trade show in Las Vegas, I crossed a walkway between buildings along The Strip. I stepped out into the dazzling light of one of the new outdoor digital billboards that had just started to appear. In glancing away from the considerable glare, I saw that everyone on the walkway was bathed in an ever-changing light from the garish display. 

For me, this accidental lighting was a lot more interesting than whatever was being hawked on the billboard itself. The play of light was animated like fireworks on the upturned faces in the crowd. It was a thing of beauty in a sea of over-the-top excess. 

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that was my introduction to image-based lighting—years before anyone had named it or figured out how to use it. 

Virtual Production
In its most basic form, LED panel lights consist of individual pixels. Advanced versions can be mapped out to form a kind of low-resolution display screen. At the point where you can “drive” these lights with images played across the light’s face, you have an image-based light (IBL). Need a larger area? Just add another panel and map it accordingly. 

If that sounds similar to a video wall, it is.

IBL fixtures and video walls actually have a lot in common with each other. Dot-pitch, brightness and color quality may be different, but they’re both fundamentally screens. One is designed to be viewed directly, while the other is indirectly viewed by way of its incidental light and reflections. 

When used together in the realm of virtual production, the results are the latest in movie magic—with the benefit of capturing realistic virtual environments and the actors’ performance directly in the same camera shot.

IBL fixtures are now integral to special effects production.

Special effects (SFX) used to rely heavily on “green screen” and required extensive post production to piece effects together. Virtual production studios can now accomplish that in one pass, permitting virtual backgrounds to be simultaneously combined with live foreground action, representing a transformational change in the industry. 

Shows such as “The Mandalorian,” and current “Star Trek” shows depend heavily on virtual production within LED volumes. 

One byproduct of shooting within these immersive LED volumes is that ambient light from the screens, along with their reflections, illuminate the foreground—much as they would in nature. 

Deficiencies
There are, however, still a few problems. 

Most video screens are made of RGB (red, green and blue) LEDs. Although these screens look fine when viewed directly, the RGB emitters give off light that’s deficient. It lacks the spectral fidelity needed for accurate color reproduction. This is particularly noticeable on flesh tones. 

In an attempt to address these deficiencies, some video wall manufacturers are beginning to take a page from the lighting fixture industry, broadening their color spectrum by adding phosphor-based “white” LEDs to the RGB mix. Although the color fidelity of these RGBW displays don’t quite equal the accuracy of purpose-built lighting fixtures, they’re a big improvement. 

In practice, using these white LEDs becomes a balancing act between how it looks to the camera and how it lights the actors. One company addressing this challenge is Emmy Award-winning Brompton Technologies, which developed “TrueLight” to better control the light balance. Breakthrough advances like this are part of the ongoing evolution in lighting today.

It’s now possible to open up a virtual area of white light within an LED volume (but outside of the camera shot) to help illuminate a scene. At the moment, however, the best LED volume walls are still somewhat deficient,  only scoring a color accuracy of around CRI-80 out of a possible 100. Those displays will eventually improve, although change will require considerable investment. 

IBL fixtures are inherently better at lighting the foreground by all measures. And their ability to work in conjunction with the dynamically changing images can now permit a seamless match with background images. 

Accurate Color Reproduction
Inspired by the industry’s need for better lighting tools, several manufacturers have stepped up. Among them, Kino Flo and Quasar Science have created lights that convincingly match virtual backgrounds, as well as providing for accurate color reproduction. 

For example, envision a car chase past a row of street lights. While a conventional light gag could be used, the IBL fixtures can more accurately mimic the movement of the street lights past the car by inputting the moving street lights directly. Combined with the matching images in the Volume, these tools work together to build a more convincing illusion. 

To accomplish this, IBL fixtures have taken a page from video displays to become a sort of low-resolution video panel, but with more output and higher color fidelity. Likewise, LED volumes have borrowed some tricks from lighting. Micro LEDs and flip-chips create tighter pixel structures that allow direct recording without moiré. This tight clustering has also enabled the addition of “white” LEDs to improve the color fidelity of the light the volume emits. 

Image processing that was originally developed for the video game industry adds to the realism. 3D creation tools, such as Unreal Engine, have made it possible to add real-time background perspective changes that appear in-camera. 

The amount of control required for IBL lighting fixtures has exposed the limitations of the DMX-512 lighting protocol. Fortunately, there are already practical workarounds. IBL lights require input control that more closely resembles a video feed. Designing better control solutions will be an ongoing process.

These are the latest tools for the literal expression of virtual light. They’re already playing an important role in media and entertainment production. We should also remember that the “poetic” interpretation of light can be of equal importance in storytelling. 

Conventional lighting fixtures will remain important tools in production, but the unique capabilities of IBL fixtures open new possibilities for lighting effects beyond virtual production studios. The full impact of these new technologies is a tale still being written.  

Television lighting techniques have evolved over the years, pushed by advances in camera technology and viewers’ discerning eyes. Much as our studio sets have had to become more realistic, the broad strokes of lighting have been refined to encompass the more subtle nuances that are visible now. As image resolution has increased, the adage “close enough for television” no longer holds true. Television is still a “closeup” medium, but those tight shots are now larger than life and extremely detailed. 

The skin-pore-revealing detail of the medium is something that every news anchor over 30 is keenly aware of, particularly as their own smile lines begin to appear. As a result, most on-camera talent understand the value of good lighting (along with the importance of makeup and even camera shading). 

Anchors attending public appearances are sometimes told that they look better in person. There are many reasons for this, but it’s sometimes retold as a subtle complaint about their lighting. I was once tempted to tell a grumbling anchor that (with apologies to Star Trek’s Dr. Leonard McCoy), “I’m a lighting designer—not a plastic surgeon!” (not that I would actually say that). They were just seeking help to “accentuate the positive.” 

Lighting Techniques
Presenting on-camera talent in the best possible light is fundamental to television lighting. While there’s no single recipe to magically make everyone look great, there are techniques that help. One important tool is using fill light to moderate the prominence of wrinkles by controlling the degree of contrast. The less dark the wrinkle’s trough, the less prominent it is.

Fill light is more than an instrument within some “three-point lighting” triumvirate. Fill light includes the ambient light bouncing off all the surfaces in a normal room. Just as an echo in a room tells you if the surfaces are reflective or absorbent, the ambient light tells a story about the space. And much as an anechoic sound chamber doesn’t sound anything like an actual room, a dark studio doesn’t look like a “plausible” space—unless it’s supposed to be a cave. 

News studio lighting is grid-mounted to keep the floor clear for roving cameras. That limitation presents challenges to providing natural-looking fill. “Normal” rooms have light coming from many directions at once. Table lamps, windows and bounced light from the reflective surfaces each contribute to the general lighting in a room. But studios are not natural spaces. This is where integrated desk lights or camera-mounted lights (such as Obie Lights), can help fill the gaps in creating a visually plausible space that is more flattering to the face. 

One of the tools that we can use to emulate ambient light is the chin light. 

Chin lights provide a specialized type of fill. They deliver light from below the zero-degree sightline, where grid-mounted lights can’t directly reach. They’re intended to emulate the softly scattered light that bounces off horizontal surfaces and under-light the face. This can be an actual light fixture that’s embedded in the desk or elsewhere below the height of the camera lens. For example, Walter Cronkite had two scoops on floor stands for the purpose—but there are many techniques to accomplish the same effect.

My favorite version of chin lighting is done without additional instruments. Assuming the anchor desk has a large enough acrylic top, it’s possible to use the anchor desk fill lights as bounced fill off the reflective acrylic desktop. This bounced light helps fill in the anchor’s face from underneath without using additional instruments. It does, however, require planning in conjunction with the rest of the lighting design. 

Angles of Reflection and Incidence
Remembering that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence; you need to establish that the desktop is large enough, and that the bounce light angle is correct to land the light on the anchors’ faces. A bonus with this technique is that the instrumentation remains invisible to the audience. 

Another advantage of this bounce technique is that the light intensity is more consistent across the area since the Inverse Square law works in your favor over the longer throw.

Light originating in the grid provides a much farther throw distance than a desktop-mounted source. The longer the throw distance, the less impact on intensity changes from the anchor leaning into (or out of) the light. In short, they won’t “bloom” when they lean forward. While this reflected chin light technique requires finesse to achieve, it’s the most natural-looking of all the options.

Another method to create a chin light is to build them into the anchor desk. This will require some coordination with scenic design and a bit of grip/electric/carpentry work. Compact LED fixtures, such as the remote phosphor BB&S Pipeline lights, can be tucked into a desk to gently up-light individual anchor positions.

With the short throw distance you’ll only use a fraction of the total output of these fixtures, but the demand for high-color quality and dependability remains the same. Accessories can be added to increase the effective aperture size (larger is always softer), and egg crates will help control spill and shield them from the camera view.

Another option is building your own lighting fixture into the desk using LED tape, matching power supplies and dimmers, diffusers and more. This is a much more labor-intensive option since it requires extensive custom work. Done right, it can become integral to the anchor desk’s overall design.

Whatever approach you take, the effect of chin lights should always be subtle; the goal is to softly supplement the main lighting. All added fixtures should have a color temperature that matches your main lights, and the CRI/TLCI/TM-30 numbers should be as close to perfect as possible to ensure skin tones are spot-on.

Even though chin lighting may seem like a small detail, this technique contributes to presenting your people in the best light. 

Lighting’s contribution to a production is often easy to overlook—as with makeup and special effects, being invisible to the story is actually a compliment. Unless the lighting design is intentionally flashy, the viewer shouldn’t be distracted by the lighting. Most of what we do is designed to make people and sets look good—rather than drawing attention to the lighting itself. In Zen lighting parlance, "the spotlight does not light itself." Besides, your average newscast doesn’t call for much “flash and trash” lighting. 

Lighting should always be designed in service to the production. The anchors and the show should look attractive, without the audience ever being aware of how that’s accomplished. Light the news—don’t be the news. One of the worst ways lighting can draw attention to itself is to fail during a show. In an effort to help you avoid unintended black-outs, we’ll cover some strategies to harden your lighting system against disasters. 

While nothing can ever be disaster-proof, we can be prepared for two common causes of lighting systems failures. 

No matter how lucky you are, the fickle finger of fate will eventually point your way. Either a natural disaster or human error will eventually put your system to the test. Knowing that, let’s focus on the two areas most likely to take down your lighting: Loss of power or DMX control. 

Protecting Against Power Loss
Keeping the lights energized is easier today than ever. During the incandescent era, news sets could easily use 60,000-100,000W of light, but in the age of LEDs that number is down to about one-tenth of what it used to take. Depending on the capacity of your emergency/backup power system, you may discover that you already have the backup generator headroom to include much of your studio lighting. 

Except for the lighting console (which we’ll cover later), lighting fixtures usually recover quickly once power is restored. But if you want to avoid your lights winking out during the time it takes your generator to kick in, consider putting your most critical studio lights on your uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system. For example, as few as two 20-amp UPS circuits could protect the LED lighting on an entire anchor desk during a power outage.

DMX Data Stream Protection
If it’s not already the case, every light in your studio will eventually be controlled by the DMX-512 lighting protocol standard. That DMX data stream should be “hardened,” starting with the lighting console. Lighting consoles are fundamentally computers, which are going to have to reboot if they lose power. Depending on the default behavior of the rest of your lighting system, that could put you in the dark. Keep it up and running with a UPS that also protects against power surges. 

Every powered device that the DMX signal passes through (such as individual lights and DMX Splitters) will need to be energized to reach “mission-critical” lighting fixtures. This is another reason why DMX cables should follow logical paths to defined zones. This practice will also ease troubleshooting.

As with any technical infrastructure, the foundation of a dependable system is quality equipment. My preference is for lighting consoles with simple interfaces, bullet-proof design, robust build, and 24/7 support. Single-purpose devices that are isolated from the internet will give you an additional level of protection.  

No matter how dependable the equipment may be, stuff happens. Unless you’ve got redundancy built into your system, it could take days to get a replacement board. For that reason, I highly recommend adding a DMX “shot-box” alongside every lighting console.

A DMX shot-box takes a “snapshot” of what your lighting console is sending out to the fixtures. In the event of a console failure, shot-boxes can continue to feed the commands that hold your last “look” on stage. These shot-boxes can also record a number of different cues to be played back with a push of a button. These devices will keep your studio up and running for however long it takes to repair your primary lighting console. 

Shot-box devices like the Doug Fleenor Design Pre10-P (static cues only) and the Swisson DMX Recorder XRC-200 (static and multi-step cue sequences) can be easily integrated into any existing DMX-512 lighting system. In addition, ETC lighting systems either have built-in programmable behavior that will “hold last look,” or can be added with their ETC-SACN Gateway products. Any of the above devices will allow you to play back cues independent of the main console. 

These are intuitive devices that can be installed in minutes, and can react automatically. Just remember they need to be plugged into UPS protection as well.

We can’t predict when disaster will strike, but following these strategies will help you quickly recover from the most common ones that can take out your lights. The cost of being prepared is less than a single commercial break, while the peace of mind will be priceless. 

Best Practices
Advance preparation can provide an edge in recovering from disasters. Here’s my short list of time-proven best practices: 

• Use DMX splitters/repeaters to provide electrical isolation between the console and the lights. This will limit the potential damage from cascading electrical shorts.
• To find DMX problems, have the right diagnostic tools on hand—such as City Theatrical’s DMXcat or Swisson’s DMX Tester.
• Back up your shows and keep several versions available in case of data corruption.
• Run DMX cables in logical control zones. Never more than 32 fixtures on a single run, with the last fixture terminated to avoid potential signal reflections.
• Label each light with its starting DMX address. This will make it easier to ID and replace.
• Nothing works perfectly all the time, so have a spare for each fixture type.
• Cheap equipment is never a bargain. Good companies make good gear. 
• Test your backup plan to make sure it actually works.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions. Contact him at
TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

For those of you attending the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 15-19, any boasting about bigger, brighter, and better-than-ever lights is more than just hyperbole. In a pattern similar to the early days of computing, LEDs have made major strides in efficiency and color quality. They really are better than ever.

Manufacturers may have been sidelined during the pandemic, but many have used that time to refine and expand their product lines. In addition to those efforts, you find there’s been major improvement in the LED components themselves. Here’s some of what you can expect to see.

Saving Money
With few exceptions, manufacturers have discontinued their “traditional lamp” fixtures. What you see on display will be almost exclusively LED. The rare exceptions to this rule will be the big HMIs or special-purpose fixtures that require a quality that LEDs can’t provide. So unless it’s an 18K spot or something with exotic optics, it’s all LED. 

New laws to get mercury out of the environment have put fluorescent lamps on the “nearly extinct” list. The big lamp manufacturers have already finished making the last of them, and whatever remains in the warehouse will be the last of it. As a result, there may be high demand this year for LED soft-lights to replace obsolete fluorescent equipment. With supply-chain problems finally clearing up, product availability should be better than the past few years. 

Progress in the development of LEDs has followed a path similar to Moore’s law for microelectronics. Haitz’s Law predicts LED efficiency increases and cost reductions that we’re seeing reflected in the latest light fixtures. If you do a lumens-per-dollar calculation, you’ll find you’re getting a lot more quality light for your buck than ever. That’s at least partly due to the efficacy improvement of the LED chips themselves. This helps explain why newer models can honestly boast about better output.

‘Tunable White’
Real-world lighting requirements don’t come in just one color-temperature (CT). Bi-color fixtures address this demand with variable white adjustment. Models that include +/- green adjustment will make it easier to use together with other fixtures that may not be spot-on. 

These “tunable white” fixtures are ideal for field use where color-temperature versatility is needed. Studio spaces may even discover they prefer how skin tones look when lit with a bit lower color temperature than the de facto standard of 5600K “daylight.” 

Expect to see many companies offering slightly different versions of a Mono-Light. This format is almost primal in its bare-bones layout. It consists of a COB (Chip On Board) LED, fan-cooled radiator, power supply (often separate), and a control interface to make it all work. 

These lights put out a lot of raw light, but are typically used with a variety of light modifiers (reflector, diffuser, Fresnel lens, etc.)—typically fitting a common Bowens mount. For better and worse, this category is the Swiss Army Knife of lights. With the right attachments, mono-lights are a useful tool for smaller scale field production out of a trunk.

Like the unofficial motto of the US Post Office (“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat…”), look for more IP65 lights that will deliver under every condition. These more robust field lights are designed to handle the worst of the elements. “Run & Gun” crews will appreciate having these IP-rated fixtures when the weather takes a turn for the worse. 

Cable snake nests are the unavoidable bane of location setups. Look for help with more fixtures featuring fully integrated wireless control. Some are brand specific and proprietary, but other systems are intended to work with any DMX device. Among wireless systems that have proven interoperability, watch for fixtures that have incorporated LumenRadio CRMX and Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM enabled systems. 

War of the LED Emitters
With the high sensitivity of today’s cameras, color quality—rather than just brightness—has moved to center stage. Without taking too deep a dive into the science behind LED color, creating a light with a broad color spectrum enables more accurate color reproduction. Different manufacturers have taken different approaches, each with their own unique “secret sauce” mixture of LEDs and phosphors. 

The engineering goal behind these varied approaches is to provide as natural a visible spectrum as possible, while still providing an energy-efficient light. Some companies use phosphor-converted colors to smooth out the spikiness of single-frequency emitters, while others use 6 or more separate colors to stake out their broad color gamut. 

Quantifying the color accuracy of lights is evolving. While everyone is familiar with CRI (Color Rendering Index), it has limitations. Companies are now posting the more specific TLCI (Total Lighting Consistency Index) numbers, and even the TM-30 scores. By these measures, the closer the score numbers are to 100, the closer they are to perfection. 

Novel Designs
As virtual production continues to prove its value in the industry, look for more lighting manufacturers to develop image-based lighting solutions. For those who need it, these fixtures can integrate with real-time image content to create plausible lighting that seems to arise from the virtual environment itself.

Part of the fun of the NAB Show is getting to see the latest lighting fixtures. I’ve seen several new fixture designs that deserve recognition for their ingenuity. One novel light fixture has a liquid-cooled stalk of LEDs surrounded by a stepped reflector. Beam width is controlled by which rows of chips are reflected in selected portions of the reflector. It’s innovative and a great conversation starter. 

Time will tell the utility of such novel designs. Some will remain curiosities of limited application, while another may turn out to be the new “workhorse” of the industry. 

Our industry is filled with some of the most creative people on earth, and this year’s NAB Show is your chance to meet them and see their latest creations for yourself. Enjoy the adventure! 

To register for the show, visit nabshow.com/2023.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

Unless your studio was built in the last decade, it was almost certainly not designed to support today’s LED fixtures. During the age of incandescent, racks of dimmers supplied power to stage-pin and twist-lock outlets hanging from the grid. 

Intensity-level commands were sent from the lighting console to racks of humming dimmers, tucked away in some room where their buzzing modules and cooling fans couldn’t be picked up by studio microphones. These were the trademarks of every lighting system of the last generation. 

This type of dimming infrastructure risks becoming obsolete with the arrival of today’s LED lighting fixtures. This column will help you understand what changes must be implemented before the arrival of your next lighting package.

Transitioning From Dimming to Non-Dim Power
You might be tempted to just change the plugs and park your dimmers at 100%. Don’t. 

Your existing lighting infrastructure will need some modification to work with the new lights. In evaluating what must be changed, we need to first note the different requirements of incandescent vs. LED fixtures.

Legacy dimming systems were designed to control incandescent lights using a single modulated power feed. Heating up a tungsten filament to the desired degree of brightness is a fundamentally simple way to make light. But things get more complicated when you need to dim a lamp. 

Controlling incandescent brightness was originally done with resistance dimmers—a relatively simple, if wasteful, solution. This method gave way to more efficient modern dimming, which works by “chopping” the power to control intensity. Tungsten filaments were fine with this, thanks to their thermal inertia as a resistive load, but the chopping of the sine wave causes problems for solid-state electronics, such as contemporary LED fixtures.

Solid-state lights require a constant “non-regulated” power source. Dimming is done with on-board dimmers, rather than by dimming the power source they’re plugged into.

A modern dimmer at “full” is not the same thing as a non-dimmed/unregulated circuit. What comes out the back end of a dimming module looks nothing like a pure sine wave.

There’s further distortion of the sine wave, along with wasted energy, from the “chokes,” which helped limit the vibrations of incandescent filaments when they were dimmed (Fig. 1). 

Furthermore, some dimming systems used techniques to “goose” or reduce the voltage when the power mains weren’t operating up to standard. All of these modifications to the power create challenges for devices that were designed to be plugged directly into a standard power source. 

In short, your legacy dimming equipment may not play well with your next generation of lighting equipment without some modification. 

To quote the advice from lighting company ETC, “No matter what type of dimmer you are using, you must set the dimmer to not regulate the sine wave on the circuit that is providing power to the fixture.” 

And while your dimmer system may provide an option for something labeled “Non-dim” mode, that’s not always the same thing as “switched.” In fact, “Switched Mode” on some ETC modules still runs through chokes. Naming conventions aren’t standardized or dependable, so verify the actual output with a True-RMS meter.  

Getting From There to Here
Your existing electrical distribution infrastructure can almost certainly be modified to work with the new lights, which is always a more efficient choice than running new circuits from scratch. Modifying the electrical infrastructure you already have has the inherent advantage of saving time, materials, and labor—none of which come cheap.

Some dimmer manufacturers offer non-dim/switched-output modules specifically designed for the purpose of passing through the “unregulated” power, as required by the new LED fixtures. Swapping out dimmers for switching modules can be your “plug & play” solution to powering solid-state lights. That only leaves changing the connectors. “Household” (NEMA 5-15) is the typical connector for powering lights today. 

Because LED lights are so efficient, multiple fixtures are often run on a single power drop. To help accommodate this, most studio fixtures have pass-through “convenience” outlets. Unlike incandescent fixtures, ganging several lights on the same outlet doesn’t limit individual fixture control because each LED fixture has its own unique DMX address. This feature also reduces the total number of power drops you’ll need to modify.

Even if your dimming system’s manufacturer is no longer in business, it may still be possible to update your system. Any changes should only be undertaken by qualified professionals who understand the system and how you’ll be using it. Any missteps in wiring will almost certainly void your fixture’s warranty. Be careful.

Even with the churn in the dimming industry that’s occurred over the years, you still have some options if your manufacturer is no longer supporting their equipment. One aftermarket service company that specializes in converting dimming systems to non-dim applications is Johnson Systems (www.johnsonsystems.com). They have decades of experience extending the useful life of dimming systems with plug-and-play solutions.

Power Off
There’s an additional advantage in retaining the ability to switch off the power to your lights when they’re not actively being used. As with many electronic devices, they’re never completely “off.”

All new light fixtures continue to use some power in their “standby” state. This not only wastes energy, but causes some additional wear to the fixture’s electronic components. 

From the perspective of energy use and reducing unproductive running hours on your lights, being able to turn them completely off is a major advantage.

Transitioning to any new technology can be a bumpy ride, but preparing your lighting power infrastructure to match the needs of solid-state fixtures will help smooth the way.

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting at
TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

Even though the transition to LED lighting is well under way, there are lots of TV stations that still depend on studio fluorescent lights. I know this, in part, because I helped put them up with their last news set. If you’re involved in providing lighting in a station that still uses fluorescent studio fixtures, this column is especially for you. 

As discussed in earlier columns, there is an ongoing succession of lighting technology happening right now. Just as flame-based lighting gave way to incandescent lamps, fluorescent is now being replaced by LED—the difference is that few will wax nostalgic over the loss of fluorescent. Manufacturers have begun sounding the “last call” for lamp orders as we rapidly approach the final days of fluorescent lighting.

Fluorescent Had its Day
It wasn’t that long ago that fluorescent light was the most energy-efficient solution for many applications, including television lighting. It was well-suited to replace the earlier incandescent softlights. Hybrid lighting packages of incandescent Fresnels and fluorescent softlights used to be common pairing for lighting television studios. That was before LEDs became practical.

Ten years ago, it cost twice as much money to buy an LED version of a softlight, compared to a fluorescent fixture. Worse, the LED softlights were only half as bright as the fluorescent. The color fidelity was poor and the lumen-per-watt efficiency was worse than the fluorescent lights they were destined to replace. Today, all of those deficiencies are history. Today’s high-quality LED light fixtures are superior to fluorescent lights in every way. 

Depending on where you live, you may have already purchased your last fluorescent tube as new laws roll out over the next year or two. Several state legislatures have already set the path to prohibit the sale of fluorescent lamps. By my reading of the California bill, the sale of nearly all fluorescent lamps will be prohibited beginning Jan. 1, 2024.

The European Commission has already announced that it will phase out general purpose fluorescent lighting across Europe in 2023. By international agreement, The Minamata Convention on Mercury, with 138 signatories, phases out fluorescent lamps by 2025. 

For most purposes, fluorescent tube sales will stop by 2024. In other words, the end of fluorescent lighting is in sight. That’s actually a good thing. Not only will this transition save energy, but it will reduce a significant source of pollution in our environment. 

Why such unanimous agreement on the elimination of this once celebrated lighting technology? It boils down to a poisonous drop inside of every tube: Mercury. 

Now that we have a viable alternative light source, the phase-out of fluorescent tubes will help reduce exposure to this neurotoxin. This move will keep millions of metric tons of mercury pollution and CO2 out of our environment. It will also save consumers a trillion dollars in the energy costs through increased efficiency. 

Exit Strategy
Still using fluorescent lights in your studio? Then you need an exit strategy now. If you’re still using fluorescent lighting, your studio should already be planning a path to replace them. You may have as little as a year left to complete this transition. While the cost of the new equipment can be substantial, the supporting infrastructure is actually simple by comparison to what was needed for incandescent. 

The latest lighting fixtures require little more than non-dim power and a DMX data line. While specific details about adapting to this next generation of lights is beyond the scope of this column, the requirements are well known within the industry. This is no longer “cutting-edge” stuff.

In an era of long lead times and supply-chain challenges, you need to plan ahead. With a lot of stations trying to beat the clock on this, there could be a wait. For some fortunate facilities, there may be an easier route.

Possible Upgrade
I was optimistic when Osram briefly introduced an LED retrofit to replace a common type of studio fluorescent tube. Unfortunately, they discontinued it shortly after its introduction. It’s now clear that lamp manufacturers have lost interest in fluorescent lamps. Based on their current websites, they’ve already moved on.

There is, however, one upgrade solution that deserves special note. Brightline came up with an all-in-one retrofit package for their outdated S1.2 and S1.4 fluorescent fixtures. The LED upgrade kit is easy to install and costs a fraction of a
new fixture. 

I admire that this company figured out how to extend the life of their legacy fixtures while maintaining exceptional performance. The upgraded light is fully DMX controllable, has an excellent 97 CRI (Color Rendering Index) at 5600K (daylight) color temperature, and all of their well-designed accessories still fit. 

This is a great option if you’ve already got Brightline fluorescent fixtures in your lighting grid. 

Taking this a step further, why not design more sustainable fixtures? Even a 50,000+ hour LED lifespan will eventually fade and lose color accuracy. When they finally fail, is it really necessary to replace the entire fixture? Why not just replace the light engine? The result would be less waste and greater user value. 

Whatever new or renewed equipment you eventually choose, remember that fluorescent tubes are hazardous waste. The EPA encourages recycling of fluorescent lamps. Local regulation may well require it. You can find resources by Googling “how to recycle and dispose of fluorescent tubes.” 

Inevitably, there will be another major advance in lighting technology that makes LEDs obsolete. Let’s hope the next lighting revolution is at least a few years away. 

Anyone who’s delved into lighting knows that it’s a complex blend of art, craft and science. Within that pillar of science is the formula, which helps us predict how lights spread over distance—The Inverse-Square Law. 

Fortunately, you don’t need to be a physicist to understand this little bit of energy propagation science. This subject is usually presented as a formula to solve, but my goal is to cover it in a way that even math-phobic people, like myself, can understand. Here’s the sum of it. 

The Inverse-Square Law describes how point-source light spreads out over an area. Intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between light source and the measuring point. Got that? If not, relax. 

I’m going to be a bit heretical here and save you the pain of memorizing a math formula that you’ll probably never calculate. Those who run this computation are more likely to be engineers involved with the I.E.S. (Illuminating Engineering Society) than I.A.T.S.E. (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees). For the rest of us lighting folk, I offer you a rule of thumb that I hope you’ll find more accessible:

• Reducing the distance to a light by one-fourth doubles the brightness. 
• Increasing the distance from a light by one-fourth halves the brightness. 

The closer the light is to your subject, the more drastic the change of intensity for any variation in distance. This is particularly relevant today, as many LED fixtures are frequently used relatively close. 

Another reason not to worry much about the precise calculation of Inverse-Square is because it’s based on a “point source.” That requires the distance from the lamp to measuring point to be at least five times the width of the light emitting aperture. Given the larger aperture size of many LED fixtures today (such as panels and tubes), a lot of fixtures don’t fit the “point source” description at the distance they’re used. 

Precise point-source calculations simply aren’t useful in predicting the light drop-off of large aperture sources. Intensity still changes over distance, but not in the manner that the Inverse-Square Law promises. If we’re interested in the practical application of light, we must accept that reality beats theory every time. Fortunately, there are lighting techniques designed to smooth the intensity that don’t require advanced math skills.

Let’s look at an example where a point-source light is relatively close to the subject. In this case, our subject is 6 feet from the light, and the intensity measures 100 foot-candles. Moving the subject just 18 inches towards the light (which is ¼ the total distance) doubles the brightness to 200 fc. 

This drastic change works in both directions. Moving the subject away from the light by the same 18 inches will halve the intensity to 50 fc. Those changes are huge from the standpoint of camera exposure. One short step in either direction would result in being over-exposed, or underexposed, by a full f stop. Fortunately, there are practical techniques to minimize this impact.

Making Artificial Light More Natural
Our goal in covering this isn’t just about sidestepping the Inverse-Square Law. Minimizing the impact of abrupt-intensity-change benefits more than just minimizing exposure swings. Lighting that’s consistent across a broad area appears more natural. 

As in most things, nature is the best teacher. Our most fundamental light source is the sun. At its relatively infinite distance from the Earth, its rays are parallel. Collimated rays aren’t impacted in a meaningful way by The Inverse-Square Law. The sun is a prime example of how great distances between the light source and the subject minimize intensity changes. By the time sunlight enters our neighborhood, the intensity will be the same all along its path.

Light in the real world tends to vary brightness more subtly than our added production lighting.  Practical lamps cast their light in accord with our expectations of the real world. If you want your reel world to look like the real world, your lighting would do well to follow nature. 

The way you create your lighting should be invisible to the audience. In support of that goal, masking the impact of the Inverse-Square Law is akin to smoothing the brush strokes of a painting. If your aim is realism, let your audience be free to concentrate on what you’ve painted, rather than how you’ve painted it.

Tips on How to Finagle the Inverse-Square Law
Distance: The primary technique to mitigate abrupt intensity change is to work the lights from farther away. This approach requires more output from your lights to deliver the desired intensity from a greater distance. Higher-output fixtures, with excellent color fidelity, are always a good choice. It’s better to dim down a powerful light fixture than have to move an under-powered one closer. Avoid close-in fixtures whenever possible.

Modifiers: Another means to finagle the Inverse-Square Law is to change the intensity by intervening along the path of the light. Light is malleable. Shaping and shading light can be done with a variety of modifiers. Scrims, flags, nets, reflectors and diffusers can be inserted into the light path to manipulate both the quantity and quality of the light. 

One common technique to “cheat” the Inverse-Square Law with a Fresnel is to place a half-double scrim in the accessory slot. The scrim can be positioned to hold back whichever part of the beam would otherwise be too bright for the nearby subject. This is especially useful in smoothing the intensity whenever talent moves toward a light. 

Nets, diffusion filters and flags are some of the different modifiers that can be placed in the beam to selectively reduce parts of the total area. Whether clipped to the barn doors or held more precisely by C-Stands and gobo arms along the path, these modifiers can attenuate selected portions of the beam to smooth intensity. 

On some beam fixtures, you can use the less-intense outer edge of the light (the “field angle,” as opposed to the central “beam angle”) to smooth and blend the light levels. Likewise, soft-lights and LED panels with “control screens” or “egg-crate” louvers may be panned or tilted slightly off the main focus to provide a less-intense light from the edges of the light. 

One novel approach to minimize the impact of the Inverse-Square Law uses mirrors and assorted reflectors to increase the total throw length of the beam’s path. This effectively folds the light to increase the light-to-subject distance. This unconventional technique has been well-demonstrated by Cinematographers Dedo Weigert and Christian Berger to excellent effect.

Even though physics dictates the behavior of light, we have the tools and techniques to sidestep those limits to better serve our purpose. Inverse-Square turns out to be more of a suggestion than an unbreakable law. 

In my first column for TV Tech, I looked at how modeling shadows allow us to perceive depth on a flat screen. Two working eyes that have overlapping fields of vision provide you with binocular vision for perceiving depth. 

But a camera is limited by having only one “eye”, and the display surface is, likewise, flat. But with proper modeling, shadows let us perceive 3D depth in an otherwise 2D medium. 

Shading Creates the Appearance of Depth and Light Creates Those Shadows
Unfortunately, a lot of today’s video lighting seems concerned with little more than providing the most basic type of illumination; the even wash. Although that wash provides enough light to make an image, it’s dull and looks flat. If you’re interested in creating compelling images that hold your audience, your lighting must accomplish more than just enable an image. 

A good place to understanding what’s needed for better quality lighting is to examine one of the fundamental approaches to dimensional lighting: Three Point Lighting.

Three Point Lighting is almost mantra-like in its formulaic approach that promises good lighting. The assumption is that you put up a key, a fill, and a back light, and you’re ready to roll. However, there’s a bit more to it than putting up three lights.

For those that dabble casually in lighting, a basic Three Point Lighting scheme can provide good results for a one-person shot. But if you expand your understanding of what’s behind the individual elements, you’ll find that Three Point Lighting can serve you better as a concept to guide your lighting, rather than just a recipe calling for three fixtures in a triangle. 

First, Indulge Your Inner Muse
Deciding what a shot should look like is where you get to indulge your inner muse. Like a sculptor, you’ve got to know what the final creation is supposed to look like before you begin chiseling the stone. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up with a pile of rock chips (or a mish-mash of lighting, shadows, and a jumble of equipment). 

Good lighting, based on a previsualized ideal, becomes the successful realization of an image made tangible for the camera. 

It helps to think of each element of Three Point Lighting as more than simply light fixtures. It’s a tool to visually tell a piece of the story. Here’s how I view the constituent elements of Three Point Lighting:

• The Key Light provides modeling/chiaroscuro, which reveals the shape and form of the subject. (What it reveals, or conceals, defines the nature of the subject, along with how you want the audience to view them.) 
• The Fill Light moderates the shadow density and implies the ambient environment & mood. What you see in the shadow areas helps describe and define the surrounding space. 
• The Back Light separates the subject from its background with layers of light and dark. This works in conjunction with depth-of-field softening of distant objects to indicate depth. 

The use of creative lighting approaches, like Three Point Lighting, weren’t always a part of television. In the early days, the people in charge of lighting were simply trying to make acceptable pictures with primitive equipment. 

Flat Lighting is Dull
Although film lighting was already a well-advanced art form, early TV lighting simply consisted of high levels of flat light. The light fixtures, and the accompanying heat, resembled automotive paint drying booths. 

Better video equipment eventually set the stage for better lighting, but it took the arrival of lighting technicians with film backgrounds to introduced creative lighting to television. These pioneering Lighting Directors introduced creative lighting to television.

Tribute to a Lighting Pioneer – George Spiro Dibie
One such pioneer was George Spiro Dibie, who just passed away in February at age 90. A five-time Emmy winning cinematographer with a long list of honors and achievements, George would light up a room just by walking in. Besides being a great guy, he was also a generous educator. George freely shared his techniques and insight with many students—myself included. 

In honor of him, I’d like to share one of his practical lighting approaches. With a smile and wink, George dubbed it "The Dibie Four Square." 

The Dibie Four Square is an easy method to light a general-purpose area for a multi-camera shoot. For those of you who are responsible for hands-on studio lighting, I think you’ll appreciate this generalized lighting plan. 

When faced with the unknown studio event, this is an excellent lighting layout to use. It’s perfectly suited to nothing specific, but generally usable for nearly anything. Darwin would appreciate it. (Non-lighting tech folks, who may not need the granularity of specific instructions for installation, can skip to the end.) 

As the lighting diagram illustrates, The Dibie Four Square involves four main lights from each of the corners, adjusted as follows:

Depending on where the talent is standing (or seated) within the confines of the stage, each of these lights will function as either a key, fill, or back. This basic approach can be scaled to whatever stage size needs to be lit, from a small studio to a stadium. I’ve used this approach to cover the world’s largest bell-ringer choir for a PBS special, as well as for a small multi-use studio. It’s flexible. As with a recipe, feel free to improvise to meet your needs.

My favorite variation to the design, shown in the illustrations, includes soft-lights mid-way between the corner fixtures. These should be somewhat lower than the corner lights, as shown. 

Please note that this is not the perfect approach for any specific set (the sofa set being just an example), but it is an acceptable plan for a wide variety of subjects. My thanks and acknowledgment to George Spiro Dibie for his inspiration, which lives on.

On location during the day, whether shooting ENG or scripted, we often walk into a space and survey the existing light that is available. With regards to daylight specifically, this includes the general ambient light in the space, windows and the location of the sun. There are plenty of situations where crews just use the available light, however, in most cases you are looking to enhance it and actually light the scene.

SUPPLEMENTING DAYLIGHT

Probably the biggest goal of daylight units is to give direction to the ambient daylight. HMI lighting has been the go-to for supplementing daylight due to its efficiency at converting electricity to light. Their output is four times greater than that of a tungsten unit. They can push in from the outside to add highlights inside an interior location, either on the walls or as backlights on subjects. They do not need to be hard—they can provide a powerful but soft push as well by adding a variety of diffusion flavors.

On a short form piece I recently worked on called “Mary, Meet Grace,” HMIs were used as soft pushes to extend the exterior daylight inward and to key actors. An effective method to use is light from the outside but HMIs can also be used on the inside of a set as well.

On the interior of a location, HMIs can help match with the intensity of the exterior daylight when the camera is pointed toward a window or open doorway. You not only have the necessary punch of an HMI to balance exposure between interior and exterior, but also the ability to soften the HMI to the point of creating a very realistic effect of return.

In other words, HMI lights are so powerful that you can soften them enough to have them act as a key light that mimics a bounce of the actual sunlight coming in. They will not look “sourcey,” in other words, too lit and obvious, when shaped and softened from the inside. There is enough output to knock down their intensity a bit without losing too much exposure on camera. The only downside of this is that these units are large due to their specific bulbs and housing, so having space is key if you want to stick something like an ARRI M40 inside as a key light.

LEVERAGING OUTPUT

Though LEDs are great at imitating daylight color-wise and currently super popular, they still don’t give the punch that HMIs do, simply because they’re an array. The way HMI fixtures are built is what really leverages output, with both fresnel and par options. The lens on an HMI fresnel creates a beam that can be narrowed or widened depending on a variety of lenses and a par HMI takes the light hitting the back of the housing and sends it forward for the maximum push. Each is basically a giant point source as opposed to a panel of smaller sources.

LED lights can still be pushed through windows for a softer, wider beam. They are great for simulating streetlight at night and can still be used as daylight but will not give a specific shape like a streak of daylight on a wall. It is also much harder for them to compete with the natural daylight and they won’t read very well on camera depending on the strength of the unit.

While HMIs are the choice for pushing daylight through a set, other units like LED or tungsten lights can be of use for certain effects. Tungsten units, if powerful enough, can also push through to give a feeling of warm daylight when the sun is lower in the sky. They are still hard like HMI sources if they’re a fresnel or par can, just not as powerful, so a much greater unit in wattage amount is needed.

I recently worked on a music video where tungsten came in handy. We placed a par can outside a smaller window to push a distinct warm shape for a particular performance take. If simulating something like sunset, tungsten doesn’t have to be made to match anything necessarily and it seems to do a beautiful job without needing to be corrected with gel.

Bottom line, if you are shooting in daylight, having daylight units, particularly HMIs, will most efficiently allow the supplementing and shaping of light. Other units can serve other purposes in a daylight scenario, but these are best for matching daylight’s color and extending its quality into an interior location.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached through TV Tech.

LEDs are the lights of the present and the future. Though we still utilize HMI, tungsten and other lighting technologies, LEDs keep gaining momentum and are on sets everywhere. They have evolved into beautiful key lights on all types of skin tones, all the while becoming more versatile and lightweight. Because of their compact size, some can be placed in very small places in order to illuminate from areas that were difficult to access before. 

HUDSON SPIDER

Soft light is extremely popular, but softening LEDs has been a challenge since a lot of space is needed. Slapping diffusion onto LEDs, up close to the source, isn’t effective. However, some units are offering more structural changes and accessories that allow light to become softened closer to the light fixture itself.

One prime example is the Hudson Spider. It has several arrays of LEDs that fold into themselves for a lightweight, easily transportable unit. Its soft box options are also easier to apply than most—instead of using firm metal rods, it slips on to each LED arm and then uses a zipper to shut. The Hudson Spider can be formed into different sizes depending on how extended its arms are, so you can create bigger light sources.

The thing that sets Hudson Spider apart when it comes to really achieving beautiful light quality is that the arrays are spread out. Each array is a single arm that extends from the center of the fixture, with space between each arm, so in an umbrella or other reflector build, the LED light is spread out and broken up more than a wall of LEDs would be. Because the arrays are so slim, actually placing into the parabolic backing gets them naturally further away from diffusion that comes with the kit and is placed at the front of the soft box, making these options more viable.

LITETILE

LiteTile from LiteGear has been another great tool for creating larger sources that can be softened. They come in different sizes including 2x8 square feet and 4x4 square feet. Attaching velcro frames for diffusion on their other products such as LiteMat does not do a decent job of softening because it’s so close to the light.

LiteTile skips over this and allows you to create your own space between unit and diffusion and other shaping tools, which ultimately makes for a better quality source. Because of their slim profile, LiteTile can be rigged with diffusion that matches it in size, hung from a grid or ceiling and fit into tight spaces. You can also obviously “tile them together” and create much larger panels of light, depending on the job.

Additionally, what is great about lights such as the Hudson Spider or LiteGear’s lights is that they’re bi-color. You can dial in anything on the Kelvin scale from 2,600K to 6,500K, depending on the specific unit. They also come equipped with a dimmer pack so you can control intensity easily and offer the option of running off of either battery power or house power.

These features have been around for a while but the thing that LED manufactures have been trying to perfect is this ability to shape and soften with the tools inside of the LED’s kit. They come with egg crates, umbrellas or backings and multiple flavors of diffusion.

Worth mentioning is LiteRibbon, which is defined by being a single, flexible strip of LEDs. However it is not a large array and even harder to soften. The smaller the group of LEDs, the more it makes sense to simply use for harder lighting accents. Even if super thick diffusion was to be laid on smaller sources, the quality is just not as soft and spread out. So something like a strip of LEDs is better utilized for glows of light under the lip of a bar, behind furniture, etc.

There are countless manufacturers of LED units for the television and film industries. It’s important to make sure that whatever lighting is purchased is a quality product—not just in the quality of the light emitted but its color, power and other options for altering the light. LiteGear and the Hudson Spider are just some of the quality brands available. The future for LED lighting is an exciting one as the technology continues to advance.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached through TV Technology.

Remote control for lighting in the television and film industries has become a new standard. Production requires more setups in less time and so it has become crucial to have the ability to change the settings of our units without even having to touch them. Units can be rigged up high and the crew no longer has to use a ladder or lift to change settings like intensity and color. As cinematography becomes more sophisticated and lighting gigs become more complicated, this practice of DMX lighting has become a popular solution to carry out dramatic changes in frequency, color and more.

CONTROL AT YOUR FINGERTIPS 

We saw remote control over lighting come about in the 1980s, when a cable could be run from the unit to a board, and from the board a technician could dim or strike the light. The board communicates to the light from afar and was developed with stage lighting in mind. It took a little more than another decade to begin to see wireless control come about. Now, after decades of advancements in this technology, so much can be done wirelessly, though cabling is still very often needed and easy in studio setups and situations where lots of units play for long periods of time. The point is, DMX control is at our fingertips.

With this technology being so accessible comes a modern trend in cinematography that is light changing during a shot. Because it is so dramatic to watch the color, frequency and intensity of light adjust during a shot and quite unlike real life where we use continuous light, these effects are seen mostly in the commercial and music video worlds.

One great example is the latest music video from Carla Morrison. Light changes from warm to cool, a lightning effect happens over and over again, and is controlled remotely. To achieve this, a technician such as the gaffer or board op is nearby controlling the units based on the cues in the song. Timing light gags, whether to music or an action like an actor flipping a light switch, usually requires some rehearsal. Everyone needs to be in sync and understand when these changes happen.

For wireless control, LED chips are found inside each unit that are essentially small computer chips that communicate a variety of adjustments and control the unit in general from overheating, etc.

The Astera Titan is a popular example of lighting that is completely wireless. They’re battery-operated and controlled completely remotely. These lights use their own proprietary software to operate from a distance.

However, there are systems with receivers that can go into a large variety of units that connect with a transmitter like Cintenna from RatPac Controls. These then use apps such as Luminair to control everything. Just as on physical boards, you can save presets on digital boards as well, and control what fixtures are grouped together with each of their individual settings. The transmitter is essentially somewhere within reach of everything or even placed on the technician’s belt.

SMART BULBS

Alongside lm and television lighting, home lighting has also followed suit in the ability to have bulbs grouped together and different effects programmed. Consumers who aren’t in the lighting space can easily learn to program and control their household smart bulbs. Companies such as Astera and Aputure have recently come out with smart bulbs that take it a step further with bulbs that can be dialed between thousands of color temperatures.

Both the Astera NYX and Aputure B7c bulbs are controlled with apps and one of the biggest improvements with these LED bulbs is that they are completely flicker-free at any shutter speed on camera. They’re also super color accurate, which has been something LED technology has been battling to get right for some time. Another bonus is that you can charge multiple bulbs all using the case they come in. A variety of attachments and power options is also available so placing in different locations is easy.

DMX saves us time, which we all know is money. Time is taken with the more complicated cues you have within a lighting setup, but the ability to dial things in so effortlessly is incredible. They’re real-time adjustments as well, so there’s no waiting around for color to change or a light to be dimmed down. The technology of remote controlling lights will continue to improve, with higher output LEDs becoming more portable and adjustable and with even more options within the apps.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand.

She can be reached through TV Technology.

There are a lot of options available when it comes to lighting technology, and these days many tools are becoming ever more versatile. There are still lights for different uses though, offering different qualities, colors, shapes, etc. More often than not, a lighting package includes a variety of these tools in order to meet the challenges of lighting different spaces.

Something that can give you a powerful, directional push through a window isn’t necessarily what can give you the perfect omnidirectional soft light. Often, there are a few different types of lights actually lighting a scene. So how do we paint a frame with various tools and make it look natural and intentional?

BLENDING LIGHT

At the root of “mixing lighting” is the idea of blending light. Typically we don’t want a viewer to pay too much attention to the light sources on screen. When mixing different lighting technology, we usually strive to do so that is transparent for our audience. One specific example is when an effect of a light that exists in a location is extended with a film light.

For instance, an incandescent lamp that is on in a room may be used as a motivated source to “key light” a subject. The lamp by itself may not throw enough light on someone’s face without looking much too bright on screen, so a film light must be added just out of frame to extend the effect of the lamp.

A few factors are considered when choosing what this unit should be to mimic the qualities of the lamp—whether the light is soft or hard, its color temperature, shape and intensity. All of these things should match to ensure that the viewer cannot read the additional unit. A leko is a great solution for this as it naturally has a warm bulb and is a narrow beam that can be focused from a distance.

FROM SUBTLE TO INTENSE

In a recent music video, we had a few natural looks inside of different rooms where the lighting started out as subtle and then began to pulse with the beat. This shoot started the same way with practical sources placed by the production designer in different rooms. In this situation, we knew that light was going to change as the song progressed and would begin to mix differently.

Instead of using more tungsten, incandescent units that would match, Astera Titans were rigged overhead and programmed with a warmth that would initially match. In this case, this warm light was not meant to be an extension of lamps but rather a feeling of another practical fixture overhead in the room. Because we matched it, it blended in better. As the music changed, it was then easy to move away from the warm and have them strobe with new colors and intensities.

Beyond just extending what already existed in the location, the artists moved from space to space at night. So we needed to feel the depth of outside by illuminating surfaces outside windows and pushing light through others. Because we had Asteras above on the ceilings, Skypanels served as the main units outside since they, like the Asteras, could be programmed and matched in color easily. A few M40s pushed through with selected gel frames in front of them. Matching colors and choosing other colors that contrasted well with each other was really important so that as we moved from room to room, the visuals remained seamless.

GETTING STARTED 

Starting out, it can be intimidating to blend and mix units that have different traits. Because of the ability to change color, quality and intensity, we can find a middle ground where different sources don’t overpower others and instead, work together to create a pleasing frame. Setting a white balance on camera that is between tungsten and daylight can help avoid any warm or cool units being too oversaturated.

There are so many choices in lighting tools and the more knowledge we possess of what each is capable of, the better we can put together a versatile lighting package—one that can allow us to be really intentional with any shooting location.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached through TV Technology.

There are reasons we light—to add shape, separation, draw the audience’s eye, create a mood and so much more. More often than not, we change lighting in the shooting location to achieve these. There are a few go-to techniques that can really help add shape and direction within interior spaces, most of which are taking away certain sources that already exist and enhancing or extending others. The two examples below are very similar in method but different in their goals.

MAINTAINING AMBIENCE

The first example is a project that went to broadcast where we shot a few different subjects in their homes and then everyone together in the headquarters of the non-profit they were all a part of. The setting was a typical office space with fluorescent bulbs lighting the room from above with one window near the entrance. Without changing anything, it was a flat, harsh look with colors that did not mix well. We had to capture them in real time as if we were capturing a documentary or news piece that was very noninvasive.

With time to plan before the group had their meeting, the crew went into the room and rigged a Litegear LiteMat 4 above the conference table, threw a K5600 Joker 800 through that single window that would mostly be off-screen and turned off all the house lights. This transformed the room, adding contrast and dimension; yet, because of the top light, maintained enough ambience to avoid being too dark.

Overall, the scene felt naturalistic for the documentary-style piece, but slightly more stylized and flattering. We could not affect the layout or items in the office either—we had to choose where to mostly point the camera so as to maintain that look while still showing as much of the room as possible.

MAINTAINING AUTHENTICITY

For a series of PSAs that also went to TV, we wanted to add a specific, dramatic tone to the visuals while still maintaining a sense of authenticity—a combination that I strive for often.

There were a few different concepts that were executed but one I thought was particularly interesting was that of a school shooting simulation: Students are hiding beneath their desks and there’s a suspenseful, dangerous tone we wanted to communicate.

The classroom had white walls so to begin, production design elements came in to take away the ambience. House lights were turned off and HMIs were lined against the single wall with windows. Most of them came down onto the tables and bounced off the floors to illuminate faces. One even kicked the back wall, adding a highlight. They were a combination of a few 1600W HMI fresnels and a 4K HMI. When walking in for close-ups, we would simply cheat the subject somewhere slightly different to create a better shot.

FLEXIBLE SHOOTING

Both examples allowed for flexible shooting as well in each location, which, for a more naturalistic-looking approach, is ideal. Sometimes we’ll be asked to allow subjects to be able to move around a space freely, without lighting having to be altered. Offering to bring in a little additional lighting or grip to tweak a close-up or other additional shot is helpful if you can pause the action, as in the school PSA. For a live meeting though, as in the first example, the action cannot be interrupted, so being able to “set it and forget it” was key.

In both instances, we were dealing with serious subject matter and adding contrast and direction in the images was really important. While one was more extreme than others, it was really about adding direction to the light in each scene and then deciding how much ambient fill existed.

Approaching lighting in a more minimalistic way tends to speed things up and keep the onscreen tone authentic. This is true from narrative to television. Even in news, lighting is more and more sophisticated. It is a matter of focusing on the story in every format and understanding how to use available light or how to replace it.

Though our camera technology is evolving rapidly and is getting significantly better at capturing a range of light readings without losing information, the need to actually shape light in locations and paint the frame will never go away.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand.

During the pandemic and as production is slowly ramping back up, many in our industry have been taking a minimalistic approach when it comes to lighting. To produce content, filmmakers have had to compromise on the amount of crew, tools and what happens in front of the lens. The shoots I have been fortunate enough to do have all followed strict safety guidelines.

EMBRACING NATURAL LIGHT

Something else that is evident right now is that it’s the naturalistic concepts that are being chosen and executed. Doc-style concepts where natural light is embraced is very attractive to production companies. These mean less people needed on set, less money to be spent and less equipment to be rented. When you need to light, bigger units far away have been key in keeping the equipment footprint small indoors near subjects.

For exterior shoots, it has been a bit easier to accept natural light. Distance between crew members and talent is less of an issue and larger rags like bounces and solids can still be utilized to create shape. Utilizing the sun, usually as backlight for separation, and then creating shape on faces and objects has been a useful approach. This method sort of falls in line with the idea of keeping lighting naturalistic—fewer lights, bigger sources further away, really taking advantage of what already exists in the space. But even in a commercial setting, shooting exteriors lends itself to safety during a time when illness is easily spread from person to person.

Recent music videos have been contained, with many members of production on set virtually to minimize the amount of bodies on location. Those physically present include the DP, producer, one assistant camera, sometimes a production assistant and the talent. A very exciting, and slightly more involved, video for singer-songwriter Quinn XCII was able to be contained and yet really visual. Crew came in separately, set up a few different lighting gags with Astera Titans, Litemats, a Skypanel S-60 and more around where the artist would be placed. All of these units were selected because they could be controlled away from the actual setup.

OPERATING REMOTELY

After grip and electric were set, the artist and camera came in to keep everyone from being on the set at one time. Longer lenses were used so the operator could be further away from the subject, and the lighting changes were programmed and executed remotely. All the gear was wiped down and the crew took frequent breaks to clear the air. It ended up being a simple concept logistically, but with several different looks throughout the video and light that changed frequently in intensity, shape and quality.

This Quinn XCII video shoot was an example of a project in this intense time that didn’t lean into the “natural light” approach, but could still be done carefully with distance and a very small crew. The challenges production is giving us to photograph the world within current projects are making us rethink what we really need to light and perhaps slim down on the resources we need to accomplish them.

It’s thanks to lighting technology that we can do so much more without having to be at the unit. The Asteras were programmed to do different lighting cues, the Skypanel dimmed up and down as a key and then the Litemats also dimmed at certain points in the video. Though most of the video is black and white, some color stock was shot and the color temperature of the lights had to change for both color and light sensitivity reasons. All of these units were able to accomplish color change as well from a distance. No need to come in with a different unit to swap out something that was already in place.

Time will tell how our industry moves forward with the safety and health of its members in mind. Many advances in lighting technology have helped keep us even safer, perhaps without us realizing it. We are faster and more efficient with such versatile tools. We will continue to work toward having full crews with full grip and electric packages in closer proximity to each other again. For now, the focus is on essentials for getting content made while still staying truthful to each piece and its narrative.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer whose work includes films such as “Lucky” and “Speed of Life” alongside dozens of commercials and music videos. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand.

Social distancing has become the normal practice all around the world for the past few months. With it being so crucial for our health and our future to stay at a distance from one another, being on set with a crew has not been an option. The industry, for those in film and television, has mostly been shut down in major cities. But news reporting, as important as it is for delivering information during a pandemic, has to continue. 

DIFFERENT SETUPS 

As I have tuned in to see how networks are handling it, I have noticed several individuals are live from their homes recording with a static or robotic camera to bring us essential information. It has definitely called for creativity in finding an interesting frame in a room with plenty of natural light away from noise. Even daytime and late night talk show hosts are shooting their shows at home. Ellen Degeneres and Jimmy Kimmel, for example, have a key light or two set up to bring up their exposure and shape their faces in their home settings. Anchors for different networks sit in their living rooms with an LED panel pointed at them for balance with the bright windows on screen. 

Many reporters already know how to improvise and make things happen fast from being out in the field. In general, simple ENG lighting setups have come into play for these situations—think of an on-the-go ENG package. It would include a couple small LED panels, soft boxes, stands and shaping tools. In most of what I have seen, unless against a specific backdrop, the subject presents from a room that already supplies ambient daylight so daylight LEDs and ring lights are a good match. Even a small onboard camera light does the trick as a key light for some home broadcasts, while lamps and other in-house lights decorate the background. 

PLUS: Has Remote Production Changed Production ... Forever?

I have noticed that some talent has the luxury of space, so they are able to place the lights a little further away to either soften or shape better, while others are stuck in a small studio space and may have the light directly pointed at close proximity. Others have figured out to bounce a light into a wall to soften the return if there isn’t much space to work with.

SETTING UP AT HOME

To set up an at-home broadcast, a production assistant simply drops off the gear for the anchor at their house. Then, through a video conference call, the crew assists them in getting everything up and running. However, some crew members have had to enter the homes of these journalists and set up more complicated equipment at the start, especially when control over the camera and lights needs to happen remotely with a separate crew. DMX control over lighting, robotic cameras, greenscreen and teleprompter all have required a safe, small crew to set up.

Some reporters don’t have a gear-heavy system. They’re reporting from their laptop or phone cameras for their segments and just lighting smartly with what their space has to offer. They avoid any toplight, adjust their screen brightness and turn off unnecessary lights in the room. 

Crews having to conference in have been an adjustment. The inability to be hands-on for a shoot and to only be able to communicate verbally about how to execute is strange since working on set is such a physical job. The other aspect that is different is that, on a video conference call with the crew, everyone is in on the same conversation. The producer cannot have a separate conversation with the assistant director—everyone is listening to everything. 

There is a strong belief that a lot of these new practices when shooting news segments will still be implemented when crews do get back together—masks, sanitizing of equipment, minimal crew members and physically standing 6 feet apart from each other as often as possible. We see this in the broadcasts that are not at home as well. Reporters sit at opposite sides of the table with the crew in the other room. Camera operators are far back. We definitely won’t go back to set the same way we used to. 

The need to shoot to share information during a pandemic has really made us think about the essentials and there will most certainly be strict precautions taken when we return to set in the future. The compact ENG style of shooting will be used wherever it can be to continue to keep workers in film and television safe.

Shooting for electronic newsgathering (ENG) is usually done on a tight schedule and requires mobility with equipment. The crew shows up to a location and usually has to be in and out quickly and efficiently. They could be moving to and from multiple locations each day and shooting many different places within one larger area.

This is separate from shooting in the studio. It is the practice of going out and gathering pieces for news stories, which can include more run-and-gun scenarios like capturing events, but also more sophisticated sit-down interviews on location. Lighting-wise, it is best to have a package that is mobile and versatile.

LIGHTWEIGHT AND TRANSPORTABLE

Most manufacturers that cater to ENG shooters try to make their lights as lightweight as possible. There are smaller fresnels and panels that are easily moveable and transportable. They also package them in cases that store more than one light, so you can carry multiples in one flight case or bag.

Companies such as Ikan, ARRI, Lite-panels and Nila have great kits that provide tools and accessories to change the quality, intensity, color and shape for what you need. A typical kit will come with two or three units and include barn doors, gel inserts and sometimes even soft boxes. Panels are great soft lights with inserts of diffusion that are interchangeable so the quality of the light can be affected easily without a lot of grip-page having to be built around the light. Usually ENG is conducted by one or two crew members, so building stands and large rags is usually not an option.

An important thing to keep in mind is having units that are bicolor. There are so many options now, and the LED units that can change between tungsten and daylight do a decent job of color accuracy. It is quicker than having to use a gel. Being able to dial specific Kelvin temperatures can allow the artificial lighting to blend with lighting in the environment that may be a little cooler than tungsten, but not quite true daylight and vice versa.

This helps eliminate the amount of units you need, if the ones you have naturally provide different color options. You don’t need to haul different kits for color with you to a job. LEDs not only provide the flexibility in color, but being LEDs you have battery-powered units and don’t have to rely on a location’s power situation. If you do need to run power from the location, LEDs provide a worry-free solution as they draw much less power than traditional tungsten lights. You won’t have to necessarily go check the breaker box when you are out shooting with limited time.

Utilizing the available light in a space is key to shooting ENG, but much of the time it’s not the most flattering light. A lot of public buildings have a lot of cove lights in the ceilings, which create a hard top light that isn’t consistent. When a subject walks around, they go in and out of these lights. Sometimes they won’t match in color because a bulb or two have been replaced.

ON-CAMERA LIGHTS

One of the things that constantly comes up in shooting ENG is the need to provide an eyelight, especially when faced with ugly top light in interiors. If you don’t have time to light an interview with units on stands and design the frame, you need a fast, easy light to serve as an eyelight. A good example is when interviewing someone inside for an event such as a conference. Having a small on-camera light is about as minimalistic as you can get and being bicolor will help it blend with the location lighting, unless of course you want it to feel like an on-camera light.

If the light is just to supplement what’s there and not draw attention to itself, having something that can be softened and match the ambient lighting color is best. One of my favorite small, mobile lights that could be used on camera is the Aputure M9. It’s dimmable and has both diffusion and color panels you can slide on easily.

Just as an AC on a film set has a run bag, an ENG shooter should as well. Aside from the light kit and camera case, a run bag can provide another opportunity to bring these smaller on-camera lights and accessories to help combat poor lighting situations. You can pack all your batteries, a few compact lighting options, light accessories, tools and more.

ENG shooting has become much simpler and painless with the latest in lighting technology. It’s now completely mobile and allows for more artistic tools that are compact, letting ENG shooters bring more equipment for endless creative possibilities.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

The lighting in news studios is designed to achieve a nondramatic look without needing to make adjustments. Talent on camera should be able to move around freely; and cameras should be able to capture a variety of angles on each set once lighting is in place. For this reason, long trusses are positioned among an expansive overhead grid with countless mounting points for lights. Not only is the number of available mounting points greater this way, but there are also no stands to avoid on the ground. The goal is not only to have subjects lit for every setup, but to have backgrounds lit and ready to go as well. Because news is not a dramatic lighting look, having several lights installed to fill the space is also reason for a large grid.

MANAGING THE SPREAD

Typically, lights are set across trusses for backdrops to evenly light green or blue screen behind a news desk setup. The lights are set back from the backdrop about half the height of the backdrop so as to spread the light without having any darker spots. For the best keying job, you want as evenly a spread as possible. Lighting in newsrooms usually is also preferred to be softer and this can apply to the backgrounds as well. The larger the source, the more you can soften without losing too much intensity or throw. The backdrops are not always a chroma key background—now a lot of high-resolution screens are the actual background elements. This makes spot reading essential so as to avoid any hot screens behind your subjects when exposing on camera.

In front of the set lights, toward camera, there are backlights for the subjects. These can be a little harder as they separate your subjects from the background. Finally, you have soft key lights. You may find an array of lighting fixtures up in the grid.

To maintain control and direction of specific lights, specifically key lights, some lighting designers choose fresnel units. These have lenses that help directionality, usually equipped with barn doors, and you can narrow or widen the beam. Some of the more common fresnels found in a newsroom are those from ARRI, Fluotec and Mole LEDs. Other sets go all panels—ARRI Skypanels, Litepanels, etc. That way they’re using all soft lights and fixtures that can have chimeras built on top to avoid having to rig up diffusers.

It is usually preferred to rig as little to the grid as possible while still meeting all the lighting needs. Besides mounting a few solids to separate sources and control spill, all that should be up there are the units themselves. Being able to attach soft boxes to them helps keep the amount of hardware above to a minimum. A lot of panels are naturally soft lights, so being able to add on a soft box with a variety of diffusion options gets the light quality to an ideal place quite easily.

NEW TOOLS

Tools available in lighting now save a tremendous amount of time and energy in the news space. LED technology makes these sets much cooler and draw less power. They also offer flexibility with color temperature and intensity, all easily adjustable through DMX. Sure, you could connect everything to a dimmer board years ago, but now you can dial in even more in terms of hue, saturation, etc.

I was fortunate enough to demo the new ARRI Orbiter, which I think will be another major player in studio lighting, with even better color and offering hard light with a variety of mountable lenses. It seemed like a hybrid of a Skypanel and a little like the company’s L-series. I think more and more of these will start appearing—lights that become all you need in terms of color, hard and soft light, with a range of attachments to easily mount on the unit.

News is climbing in visual sophistication along with every other format and lighting technology is what is helping make it all possible. Lighting is used to create depth, execute color cues and light a variety of stages and subjects like never before. As LED lighting technology becomes even more versatile, the job of lighting a studio will only become easier, with more lighting tools and capabilities at our fingertips.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

My friend Ryan Jow is someone I love shooting narrative for because he’s a director who knows what he wants and is so connected to the material. He recently brought a short film to me that had two central characters who we essentially had to shoot a lot of coverage for in a small space. Photographically, he did not want them to be in the same frame very often so we had to shoot separate shots for each and match them carefully throughout the day.

The first step for a small project like this in a confined space is choosing your tools carefully. I think being specific comes with experience because you know exactly what each unit gives you in terms of quality and intensity. You are able to nail down your lighting and grip list without going over budget because you can plan for what you need.

In this instance, both characters were at a table against a window. My gaffer and I chose smaller HMI lights—1200W and 1600W—to key with as we didn’t have the space to put them very far from the window itself. I tried to block shoot as much as I could, but the scenes escalated script-wise for the actors and it was sometimes better to break it up by scene as opposed to by each side of the room. We made note of the distance and angle of each of the lights for consistency. We also kept an eye on color and matched to what the natural daylight was doing from the window.

In the film, the day goes into evening and ends at dawn. Each table scene had a different look so I had to plan out what each look entailed in terms of units I used.

For afternoon, HMIs pushed and were a little harsher of a side light through the window; while a LiteMat 4 served as a wrappier eyelight on the inside of the room next to camera. To imitate sunset, we added warmth to the HMIs in the form of CTO and we softened a bit. We also added a tungsten Leko to rake the back of the wall behind the actresses. For the dawn look, we softened the HMIs even more significantly and made them come from more of the side as opposed to wrapping around the front of each actress’ face. I believe we also cooled them off a bit. We watched our fill level as well.

Obviously you want to maintain your lighting ratio regardless throughout any scene you’re shooting. The earlier scenes had less fill as we let our sources be harder, whereas the dawn scene was softer overall and the light spread in the room a bit, creating more natural fill light.

During the short moments when we saw both actresses against the window, we made sure to wrap our HMIs by cross-keying them to avoid them being too silhouetted. If we didn’t see enough of their faces in profile, it would be jarring to then cut to their faces more frontally where the light all of a sudden wrapped more. It wasn’t just about faces though—maintaining the same quality on the walls and objects in the frame was important as well.

When you’re shooting coverage, inconsistencies in the quality and angles of the lighting can throw off your audience and it begins to feel like actors are in different spaces. There are obviously some things, even in the biggest movies, that are inconsistent if you look closely—the most common is a wide shot with a beautiful, hard backlight that cuts in to coverage where all of a sudden that hard backlight is softened.

You learn to let things go and sweeten the close-ups. However, a cinematographer’s job is to be able to shoot around a room and maintain a look. In addition to camera and lighting notes, I would highly recommended having your DIT AirDrop you screengrabs as the day goes on so you can be referencing previous frames.

Being consistent in your lighting, in both the tools and the techniques for a project, allows you to connect spaces visually. Becoming good at maintaining a look as you move the camera around a scene then gets you to a place where you learn how to break some rules. You can keep your audience immersed in the world of your film, but still tweak lights as you move in, etc., to the point where no one notices. You can fake afternoon for sunset and keep it that way, or night for day for example, because you understand how your tools work and where to put them.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

Film lighting tubes are becoming more common in lighting packages as they become more versatile. Whether they are from Quasar Science, Astera or NanLite, tube lights can be very useful for narrative, commercial and music video formats. They come in different lengths and have many wireless and color capabilities.

FLEXIBILITY AND CAPABILITY

Tubes can be easily rigged almost anywhere and don’t require a stand like a large fresnel would. They can be placed up above on ceilings with clamps or even tape depending on the tube, helping to hide them out of frame. Grouping many together can create a large source, and if you are able to rig many for a top light, you can then rig a large rag of diffusion underneath to create a large soft overhead source without needing any stands. When it comes to giving talent flexibility in blocking, being able to light from above and not have to avoid stands and other grip equipment on the ground is very helpful.

Tubes can also be placed in the frame purposely. We have seen this so much in music videos, but even more natural uses are things like uplighting or accent lighting in rooms. They fit into many things naturally, from kitchen spaces—like under cabinetry for a little separation—to practically being featured in things like fish tanks. You can use them in tight spaces such as cars, though softening them to look less “source” can be tricky if you don’t have a lot of room.

One aspect that is now pretty crucial for time and ease of implementing tube lighting is their DMX capability. On my last feature film, I found Astera Titan Tubes to be very useful with some practical lighting effects we had for the climax of the film. We were able to connect through Astera’s mobile app and then group and control different tubes. As our lead actress raced down a corridor of complete darkness, my gaffer was able to cue different sets of lights to illuminate different parts of the space as she moved.

Settings such as timing between cues and color temperature can all be changed for the needs of each shot and all without having to hop on a ladder and physically dial anything in on the tube. Everything is done from an iPad. We did tests with different tubes and lighting units to see what worked best—which I highly recommend—especially if you are going to see them in the frame.

PRODUCT SHOTS

I recently shot a commercial for a new wine product where tubes came in handy for creating shapes on the bottles. Being so slim and specific, lighting tubes are great for product shots. Sometimes they can make it quite easier to create lines on shiny products like bottles and handheld devices.

On this particular wine commercial we even set the Asteras to different colors so all the lines were not the same. Pointing tubes at talent or in a space will have them spread light all over, but when pointing at a surface of something like a shiny product, they’re very specific. They are easy to hide just out of frame too. They come in different lengths as well, from 12 inches to 8 feet to serve many purposes in the space. Placing many of the longer ones together can create a nice big source and throwing up a single long tube can serve as a great backlight on talent.

LED tubes like Asteras and Quasars are also efficient in terms of power, especially over fluorescent tubes, which a lot of filmmakers started with and still use. Because they use less energy, they also run longer. They are also rechargeable and you can charge several at a time.

You can dim them to quite a few different stages and if you have tubes that are not RGB and only bicolor, you can easily wrap them with any gel to create a color effect. If you plan on seeing them in frame though, I would be prepared to wrap in ND gel, as even at the lowest dimmed stage, tube lights spot read quite hot on camera.

Manufacturers will continue to make advancements in tube lighting, and their uses will continue to expand. I would say that they are great to have in your lighting rental for almost any job because they work great for big overhead rigs and light gags, but they also come in handy randomly when you’re in a pinch. You can group them together or use a single tube for many different scenarios, and their quality and color are getting better and better.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

A lot of my projects are “raw and real” character pieces that don’t call for super-stylized lighting. My approach is often rooted in realism.

Music videos are where I tend to be able to play the most. One video that was actually pretty minimalistic was Hozier’s “Almost (Sweet Music).” Alongside an incredible director and friend, Blythe Thomas, we set out to capture what was essentially a celebration of timeless performers and of music. We photographed different performers in different rooms—a total of seven and all in one shoot day.

Why I would choose to talk about a simpler, naturalistic music video instead of one that was super-stylized is because invisible cinematography is actually very advanced. That is where you know how to build a scene in terms of units and, more importantly, take advantage of the space you are in.

OBSERVATION

When I use a realistic approach in my cinematography, I typically start by observing the space and what it has to offer—windows, practicals, etc. For the video, everything was shot in a large warehouse in New York City and not only had great character but lots of natural light. For the daylight scenes, I leaned on them. Tracking the sun is key for this—I had to pay attention to where it would hit the city beyond the windows and when it would come in directly through a window.

One tool I found myself utilizing more than usual was LED tube lighting. For the pianist scene, for example, all we did was rig up several daylight Quasars and soften them. My crews know you cannot get light soft enough for me. Large sources that are triple broken are my favorite and are especially handy in making things look natural. They feel like a simple return from the windows and not sourcey if you do it right.

In Hozier’s performance scene, all we did was use the ARRI Skypanel as a key and a K5600 Joker 1600W as a backlight.

We shot mostly during daylight and had a mix of both day and night scenes. For night, I went with the omnidirectional route and had a Jem Ball rigged up above. Then other tools such as a Skypanel S60 and Lekos went up for accents and color separation. There were also practicals in the space, which, aside from windows, are usually another starting point for putting up sources. I’ve wanted to do more top light, like in some of these night scenes, on other projects but it’s really a time issue. It’s always faster to stick up something from the ground than rigging or menace arming and then skirting, etc. a source from above.

It was also about 90% Steadicam, so we used furniture and flats to hide stands when we could not take the time to rig or arm out something. Again, we did everything in a day, so an organic, minimalistic approach was not only appropriate but a time saver. Having enough crew to leapfrog into the next setup so I can walk on and just tweak is also key.

BLENDING IN

Color separation is something to always be thinking about. A lot of times in interior spaces, it can feel like skin tones and walls can blend in. This could be from lack of production design elements that help break up the space and pop or simply because the shot is being lit with all warmer color temperatures so everything becomes similar on screen.

In a dance sequence with Cameron Boyce and Christine Flores, we had beige wallpaper that, when lighting them with tungsten from above, would pose a threat in terms of blending their whole room and dancers together. To avoid this, we threw in two practicals that leaned more yellow and we placed a Skypanel shooting out of a small glass door in the back of the room.

I tend to shoot a lot of night scenes around 3,800K or 4,400K to also help balance out a mix of color, but it’s important to also dial in the lights. The Skypanel was warmed up a bit so as not to be too bold a blue. Otherwise, it would compete with the warmth rather than provide subtle separation.

The key to invisible lighting is, in my opinion, really understanding the space. We observe light in life all the time as cinematographers and become very quick at knowing how to recreate an environment known to the average person who lives and works in these different environments every day. We understand space and how to use it. Getting deep into the story you are telling and knowing your tools will allow you to really light invisibly while also enhancing the tone of the piece.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

Understanding color temperature is not a daunting task. What can be intimidating is being on location and needing to deal with a range of different temperatures at once. The camera can only be set to a single Kelvin reading at a time as its white balance, so how do we deal with different colored lights?

To review, and despite our quickly evolving lighting technology, we still speak in two main color temperatures—tungsten (3200°K) and daylight (5500°K). The lower the number on the Kelvin scale, the warmer; and the higher the number, the cooler. Obviously when shooting on film, which a lot of us do, we are choosing between these two color temperatures in terms of our film stock. With digital, which the examples in this article reflect, we have the ease of dialing in our white balance to whatever reading we choose. However, you still only have that one base number set on the camera, so you have to build around that white balance.

The first and most common example that comes to mind when needing to make some very specific color choices is night. Whether it is night exterior or night interior, the cinematographer is faced with juggling a spectrum of colors.

MOONLIGHT, YES OR NO

Typically, the first decision you have to make with night exteriors is whether or not there is going to be moonlight. If there is moonlight, what color is it? There are varying opinions on what moonlight should look like in order to emulate realistic moonlight, but it has appeared differently in quality, color and intensity since the beginning of cinema, so it’s up to the cinematographer. 

There doesn’t even have to be moonlight. When it comes to mixing color temperatures, you want to base the camera’s white balance on the ambient light in the space. If that ambient light is moonlight and your moonlight is bluer, then balancing closer to daylight is wise. If you’re inside for a night interior and your ambience is tungsten lamps with a little moonlight spilling in a window, then balancing closer to tungsten is the way to go. This minimizes the amount of units you have to tweak to avoid any over-saturation with particular colors.

I find myself, as many do, shooting night scenes in the mid 4000s to further balance between warmer and cooler sources. This saves from having to convert or correct any of the units too much with gels. The green-magenta axis is not helped, however, so that is something that will need constant attention and correction, especially if you’re on location using sources that are built into the space. 

With newer LED lights, you can easily dial in color temperature and tint to find the sweet spot when faced with balancing many color temperatures. If you have something like HMIs coming in through a window however, you will need to rely on gels to correct. Alternatively, you could set the base color around those units that are not as easy to correct. Then you could go around to the other lights you are using such as LEDs and simply dial in the color output.

STREETLIGHTS AND NEON SIGNS

Another example is using bold colors in a scene to represent a streetlight, neon sign, etc. It is always important to choose a base color temperature in any situation. Depending on your base, whether tungsten, daylight or somewhere in-between, different colors can appear slightly different. You will want to preview whatever LUT you are using on monitor and/or use a color meter to really dial in these bolder colors that are far away from your base color temperature. 

In the film “Windfall,” we had many units like ARRI Skypanels so we could choose specific colors. In a dinner scene that was set in an apartment in 1970s San Francisco, we threw purple in as a background light to add some separation and had a Jemball with a tungsten bulb over the table as our base, with the camera set to 3200°K. Throughout the project, I set mainly tungsten on the camera and used that as my base when lighting scenes. As a result, cooler sources like blue and purple really read boldly and contrasted beautifully with warmer units.

The point of this is that mixing color temperatures in a scene should not feel intimidating, rather, it should be seen as an opportunity to create depth, visual interest and visual tension. Differences in color can break up a space, separate subjects from the background and create tone. Having a singular color in a space can flatten it out. These are all choices, but it is important to keep in mind all the possibilities and techniques that mixing colors brings with it. It can make every image much more dynamic. With evolving lighting technology that is becoming more and more sophisticated and color accurate, we can more easily choose and balance color. It has become a very easy, accurate process that can really enhance the narrative.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

Top picture: Tungsten ambience on a night interior for the film “Down to Nothing”

I am a consistent advocate for large sources such as ARRI M18s, HMIs or any physically large unit with an output of 2,000W or more. If you have a powerful light, you can shape and affect that light as needed without cutting a significant amount of its output. Larger sources are easy to avoid catching in the frame, easy to control and afford you more options as they give you a ton of output to begin with. It is always easier to start big and cut from a substantial source than to start small and ultimately not have enough light. However, let’s think about small sources for once.

WHAT ABOUT THE LITTLE GUY?

We all want huge, powerful lights on set, but we have to keep in mind the beauty and versatility of small units as well. They may not be able to light an entire scene or give you as much real estate as a bigger beam of light, but they can work wonders in terms of adding detail and interest to a space.

It’s simple to paint the frame with big units far from camera whether through windows or above the set. Looking at the frame with more detail, we can find ways to utilize smaller sources where these bigger lights can’t help us.

I’m not here to praise practicals again but these are obviously something additional to consider and a good place to start when you feel the need to motivate some smaller lights. Consider adding highlight and shape by hiding smaller units like Quasar tubes, which are sleek, bi-color LEDs, or the LiteRibbon from LiteGear, which you can simply run along a set piece for an elegant accent.

On the last feature film, hiding units like smaller Quasars proved very handy in creating contrast and separation of the actors from the background. Again, your giant lights illuminating the set are going to cast an overall ambience or focus and spread over a particular actor or area. With small sources you can add highlight or a splash of color where your other units can’t.

Smaller lights tend to feel like a source in the frame. They don’t spread like a large source does and tend to be harder instead of softer. If they’re apparent sources like practicals, all you have to decide is the type and wattage of the bulb to get the color and intensity to your liking.

However, if they are intended to be hidden and simply light the space, you may want to affect them a bit since they can draw attention to themselves in the frame. It can be helpful to wrap something like an LED tube in diffusion to soften and make it blend in a little more.

For example, if you placed tubes under cabinetry in a kitchen scene but didn’t want to see them in the shot, you could wrap them in diffusion and dim them down. If they aren’t dimmable, wrap them in ND gel to lower their intensity.

ADDING SHAPE TO SPACE

One of the best uses I have found for small units is adding shape to the space itself. I recently shot a bunch of talking heads against a wall of wood panels full of art and photographs. We put up small Dedolights and pointed them down the wall to add some shape. I also have used these small fresnels for uplighting, which is also really nice on a wall to add some character.

I wouldn’t have been able to hide a giant unit on the floor or have been able to arm one out like I did the smaller lights. Not only are they easier to rig, but with a few of them I was able to add different shapes in different places to break up the wall and make it interesting.

Lights like the Dedolight can also serve as simple extensions of practicals. If you have a table lamp in the frame for example, you can easily place a small film light nearby and get a specific shape on the wall or extension of the lamp onto an actor without the hassle of having to control a big unit.

We like to think minimalistically when it comes to lighting a scene, but it really pays off when you can add some subtle touches in the frame with tiny sources. They can give some extra shape and color where you may want some separation or contrast.

Most importantly, they allow you to be specific. With a smaller fresnel you can spotlight a face or an object easily and generally to draw the audience’s eye. They can be just as elegant as a larger source while granting you quicker control and repositioning. With smaller lighting units you can really dial in and be specific about how you paint each frame with light and color.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

With advancing lighting technology, there are some beautiful daylight LEDs on the market that can be used to extend light throughout daytime interiors. It all depends on what is being shot, but a lot of times windows can be a plus for the cinematography of a piece. Embracing windows and available daylight gives a lot of opportunity for shaping light, very naturally keying actors and having plenty of ambient light.

I remember when getting accurate daylight temperatures on LED lights was not easy. Nowadays, there are plenty to choose from and I can count on accurate color. Some units that I have found useful to extend daylight inside a room include the ARRI Skypanels and LiteGear’s LiteMat line. From outside a room, punching through windows, I prefer to use large HMI units to simulate the directional punch that is natural to sunlight. LEDs lack the punch once directed through glass. However, inside a room, these soft LED lights are magical.

[Read: Lighting for ENG]

DOING AWAY WITH GELS AND DIMMERS

On a recent short I worked on, “Always Remember Me,” the entire film took place during the day. We were lucky enough to find a large house location with plenty of windows throughout, and so strategically blocked actors in order to shoot against them. When going in for coverage, units such as a LiteMat 4 and an ARRI Skypanel 60-C came in to wrap the light from the window as a key. I am a big fan of soft keying, and softening LEDs with diffusion can be tough if you don’t have a lot of space. Because we had a sizable house location, I was able to throw frames of grid diffusion in front of the units. In my experience, placing diffusion gel on the lights is not as effective and makes softening LEDs a pain. You want to be able to get diffusion away from the light. Having so much daylight also allowed us to fake soft backlights where there were none. The audience can just feel and assume these soft backlights on hair and shoulders were coming from some window in the space.

The scenes in this film take us from afternoon all the way until sunset. Again, having windows allows you to have plenty of ambience and still create the illusion of a lower sun. Being able to dim and change color temperature on our LED fixtures allowed us to make these light changes easily. This is where we are going with lighting—having such versatility in quality, intensity and color without needed extra pieces like hand dimmers and gels. For scenes later in the film, we turned everything a bit closer to tungsten color temperature without doing anything in camera. We were shooting on 16mm film, Kodak 7207 250D, the entire time and didn’t use any camera filtration. The change in light and color was strictly through the LEDs themselves. The HMIs, on the other hand, had to have CTO placed in front of them to match. This is where a color meter comes in handy—though you can read the exact Kelvin on your LEDs, you can’t on your HMIs, and on top of that when you’re shooting film you can’t tell the differences as easily. I had an old Minolta color meter on hand.

Though these newer LEDs that keep coming out are so beautiful and versatile, you want to always have plenty of grippage on hand to affect quality and to shape. LEDs that come without lenses, like Skypanels and LiteMat, have no sharp directional beam. They are usually one large soft spread. For wider shots in “Always Remember Me,” we had to utilize a lot of duvetyne and flags to shape the light and keep it from spilling onto walls. It also becomes a bit trickier to soften in bigger shots because you are now seeing so much of the space, so bouncing LEDs into the ceilings and walls and then diffusing, in a sort of booklight fashion, becomes an effective strategy.

[Read: Lighting the Scene from Different Directions]

Whether you’re extending daylight as a key, bringing up the shadows to expose for outside a window, or giving direction throughout a location to an already existing sun, LEDs are now extremely useful players in daytime interiors. As always, the more sophisticated and powerful, the better, so you have the ability to soften and shape as needed. The future of lighting only promises bigger and better LEDs for cinema.

When shooting in the style of electronic newsgathering, especially as a solo journalist on location, there is so much to take into consideration. On-location shooting ENG typically does not allow for a lot of setup time nor much time with a subject, and the overall workflow for prepping, shooting, cutting and delivering a piece like this is very fast. These shoots consist of short stories journalists go out and capture on location as events are happening. They can also be short stories that are pieced together through interviews, b-roll, and live events. As with any role in production, when you are capturing a story on your own, you should constantly be going down a mental checklist of tasks.

First and foremost is understanding the subject and the story. After coming to a solid understanding of the story you are telling, the next step is always planning the most effective way of telling it. 

UNIQUE CHALLENGES

Every story has different locations and each presents its own unique set of challenges. When it comes to lighting, not having a lot of time to set up and tweak is simply the nature of ENG.

The key is to prepare as much as possible ahead of time for shooting in every location, if you can. Understand the obstacles the location presents. Take advantage of the available light in the space, the time of day you can shoot there, and the directions you can point the camera once you are there to roll. Have an idea what the shots are that need to be obtained and if you can scout before the shoot day, take plenty of references photos. Utilize windows, practicals, and the tools you are able to bring with you.

[Lighting the Scene From Different Directions] 

One great way to supplement light if you don’t have a bounce board is to shine the light into a wall or ceiling. On the day of the shoot, place your subject where there is light, pull them away from walls, and then plant the lighting tools you have at your disposal.

For example, when I was starting out in ENG, I had a story in someone’s home where we were to shoot interviews. I had not seen the location before. There were large windows in the living room, so I placed the subject where one of the windows could essentially be her key light. Then, all I had to do was use one of my lights to supplement and shape that window light.

RAISING THE BAR

Our tools are advancing rapidly to give us more flexibility while shooting, which make quality images more and more obtainable in ENG. Cameras keep raising the bar in terms of dynamic range, so cutting light in specific areas or trying to supplement shadows becomes less of an issue. They can see more, and so dealing with a range of exposure in the frame has become a more manageable job. However, we still want to have some control and get it to where we want it. It is beneficial to always bring a few lighting tools on the day, especially if you haven’t yet seen the location and you’re going to capture something live as it happens. If you can bring a lighting kit, whether it be a set of LEDs, Kinos, etc., great. This means you will need a power solution and some stingers, but you’ll have bigger sources with you and be able to supplement light in darker spaces.

If a “legitimate” kit is not available, there is now a plethora of mobile lighting options. Aputure, Westcott and so many more have beautiful LED lights in a variety of models and sizes that come in very handy in something like ENG. There are many bi-color and RGB options as well, so gels may not be necessary and you can be prepared for different color temperatures on location. A lot of shooters go about explaining ENG lighting as 3-point, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Two lights is a great strategy—you can supplement or create a key, and then fill or separate as needed.

[Exterior Scenes Can Present Challenges] 

There may be a shoot where you cannot bring lights for whatever reason. You are just a journalist with a camera and have to rely on natural light. First consideration is shooting outside. Find somewhere with soft light, in the shade, or if there is no shade, point the camera toward the sun so the subject is backlit. With the cameras we have today, this is a safe way to control light and maintain exposure.

ENG shooting is the perfect combination of needing to be proactive and reactive. Preparing as much as possible, but also bringing different tools to adjust accordingly, is so important. Another key is simply not to overthink it. Our technology has advanced so much and locations can provide a lot of great light and color. ENG will always be a great way to learn how to tell a story quickly and effectively and keep lighting simple while still capturing beautiful images.

Getting your key light just right can get complicated when considering the blocking of the actors, the space and what units you have at your disposal. It is also easy to feel a bit of pressure when keying actors for tight eyelines and close-ups because we tend to sweeten up the lighting a bit when we walk in camera.

Tight eyelines and close-ups are also ingredients for a dramatic, emotional and/or important moment, so naturally we want to take a little more time to be sure we get it right.

When going for more traditional beauty light on the face, we come frontal with our key light and decide how wrapped around the face we want it. I have discussed ways to key light before, but want to explore lighting from different directions.

Half of a recent Under Armour commercial I shot took place in large offices at night. It also was shot for black and white, so my lighting and contrast had to be approached differently. The spot introduced characters as leaders of a corrupt corporation.

Because of its dramatic introduction, before we go into a gym with the main character, lighting soft and frontal was never an intention. Knowing whose story this was, I utilized the key lights for each scene in different positions—from above and from the side.

KEYING FROM ABOVE
When you key from above, where you may also have your ambient light coming from, you lose light in the eyes. You can back up actors to potentially gain back an eye light, but what you have done is created shadows downward on the face.

Fig. 1: Top light on coverage for the Under Armour office scene

What you gain with keying from above is the ability to hide units above frame lines, rig without stands in the frame, and you naturally gain ambient light depending on how big and soft you go (Fig. 1).

This also gives you a more dramatic feel than if you killed your overhead unit and threw up something to key right from camera.

Fig. 2: Keying from the side

For this conference room scene, I put up a Quasar LED tube, wrapped in black wrap to avoid spilling on the walls and windows, with a layer of diffusion, above the two actors (Fig. 2).

This allowed for the single key light to hit both actors in a master, and when we moved in, we didn’t have to move the unit, just reposition actors underneath.

If you were doing something such as an interrogation scene, you could even go harder from above with a bare bulb or some other harder source. On the other hand, if you were doing a sitcom, you would also be keying from above with several soft sources. Keying from above can play in many different scenarios for a range of genres and spaces.

KEYING FROM THE SIDE
Again, key lighting is dictated by the tone of the narrative. The more you understand it, the better your work will be. Side lighting is another dramatic way to key actors. It is important to remember that it is just as much about shadow as it is about light.

Fig. 3: Top light on a master shot for the office scene

Keying from the side is a great way to create shadow. This approach was taken a lot in this commercial (Fig. 3). I used a mix of a Leko and Arri Skypanel 60-C for a key light throughout the shoot, and would typically start out by having it too close to camera.

After realizing it was a bit too pretty, I would have my crew walk it out more to come from the side. This extends shadows on the face and creates more contrast, which in this commercial is more than appropriate.

Side lighting simply adds texture. Adding shadow creates fall off, where parts of the image gradually transition into black. On a character’s face, this can not only enhance what he or she is feeling or experiencing, but it adds intrigue, guides the audience’s eye and is, overall, much more interesting than a key light that wraps around the whole face.

Flat is ugly. It is also not what we think about when we consider sophisticated cinematography. It is helpful to have choices in terms of what units you use, but it is even more helpful to have options when it comes to shaping and directing them.

You are painting every frame, so making decisions about where to place your lights and what types of shadows you want will help translate your story to the audience. It’s all part of your job to communicate on screen.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

We have a lot of tools to measure exposure, but to me, the light meter is the simplest and truest. Every cinematographer has a different way of checking exposure in a shot, whether it’s a single tool (such as false color), a combination of tools or no tools at all. Some just look at the monitor and call it.

The author takes a spot reading of the sunrise for a 35mm movie.

However, I am a big believer in making choices and doing things for a reason as I am painting the frame with light. Metering light is not just a way to make sure the camera can see a subject, it also allows you to purposefully set ratios.

For example, if you want your backlight to be two stops over, understanding the latitude of your camera and how it will be perceived, then you can do that quickly and with confidence.

Back when shooting film, the light meter was the only sure way of knowing the image was exposed, however desired. Personally, and for many, it’s still the tool I rely on the most, in addition to false color and my eye.

For this reason, I would like to discuss how a meter is used; why it is such a great tool; and some specific instances where it saved the day on set.

Sekonic L-758C

INCIDENT AND SPOT READINGS
There are many different brands and types of light meters available. One of the most popular is Sekonic. My Sekonic L-758C, now an older model, allows me to get both incident readings and spot readings. An incident reading measures the amount of light falling on a subject, while a spot reading measures how much light is being reflected off of something. Both are important, because, just as sound waves do, light is both absorbed and bounced around by objects filling a space.

Because meters cannot see a subject, they are calibrated to assume that a subject is of 18 percent reflectance or 18 percent gray. Meters are a tool to determine illuminance, so without having to know the color of a subject, meters will read darker shades of gray as darker or more underexposed and lighter shades as brighter.

To get any light reading, the first thing that must be done is to set camera settings in your meter. The first decision you make is how you want to treat your film stock or sensor in terms of sensitivity to light. Whether you go with the native ISO or you rate it as something else, you must tell the meter this information. A meter must also know what framerate and shutter speed you are shooting at. These camera settings all affect exposure. You should also have chosen an ƒ/stop on your lens to shoot your scene.

CHOOSING YOUR CAMERA SETTINGS
As I always say, in this age of button pushers, you should be choosing your camera settings based on what you want to achieve visually rather than changing settings because the image is too dark or too bright. By just bumping up the ISO or speeding up your shutter, for example, you are messing with a lot of different things. When you take a reading with your light meter, your meter will tell you what ƒ/stop is needed to properly expose your subject. If something reads too bright or too dark, it tends to be best to use your lighting tools to brighten or darken something in the frame to get it to where you want it in intensity.

Night scene from “ARRI: Visions”

It is important to remember that the meter is just a suggestion. When your meter gives you an ƒ/4, it does not mean you have to march over to your lens and change the aperture to ƒ/4. Every shot will contain a plethora of readings from the various shadows, highlights, sources, etc., within the frame. It is the cinematographer’s job to figure out what each object in the frame should read, based on what he or she wants the camera and lens set to.

Depending on the camera’s latitude, objects that read many stops over and under may still be seen in detail. I just came off a commercial for ARRI, which was shot completely in remote locations. In one scene, the main source was a fire at night. It was important for me to take spot readings of the fire, incident readings of the actress’ face from the firelight, as well as read into the shadows around her to see if I still had detail. I wanted to make sure we exposed the actress properly while still maintaining detail in the bright highlights of the flames.

We did a lot of scenes during the day, too. Spot readings are key for bright sources in the frame such as fire, the sky and units such as flashlights.

There isn’t one ideal tool for the job, or the same ideal tool for everyone. However, I find that a light meter has been key in allowing me to make exposure decisions, shoot film confidently, and really know how I can push things in color during post. It also serves as a great way to communicate with my gaffer who is also metering throughout the day, so that together we are on the same page with how exposure through the frame looks.

Light meters have always been, and will remain, a simple, effective way of reading light.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

A big misconception in our industry is that daytime exteriors are the easiest time to shoot because of the amount of available light. In truth, they can be the most difficult. This is simply because you have less control. On a stage or location with minimal windows, we are fortunate to be able to manipulate the light and maintain a look with ease. Cinematography is about image control and repeatability. The ability to have control over the frame you are creating and then being able to repeat that same look as you clock around a room is the whole point.

I want to talk about both daytime and nighttime exterior scenes, as they both present challenges and I just wrapped on a commercial, “Visions,” that was solely exteriors at every time of the day and night.

SHOOTING DAYTIME EXTERIORS
Daytime seems straightforward to most, but it requires just as much preparation to get it right. You are typically fighting one of two battles: softening and cutting what’s already there while supplementing the shadows, or attempting to add highlights to a very flat image.

Unfortunately we cannot move or slow down the sun as much as we find ourselves wanting to, so we have to strategically choose locations and place our actors and camera. The time zone and the time of year also have an effect on your shoot as well. The most common and simple thing I do outside on a sunny day is just supplement the shadows with a bounce board on tighter shots.

Fig. 1: Using lighting technology on daytime exteriors can add edges on actors while softening the bright sun overhead, which was necessary for this opening scene of “I Blame Monty Hall.”

However, using lighting technology on daytime exteriors can be the key in achieving more sophisticated scenes. Most especially, having daylight units to add edges on actors while softening the bright sun overhead or dealing with a flat, cloudy sky can create separation and depth. ) I had to do this on the opening scene of “I Blame Monty Hall,” (Fig. 1), so there was some separation.

It can be easy on a cloudy day to have your units look like lights off to the side, so softening and spreading the beam can help hide your work. Outside, you have the biggest light source available to us, the sun, and it becomes about controlling the quality and amount of shadows.

Another common technique that goes without saying is pointing the camera toward the sun. Using the sun as a backlight can help avoid harsh front light on your subjects while simultaneously providing a backlight.

Often, controlling the harshness of the sun as a backlight is called for because we can only supplement the shadows so much before it starts to look unnatural. However, using the sun as a backlight tends to prove a bit easier than trying to control it as a front key light and just looks much more pleasing. As always, understanding what ratios you want to set and the capabilities of your camera will also help decide how to treat the light.

SHOOTING NIGHT EXTERIORS
Night exteriors present a new group of potential lighting techniques. The biggest topic of discussion for these is moonlight: How bright is it? The answer to this question varies with every film and cinematographer.

Some level of ambient moonlight can be very difficult to pull off because only so much light is in your arsenal and at some point that light will fall off into darkness. This can make a scene feel like it is, in fact, on a stage, because you can only see so far into the world.

For this reason, many cinematographers choose not to recreate moonlight at all. They may lack the large balloon light that is commonly used to create a large enough ambient light or simply not gravitate toward the look of it. In all the scenes that I have shot outside at night, I have found it best not to try to create moonlight unless there is absolutely nothing else.

Fig. 2: In this commercial, “Visions,” a haze was added to enhance the beams of the flashlights as the actors searched the woods.

In this new commercial, “Visions,” we had a night scene in the woods (Fig. 2) where the actors were searching with flashlights. To enhance the beams, we added haze, but I also wanted to see the trees. The shots were contained enough so I could backlight the trees without feeling like I had to fill a large space.

This also presented the common challenge of balancing color temperature. Deciding how bright your moonlight is is just as important and subjective as what color temperature it is.

I lit the entire commercial with Aputure 120d and 300d lights, and then threw some color temperature blue gel on the pair of incandescent flashlights.

Fig. 3: In the same commercial the scene was lit with the fire and a soft beam of moonlight with a 120d up in the rafters of the structure.

The final scene of the commercial was shot at night into an abandoned structure featuring a witch working around a fire, (Fig. 3). My initial instinct was to extend the effect of the fire with a warm key off to the side that was higher than the flames. Of course, this ended up not happening, and to make it the most natural and interesting, we lit solely with the fire, and added a soft beam of moonlight with a 120d up in the rafters.

This also spilled into the foreground in front of the structure, edging the weeds and dirt. The structure provided the contained area where I could create moonlight, but didn’t feel like it needed to extend very far.

The sun’s natural light can throw some interesting challenges, but if you scout and have the tools necessary to deal with it, you can create something you intended. Just like with interiors, you want control intention in each shot with the light.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

Something that seems a bit underestimated is the power that practicals have. A practical is a light that is seen on screen, an apparent source, that is utilized to light the space and/or subject. This could range from a computer screen, lamp, fluorescent fixture on the wall and so much more. If you see it in the frame, it’s a practical.

I’ve shot quite a few makeup mirrors where a great number of bulbs have had to be swapped out, but it ends up saving the shot. In two music videos, one for Shayna Leigh (“Jerry Seinfeld”)

A GREAT STARTING POINT
The most obvious reason practicals are so effective is because the viewer buys them as a natural fixture in the space. They not only add highlights and shapes within the picture you are painting, but they’re easily motivated. Practicals give you a great starting point if you choose to add film lights because you can bring in your own units to extend the effects of them. Not only can you extend a practical’s illumination in the frame, but deeper in the frame you can add light as if there are more of the same light fixtures elsewhere in a room.

Just as you are making exposure decisions with your film lights, you have to do so with the practicals you use. A new challenge is dealing with seeing these sources because depending on the output, you could be dealing with a super bright spot in the frame. I usually meter a lot on set, so when I have a practical in the frame, I am not only taking incident readings of how much light is falling onto my subjects, but now I am spot reading as well. Spot readings help a lot with brights sources inside the frame, where light is now being reflected instead of absorbed.

Using practicals in a scene is not a matter of just walking into a space and using what is already in the room; it is important to have control over them. I always say that the production designer is your best friend on set, one of the reasons being you can discuss the types of fixtures you can bring into the scene from outside the location.

Aimee Mann (“Patient Zero”), we had two significant scenes where the camera was looking into makeup mirrors.

On one period film I worked on, there was no electricity, so we had to rely on extending the effects of kerosene lanterns, which production design supplied. In modern day films, lamps are still popular within scenes, mostly in narrative, and I am always having to replace what already exists in the space. You always want to have options and/or a clear idea of what you want in the design of a room. In addition to having the right lamp or other light, you want to also have the right wattage of bulb for exposure. If you cannot supply separate bulbs, then having a few hand dimmers if your package will help reduce the intensity of practicals that are too bright. I prefer to switch things out, because depending on the fixture you can end up with flickering issues on camera that are sometimes invisible to the eye.

I’ve shot quite a few makeup mirrors where a great number of bulbs have had to be swapped out, but it ends up saving the shot. In two music videos, one for Shayna Leigh and another for Aimee Mann, we had two significant scenes where the camera was looking into makeup mirrors. For Shayna’s video, I didn’t add any other key, but to light Bradley Whitford, I armed out a small tungsten Fresnel to supplement. For both of these projects, I bought lower wattage incandescent bulbs, around 60W, and placed though inside the mirrors. You never know what the power of the bulbs on location will be.

KITS IN THE HALL
Another popular instance of practicals is in a hallway. Hallways may be lined with green fluorescent fixtures or sconces on the wall, which you then have to supplement or embrace. A good trick is if you are going to fly with using the lights in the hall, is to kill some of the them, and leave others on. Gently unscrewing the bulbs so that they turn off if every light is on the same circuit can give you more control, or even skirting the ones that are on with some black fabric like duvetyne helps give you more shape.

Practicals are an easy way to add highlights in the frame for some depth, as well as motivate your key and other lights painting the picture. During a single project on location, it will always be a mix of replacing and embracing the practicals that exist in the space, unlike starting from scratch in an empty stage where you are building a set. No matter what you are presented with in a location, there typically several options and it is important to not let practicals limit you. All of a light’s properties are controllable, and you have to make it work for you. Whether you need them to match the color of a film light you’re bringing in or just need them to be less intense, you can always find a way to get it just right.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

I stopped doing documentary production when I moved to Los Angeles and had since been doing narrative and commercial, so when I was suddenly presented with a documentary series where I was not allowed to bring many lights, I was very intrigued. The doc series “It Got Real” was supposed to feel and look like real life, and it was, as we followed our subjects around with cameras over a series of days.

Erin and Matt Robinson in “It Got Real.” Lighting from windows was used by pointing the cameras toward them.

Interviews were intercut with real events like doctor’s appointments, drives through Beverly Hills and a surgery. This felt like ENG shooting, which I had also done when I was starting out, capturing real events as they happen without manipulating the look much, if at all.

AVAILABLE LIGHT AND SOURCES
In instances where not many lights could be implemented when following subjects around, I had to think about the available light and sources in the spaces. Where there were windows, I would try to point toward them with the cameras.

Most everything was shot during the day, either exterior or interior, so I had an Aputure LS-1 LED that was daylight temperature handy at all times. This was used to fill any room that needed more ambience despite having a window or more, or for returning the light of a window that we were facing.

Matt Robinson during an interview in his home

We also did many long “on-the-fly” interviews on location, so this acted as a key light I could pop up quickly. For any night interiors inside apartments, I had incandescent bulbs to swap out with any bulbs in the rooms that I might have been seeing. I could ensure not only that all the sources inside a single room matched, but if I had them in my frame, they wouldn’t be so hot that information was lost in the image.

Quite simply, the best approach for freeform documentary-style shooting is to understand the lighting technology you will be faced with in the different locations. If you can scout, scout. I knew I had a lot of daylight to utilize and expose for, but I also had some night scenes without the daylight pouring in.

I had fluorescent fixtures I had to throw some minus-green gel on prior to the subjects entering the space so I could make it all look a little less tinted. I knew what color temperature to balance the camera for before going in on the day. Obviously, having a camera with a higher dynamic range and better color is also a plus and more forgiving when you get into the color suite later.

Erin Robinson in an interview for “It Got Real”

SHOOTING IN THE MOMENT
Ultimately, when shooting something that is happening in the moment that you cannot go back and get again later, you cannot micromanage subjects with marks. As with any narrative or commercial, the more you prepare, the better you will be on the day, even if things change on you last minute.

For the interview portion of the doc series “It Got Real,” we lit with some older tungsten units and a few Kino Flo fluorescents. We threw one Kino on the gray backdrop behind the subject in the A camera to add some shape in the background, and created a book light with a 1K ARRI tungsten fresnel as a key.

Despite the subject matter being quite dramatic and real, we chose not to exclude fill light, so we walked in a 4x4 bounce board to return some of the key light on the other side of the face.

I knew the interviews would be cut frequently with bright scenes with a lot of ambient light, and figured that something with a lot of contrast would not fit as well with the action we captured outside the interview; it would be too dramatic a difference. Instead, we made it soft and controlled the shadows rather than let them fall off completely.

On the interview set from camera A we used a 4x4 bounce board to return some of the key light on the other side of the face.

Going into a shoot without much lighting technology can be an ultimate test of lighting knowledge and can boost creative thinking. Despite the fact that it becomes so minimalistic in terms of sources and tools, you still go into it with the same thinking process—analyze what you have in terms of units, windows, colors and spaces. Then utilize them to the best of your ability. The more you understand, the better your work will be even though you don’t fly in a bunch of supplemental lighting in the first place.

Observing light in life is one of the easiest and most accessible methods of studying for cinematography. It not only helps in your recreation of something such as office lighting with fluorescents or daylight through a window at noon, but it also helps you control these elements and make them work for you when you are without anything else.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

As most of us are experiencing new lighting technology, physical gels are slowly becoming obsolete with new LEDs. They’re obviously essential when balancing sources on location and other HMIs or tungsten Fresnels in your package. However, now we have LED units with RGB-emitting capabilities where we can dial in any color we want and the light will produce it. You can also dim some units without changing color temperature, which you could not do on a lot of older units where you would start to get a warmer color when dimming down.

The recent movie “Never Stop” was filmed using LEDs.

I recently filmed “Never Stop” during which we lit everything with LEDs. I could only use what we had access to, so I had a mix of Kino Flo Selects and a variety of lights from the theater scene that typically aren’t used in cinema. These included Chauvet COLORado Battens, Martin Mac Auras and ETC Source Four Lustr 2 units, all of which included DMX and RGB capabilities.

These ended up serving me well as I had to create a post-apocalyptic world with vibrant parties and underground bars, and I had to do it quickly. Without delay my gaffer could dim every unit and change the colors and frequencies as we went, which made for fast auditions through different looks.

COLOR FLEXIBILITY
What is great about the flexibility in the color of LED lights with RGB is the fact that you can easily match practicals in the space. For this film, I could meter color and then dial in the exact hue on whatever light I was using, with really nice color rendering.

ETC Source Four LED Series

Sometimes you don’t have control over practicals and can’t replace bulbs or fixtures so being able to match the available light in the space so easily is a plus. You don’t always catch green and magenta coming out in your units either, so having control over that axis is very important and so easy now.

In the unique bar location for “Never Stop,” we had almost urban vapor-colored practicals. I have plenty of urban vapor gel, as it’s my favorite, but it wasn’t quite matching. Being able to be precise with the RGB modes on the LEDs made it easy to get everything looking like it was coming from the same sources in the space.

I would have to say my favorite light I had was the ETC Source Four LED. The original Source Four tungsten Fresnels are wonderful—I could light a whole scene with them and I’m sure I have in the past. Now I had the directionality and efficiency of a traditional Source Four with the added ability to make it whichever color I wanted with the click of a button.

Another great thing is that with the narrow beam, I didn’t have to flag any walls off or shape them with anything except for their internal blades. The Source Four LEDs were also rigged very high up on beams of a loft space, so having to go up to audition a gel would have taken time. Because these have DMX, a digital communication network that allowed us to talk to the units through software on our laptop, we were able to change color, intensity and frequency from the ground.

It’s interesting gaining a handful of units that aren’t what you’re used to, but new LEDs are opening up a whole new game in terms of possibilities and efficiency. You’re able to audition more options in a shorter amount of time, and understanding DMX communication and setup is becoming crucial.

Chauvet COLORado Batten

Even with the Kino Selects, which we just controlled from the back of the units, we were able to dial in things quickly. With apps such as Gel Swatch Library, you can look up more than 1,000 of your favorites from manufacturers like Lee and Rosco and then plug in RGB percentages on your LED.

If you have something like a Select, you do so on the back; and if you have LEDs all set up with DMX, you can do so through whatever program you are using on a laptop.

As I always suggest, the best way to decide which units you like and which are the most accurate when it comes to color temperature and tint is to test them yourself and talk with other cinematographers and gaffers about what they have used. We have countless options when it comes to light and color. Getting out there and playing with the wonderful tools we have will do nothing but enable you to better prepare yourself for the next project.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted via Twitter: @JuliaSwain or through TV Technology.

I try to head to the NAB Show in Las Vegas every year, and this year was probably one of the best experiences I have had. There was a lot of cinematography talk, along with plenty of new lighting units to get to know. I wanted to share a few that stood out to me and how I have or would put them to use. You will notice all of these are LEDs, which goes to show how they are really taking over lighting technology on set. All of these are efficient and have beautiful results.

DIRECTIONALITY & MOBILITY
If you are familiar with Aputure’s 120d, you know how wonderful a single-source LED can be. The new 300d is three times more intense than the 120d, and, as I always say, if you can start lighting with bigger sources, it is much easier to cut and soften than it would be starting with something smaller and running out of output.

What is really attractive about this series in Aputure’s arsenal is the directionality of the beam and ability to control the beam’s angle. The 300d isn’t physically that much larger, but packs in a much bigger punch with its intensity.

What I consider one of the biggest advantages this light has over other LEDs of this intensity, is its mobility. Other lights with large outputs can be cumbersome and slow on set. The 300d is easy to move around, which will ultimately make your setups faster.

I have not had the chance to get my hands on the 300d for a shoot, but I know I would use it for either a key, a hard back and even outside windows to give daylight direction like I have done with clunkier HMI lights. I have had to do this with the Aputure LS1, but the 300d would be even better suited because of its narrow beam—a huge plus for an LED.

SkyPanel_Firmware 3.0 Source Matching

SET AN EFFECT
The SkyPanel from ARRI has been a favorite amongst LED units that is beautifully soft and versatile. This year, the 3.0 version of its firmware was released, and introduces an array of great features, including the ability to set an effect.

With the new firmware, you can set your SkyPanel to simulate a variety of effects such as a cop car, fireworks, paparazzi and lightning. This allows you to pass on having to come up with practical ways to create effects by panning lights or changing the frequency of your units by hand. You can also select from 46 preprogrammed sources like cool fluorescents or candles to match your SkyPanel to the sources around you in the environment or the other sources you are using to light a scene.

These capabilities, along with the ability to dial in RGBW values at your fingertips, have everyone realizing that tools such as gels are becoming obsolete for some units. It is becoming easier and faster to accomplish lighting effects and obtain the colors and frequencies we desire.

Obviously, it’s great to have the SkyPanel serving as an effect light or any function for that matter on set. There have been many projects now where SkyPanels are my main lights. Not only can you change so many things about what they are outputting now, but they make beautiful soft keys.

FULLY SUBMERGIBLE
One company that has really gotten everyone’s attention this year is Digital Sputnik. I did not just want to learn more about the company’s new lights. I wanted to learn about their technology in general.

The DS family of lights is very versatile and can be stacked in different configurations, and although each unit is made up of multiple LEDs, they create a narrow beam unlike a panel would.

The newest edition released this year for Digital Sputnik was the Voyager series. These lights are tubes that can be fully submerged in water, and come in 4-foot and 2-foot units. They come with built-in batteries so there is no cabling to have to deal with while on location. You can dial in a few different things with Digital Sputnik’s application on your smartphone, getting specific with the hue, saturation, intensity and temperature. I have not used these yet, but am extremely eager to see what they do, especially underwater.

These are just some of the units that caught my attention this year and are helping lead the way in lighting technology. What is really great about all of them is the color accuracy, versatility and ability to control them wirelessly. It’s very exciting to be able to embrace new technology every year, but it also can be overwhelming. It’s truly about getting your hands on what you are interested in and taking them out on a shoot yourselves.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

Key lighting seems like the simplest idea when setting up a scene with light as it’s the main light on the subject. As a cinematographer, you tend to think about it first when going into a scene. When cinematographers start out, they often point lights directly at their subjects. Usually, they do not think about diffusion or cutting; they are just trying to get the exposure they want.

Key lighting a face is truly an art, and there are many ways to do it. It is not just about the source you use, but the quality of it, its intensity, direction and color. I wanted to address the two ways I typically key because I very rarely point lights at faces directly. These examples have been useful in many different situations. When you point a unit directly at someone, it’s probably going to be hard in quality and not as flattering on the face. There are also so many skin tones to consider.

BOUNCE LIGHTING
More than just the key can be set up using bounce lighting. Bounce lighting is simply hitting the source into another surface, and lighting with the return that bounces off of that surface. For example, a way to fill a room is to bounce a unit into the ceiling to create ambient light.

Bounce lighting as a key is a great way to spread the source, soften it and maintain a more natural look. A specific use for bounce keying is creating a television or movie screen effect. Bouncing is great for this because a movie theater screen is usually large, so spreading the light by bouncing helps create a larger, but soft, key light. If the screen the person was watching was very small and close to them, then I might consider containing the light a little more and not spreading it by bouncing.

Screengrab from Jilted with bounce lighting

Another great use of bounce lighting is the need to key someone who does not actually have a source on a particular side of a room to light them. In my very first feature, “Jilted,” I had a character in a small hotel room facing away from the window. Naturally, she was pretty dark. So to bring her exposure up I bounced a Leko with half CTB on it into a board to create a natural return on her from the window.

Bounce lighting is all about direction, so really take in your location and blocking to help you determine where to bounce from and the direction of the bounce. Sometimes hiding the unit that you are bouncing can be a challenge.

BOOK LIGHTING
Frequently, I find myself with a need to be soft with my key. Taking bounce light a step further involves shooting that beam bouncing off a surface through diffusion. A “book light” is a rig that contains a unit between a bounce surface—such as an ultra bounce or board—and a rag or sheet of diffusion, like a grid or some type of silk.

Anette Haellmigk in an interview for Women of Light lit with a book light

This makes for a very soft light and comes in handy quite a lot. I did a whole feature documentary with book lights for keys on every subject. An example is Anette Haellmigk, director of photography on “Game of Thrones,” lit with a 5K tungsten fresnel bouncing off an ultra bounce rag, back through a silk.

Book lights are the ultimate soft light, and depending on the material you use as a bounce and the level of diffusion you choose, you can have control over just how soft it is.

I have talked about filming subjects right up against windows before, and book lighting is the trick to keying someone in this situation. A book light gives you the softness you need to make the key look natural enough against a window. The hard part is making a book light bright enough—you are bouncing it and then diffusing it, so you need to go into this with a stronger unit for fighting a window if you want to maintain exposure outside.

Ultimately, the key light is determined by the space. Unless you are going with something completely unmotivated, you are probably going to draw upon what is available in the space and what is happening in the scene to decide on the placement and characteristics of your key.

Like always, the story is always king, even in determining how to treat a scene with light.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

There are a few categories or functions of light when calling for a specific unit to be used in a scene. The director of photography starts most importantly with the story, what is going on in a particular scene, and looks at what sources are available in the space. Lighting does not always have to be motivated, but beginning with what is naturally lighting up the space is a good place to start.

Besides the key, whatever fill, backlights or set lights the scene may contain, there are also sometimes effect lights that are placed to create a specific effect. This could be the light coming from a television screen, a projector, fire—the possibilities are endless. This is where believability comes into play in order to pull of the desired effect, though you may have physical fire in the shot, you may need to extend the effect of the fire to really paint the frame in the way you want to.

I have mentioned some effects in past columns, but thought I would touch on a few as I have found myself having to recreate them a lot lately. I have done video demos of some of these, and there are many ways to achieve them.

NATURAL EFFECTS
Natural effects include elements we encounter in nature. The key to creating these effectively for the screen, is observing them in life. It is natural for us as cinematographers to constantly be observing light in life and gaining an understanding of how it acts throughout the day and how changes in weather can affect it. Of course, it is quite simpler to pull these off on a stage where you have full control.

Fig. 1 When dealing with location exteriors, however, you have a whole new set of factors to deal with. One challenge that I thought was going to be difficult going in, turned out to be fairly simple, as most things do. Shooting a feature in Tucson, Ariz. during the summer, the script called for an exterior scene with overcast skies and rainfall during the hottest, sunniest day of our stay. Luckily my camera was facing the exterior wall of a building that had a porch ceiling built in. While making sure that no light leaks were coming through this ceiling, my key grip tied off a 12x12 rag of half grid to the corners of the ceiling and then onto hi rollers just off frame. This gave the soft, overcast look for the overall scene, which aids in the overall impression of a rainy day (Fig. 1).

Fig. 2 The other element present in at least half of that film was fire. We only had fire in the shot once and a while, but because there was no electricity in this world, the idea was that some kind of flame was lighting all the night interiors (Fig. 2). I knew if something appeared too hard, casting hard shadows, it would feel too “source-y” to be candlelight or some type of chandelier. Controlling the quality of my units was key, as they were all essentially extensions of fire. The softer they are, the better, but every cinematographer will find the “sweet spot” with making it believable for every scene. The same goes for something like moonlight, which I tend not to recreate, but if I do for a scene or a film, the softer and bigger I can make it, the more the audience buys it as moonlight. I tend to bounce large HMIs off a rag like ultrabounce, and spread it as much as I can so it does not fall off. There are many right ways to do these effects though. If you look at a DP like Robert Richardson, ASC, his moonlight is hard, a beautiful edge, and we completely buy it.

Fig. 3PRACTICAL EFFECTS
Effects we ourselves have created in life are easy to pull off for camera. For a music video a while back, we had to turn a theater used strictly for live performance, into an old movie theater. This involved recreating some screen effect as a key, with a change in frequency as if there were cuts and movement in the film happening, as well as some sort of projector (Fig. 3). Now, in real movie theaters, you are not backlit as an audience member by the projector, but it looks great elein the movies when the character has a little edge from it. For this key, just as I would do a television screen, I bounced something like a Leko off of a 4x4 bead board bounce and had it on a 1K hand dimmer. Another Leko was the projector, as it plays well with haze, being so directional. There are many ways you can pull this off. It is all in the understanding of how these things play in real life, and knowing how far you can push the effects in terms of intensity and hardness.

There are so many practical effects we have to create and extend in our work—streetlights, traffic lights, city lights, lights from vehicles… the list goes on. The more you can observe and experiment with these between shows, the better. Asking what other cinematographers, gaffers and key grips do is also very helpful, as it expands your toolkit and ideas. You won’t always have the same equipment on every show, so being able to do effects with different tools is a plus.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California. She shoots on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

One mark of a good cinematographer is someone who truly understands how to utilize both the capabilities of their camera and their lights together. When it comes to making choices with exposure, it is important to remember how the settings on your camera will affect the overall exposure of the image you are capturing. I wanted to touch a little on the camera, despite this being a regular lighting column, because both camera and lighting have to work together—the better they work together, the better your work will be.

Vocalist and songwriter MILCK in the music video “Quiet”

EXPOSURE CHOICES
Several aspects of both film and digital camera systems affect exposure—the sensor’s or film’s native ISO, the aperture on the lens, the shutter speed and the framerate. What demonstrates skill is being able to make choices with each of these, rather than dialing through settings just to brighten up the image on the monitor because you “think” it is too dark. All of these characteristics on your imaging device affect how it sees the world.

When shooting in slow motion for example, light is lost automatically, and the cinematographer is going to have to compensate. Rather than boosting the ISO or even opening up, the way to compensate would be through lighting. We understand that if you are outside running around in the sun and shooting slow motion, you cannot adjust your lighting necessarily if you are without tools. When you have the tools and the time, lighting is the way to go.

The point is that the way you light a scene will always be married to what your camera is set to. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people go into a scene by lighting it and then taking a look at their camera and asking what they should set it to in order to best see what they lit.

Nowadays, everyone can see the monitor, so it is tempting to just open up the aperture to brighten up the dark image on the screen that someone is so afraid of. Ideally, your camera qualities come first, as these are all creative choices. You go into a shoot knowing these before the camera is even built. These then dictate how much light you throw in.

SHOOTING AT GLASS
I recently shoot the music video “Quiet” for Los Angeles-based vocalist and songwriter MILCK. The music video can be seen here on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnexOFOxCo.

This was a project that called for a specific camera/lighting combo. We had to shoot for visual effects, avoid reflections, utilize practical lighting effects and light for different framerates, all in one day.

Almost every shot for the video involved shooting at glass. Not only did we circle around a large glass tank with two cameras, but we also captured close-ups of glass shards flying and breaking, and had to somehow show the entire tank breaking when we could not do it practically for safety reasons.

Even before the tank breaks, MILCK sings at 100fps and 60fps. Instead of changing something on the camera to compensate for the light loss, we took our preset scrims from the three lights we used throughout the video and walked them in accordingly. We also had to shoot close shots of glass shards breaking at 300fps, and so brought in more light to maintain the overall look. This saved time and kept us from changing the way the camera was seeing the space.

Despite all we were attempting to achieve, all we needed to fly were two 2K Mole LEDs—one as a key and one as a backlight—and one Leko. Flickering on and off the overhead fluorescents also helped us achieve practical effects and transition us into the next part of the song.

Finally, in order to get the glass breaking in a wide shot, we had to light an empty plate of the tank, MILCK against green-screen and a miniature of the tank against black that broke. All of these were carefully lit under similar conditions as the entire piece. Then the three shots were combined into a successful VFX shot.

“Quiet” was an extremely fun challenge that involved many different aspects of lighting, in a somewhat simple setting. Always go into a shoot knowing what you need from your camera system. And never let your lighting force you to sacrifice those needs, but always meet them in the best way possible.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California. She shoots on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

Color temperature is one of the many properties of light that we can change and take advantage of when it comes to shooting. On most shows you will find yourself either changing, converting or correcting a unit with gels or an onboard dial that changes color temperature. Of course, there have been projects where I have been unable to fly, rig or strike anything, and completely utilize available light.

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

As with anything in lighting, there are countless possibilities in terms of effects and moods that can be created with color; all of these stem from the story. Location also indicates what the cinematographer should consider. Sometimes you are correcting or changing what available light is already there or even recreating an environment with which that the audience is familiar.

For example, traffic lights on a stage for a poor man’s process or even street lights outside of a window on location where there are none. Not only can we enhance the image with color, but every member of our audience associates colors with particular emotions. A strong understanding of the language of color is vital for a director of photography.

More often than not, we speak in two different base temperatures in lighting for cinema: tungsten (3200°K) and daylight (5500°K). Obviously, when we are lighting, we go all over the Kelvin scale having to deal with fluorescents, etc., but these are the foundation that we build from when putting a lighting package together and lighting a space.

The lower the number is on the scale, the warmer the color; and the higher, the cooler. Tungsten is orange and daylight is blue. Conversion gels, Color Temperature Orange (CTO) and Color Temperature Blue (CTB) will convert tungsten to daylight and vice-versa.

Set prepared with blue wash to blacklight scene in “Atlantis Gene” The most important thing to keep in mind is that color conversion gels also contain neutral density, so not only are you converting Kelvin by degrees desired, you are losing stops of light. If you are fighting some kind of tint on the green and magenta axis, color-correction gels (minus and plus green) will get you back in the right place if necessary to match or remove tint. Both color conversion and correction gels come in increments (an eighth, quarter, half, three-quarters) in order to be more specific.

For me, it is important to be specific in camera as opposed to relying on post production later to fix any problem. It is better to commit to decisions on the day and then enhance or take it back a step later, as our world of highly advanced post production still can’t fix everything you want to change in the end.

It seems LEDs are taking over lighting packages and sets, but I still defer to my tungsten Fresnels and HMI units a lot when building a package for an independent film. When it comes to color, it is very straightforward with these, except when dealing with an HMI that ran a little magenta—but no complicated fixes.

With LEDs, it used to be a bit more troublesome, as they would have lower Color Rendering Index ratings. CRI is a number on a scale from 1–100 that represents how accurately a particular light source can render all the frequencies of a specific color temperature that a natural source creates.

Now we have more efficient LEDs like the ARRI Skypanels or Mole Richardson’s LED Fresnels. In fact, my last music video was lit solely with LEDs and color was never an issue. I had high CRI ratings on my units that also drew much less power and gave me a huge output.

STREETLIGHT EFFECT

Stepping away from color correction and conversion, we find a plethora of fun colors. One of my favorite gels, if not my favorite, is urban vapor. This makes for a great streetlight effect, much like sodium or industrial vapor, as seen in this screen-grab from “The Return.”

Creating a streetlight effect with gels for “The Return”

Knowing the variety that is out there from manufacturers such as Lee and Rosco will help you know exactly what you want to use in whatever situation.

Another example of this type of set light is the blue wash we created for “Atlantis Gene.” Mark, my gaffer, is standing in in this frame, but you can see how the blue also backlights in this instance. Both of these examples create different moods for their respective scenes. One is a steamy scene at night, while the other is a much colder, ominous vibe. Both choices were made with the directors.

Observe color in movies since the beginning of color film. Humans have psychological connections to colors, and just like music, they set different tones for us. Color is part of the cinematic language we have created as filmmakers. It is just one of the many tools of the cinematographer, but one of the most powerful.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

If you are going to invest in equipment as a cinematographer or lighting technician, lights are a good way to go. They will consistently serve you on a shoot, last for a long time and uphold their value. I want to step away from the larger, expensive units you always find on set for a moment and talk about the small but powerful things you can have in your bag. There are a lot of useful, affordable units you can accumulate, or even build, to utilize on set.

Strings of Christmas lights in a desert shoot create the illusion of a city in the distance.BULBS

There is no reason why there shouldn’t be bulbs in any ditty bag. Having a variety of bare bulbs is invaluable. We are still shooting movies with a lot of incandescent light in them, so having incandescents is pretty necessary.

I am always replacing the bulbs in the lamps the production designer provides with my own, knowing the wattage needed if we are utilizing something as a practical and seeing it in the shot. Another obvious reason to carry bulbs is to rig up a Chinaball, which makes for a beautiful, soft key light.

LED strips come in a variety of colors and can be controlled by a remote or mobile device. Incandescent bulbs are extremely inexpensive. Purchasing clamp light fixtures is also inexpensive and a good way to acquire the “guts” or socket for a lightbulb. In addition to the socket, you get a parabolic housing that can be clamped onto countless surfaces.

Another popular bulb is the Philips Hue, which comes in white or color. What is unique about the Hue is that you can change the color of the bulb, which can go between 16 million colors, with your mobile device. You can also sync them to music and dim them. You cannot go wrong with these, though they are a bit more expensive than a regular household incandescent.

STRIPS

The original strip was the classic string of Christmas lights. These will always be great to have. They are beautiful in the background of a restaurant scene or even bundled up into a cluster for a key light. Warm or white Christmas lights can also be slowly pulled across the back window in a poor man’s process to effectively simulate the shifting of a horizon line of city lights.

I have even taken multiple strings in a night exterior desert shoot and laid them 500 feet out into the sand to create the illusion of a city way out in the distance and add some depth to the world. You can also take a string of these or firefly lights like you would find in home decor, and create a ring light.

Clamp light fixture More popular now, and more affordable than ever, are LED strips. These tend to be much more controllable than people think. Like Christmas lights, they come in a variety of colors and can be controlled via a remote or mobile device.

LED strips are available in a hard fixture, resembling a fluorescent, or soft LED “rope” for more flexibility. They also attach easily to surfaces, so placing them under cabinetry or shelves in a bar scene is done with ease. With colored strips, neon signs outside of a window can be simulated. Just like Christmas lights, they can even be bundled up to create a soft source that is more specific.

MOBILE LEDs

Small, mobile LED panels have become very affordable and popular. Now with more accurate CRI ratings, they are great tools to have. I carry two Amaran M9 lights with me, which are powered by 5V USB, so they never require batteries, but there are a variety of small LEDs that you can get that are compatible with other batteries such as LP-6 and/or even have a p-tap input onboard.

Ring light fixture These units always have onboard dimmers and can be wrapped in diffusion like grid or silk to become a soft, spread out source. They are easily placed in a set with Velcro or a clamp. Instead of having a complicated car lighting kit you have to wire, mobile LED lights make for great extensions of a car dashboard, and an easy, go-to fill light.

LED panels can also be built. This is a little more expensive to do, but it is possible to create a custom panel with your choice of LED brands, colors, quantities and qualities.

CONCLUSION

If you know how to light, you will find very effective ways to implement the simplest of sources. When space and budget are limited, it is helpful to bring your own lighting tools to the table, but even on the big sets, we are constantly playing with the small, versatile lights in our own kits. There are hundreds of uses for every light and that includes everything from an ARRI Skypanel to a flashlight. With this in mind, you can accomplish anything.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted through TV Technology.

Some cinematographers and lighting technicians can get into a situation troubleshooting a setup and overthink the approach. I find that less is definitely more when it comes to sources in a scene, especially in my type of work, which is most often dramatic narrative.

Lighting does not always have to be motivated, but considering the natural sources in a scene will help dictate the direction and quality of the light, as well as offer ways to extend those effects with other units. Sometimes, there is only one source available in the space, or one single light that is being used or available.

This may feel like an extreme limiter at first, but there are many elegant ways to take a very minimalistic approach with a single source. In fact, a single source can often be the best approach.

There are countless ways to aim a light with the more space you have. For the music video “Last Criminal” the author decided to light from the smart side, coming at the camera as a backlight, and then returning that as fill.MORE SPACE, MORE OPTIONS

One of the biggest ingredients to good control over lighting is more space. Every step in a lighting setup should be a choice, and when space is limited, so are your choices. There becomes only so many ways you can direct, angle and position a source. Usually, the bigger space, the more options you have. Pulling your subject away from the wall will give you room to cut light off walls, keep shadows off walls and other surfaces, and separate your subject from the background.

There are countless ways to aim a light with the more space you have. More space will also allow you to create more with a single source. For example, you can bounce back the light as fill or as an edge coming from the opposite side. You are able to create more with less.

With one lighting unit in a space that gives you a bit of freedom, two strong strategies come to mind. First is to come from the front, camera side, as a key and pull your subject away from the background. In this instance, stem up on your light to cast shadows down, and keep them off the back wall, if possible.

Another is to light from the smart side, coming at the camera as a backlight, and then returning that as fill. For a music video I shot awhile back, “Last Criminal,” I did just that with a practical in the room. Limited space and mirrors presented some necessary workarounds. Using a hanging lamp with my own incandescent bulb, I was able to control shadow detail and contrast by bouncing the lamp back on the fill side. As a result, I had no stands or units to try and hide either. It became all very simple the more I simplified.

SHAPING A SOURCE

In “Laurels,” a film by David Brundige, a daylight unit could not be used outside a window 11 stories up. In this instance, shooting against the window, the author used an ARRI M8 to bounce back at the actress and shape the natural daylight spilling in. Lighting is all about how you shape a source. Even if it is placing an HMI outside a window, you can choose to be selective with where and how the source hits areas of the space. Often it is helpful to start with a bigger source, and then cut and shape from there, rather than starting with a smaller source that cuts too much as you soften and shape.

In “Laurels,” a film by David Brundige, I could not throw a daylight unit outside a window that was 11 stories up. In this instance, shooting against the window, I used an ARRI M8 to bounce back at our actress and shape the natural daylight spilling in. This also allowed us to be selective about the shape on her face as well as the quality. This could have been accomplished to some degree with a bounce board, and the only true source being the natural daylight.

However, such a punch from the fill side would not have been achieved. With an M8, I was able to expose for what was outside the window as well and justify the unit with the powerful daylight.

If using a single light unit, it is always helpful to have modifiers like flags to shape the beam, cut spill and just be more selective with how the light plays on a subject and in the space itself. Adding negative fill with a solid flag is a favorite technique of mine. Placing flags close to the face on the fill side will allow you to create beautiful shadows and cut any light that is bouncing and creating natural fill from your source.

I believe what separates great cinematographers from the rest is an understanding and skill set when it comes to available light and doing less with more—bouncing light back from a window, placing subjects strategically in a way that allows you to really utilize the window or practical in the space and taking advantage of how much space there is.

We have to remember that a big part of our job is to make a two-dimensional screen feel three-dimensional for our audience, with layers of depth; so being able to do a lot with less will let you make clear decisions between light and shadow. Lighting up the whole frame is not always effective. Instead, try to start with a single source and go from there.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be contacted throughTV Technology.

In general, we appreciate lights with direction. We have so much control over where and how a directional source hits a subject. However, with having to shoot out large locations, we sometimes find ourselves needing big, soft sources to create a sufficient ambient light level.

This is an instance where omnidirectional lights are extremely useful. They emit light from the source at every angle. Popular examples are Jem Ball units, spacelights, and Chinese lanterns. The great thing about these is that you can switch out the bulb inside and use a variety of different wattage systems for a weaker or stronger output.

SPACE LIGHTS

In a studio environment—especially one with a greenscreen—spacelights are often rigged overhead to create a general fill and evenly light the screen behind the subjects for exposure. More directional units are then used to be specific keys and edges.

On shows with more even lighting, such as sitcoms, spacelights can be effective throughout different rooms of a set to light actors as they move through the space and to ensure that parts of their surroundings do not fall off into shadow.

You can also put a variety of types of bulbs inside, from tungsten bulbs to HMIs like a 400W Joker with a simple adapter. I have seen Kinos and other panels above that work well, too, as an overhead grid to fill a space, but often come with a lot of flags and other grippage alongside them to cut the light and avoid creating shadows.

I find that, in general, if you can do bigger, softer sources, shadows are minimized and they can often present less problems than one would think they may cause.

Scene from “Cassidy Red” using a grid of china balls Using the same overhead rigging, with smaller bulbs inside lanterns like china balls, a lowlight grid can be created for ambient light.

On my latest feature, “Cassidy Red,” I deferred to omnidirectional units a lot. Being a western period piece, there was no electricity in the world on screen, so the soft glow that these could give me was ideal.

Every warm source was typically motivated by actual firelight in kerosene lanterns. The largest set on that production that I had to tackle was a large saloon with extremely high ceilings. The first initial thought to bring up the ambience was to bounce units into a 12x12 bounce rigged up on the ceiling.

Of course, we knew this would not end up serving us well because we would then have stands to hide, and with a lot of fluid camera movement on the floor, these would be impossible to avoid seeing in frame. We ended up building a grid of china balls, most on-hand dimmers, to create a soft overhead source that successfully brought up exposure in the room. I was able to use that as a starting point to then light from the floor when it came time to give actors dimension.

Also from “Cassidy Red,” Swain used a single china ball in this scene.JEM BALLS AND CHINESE LANTERNS

Soft sources also serve as very pleasing key lights, and what I have found over the years is how beautiful omnidirectional sources like Jem Balls and Chinese lanterns are as keys, despite their lack of direction. They are naturally made to diffuse and spread light, without having to bounce a source back at your subject or shoot it through separate diffusion.

In a minimalistic lighting approach, a soft key and ambient fill can be achieved simultaneously with something like a china ball. In “Cassidy Red,” I used a single 12-inch china ball in a jail scene where a character emerges from the darkness. Nothing else was flown. These warm sources are so versatile.

chinese lantern Another popular use is to light a group of actors with them at a table, where you have to key multiple people. By simply righting a single Jem Ball or lantern in the center of a table, you can key all or most of your actors. The wrap of light that can be accomplished with lanterns is great.

I often arm out a china ball and then bring it up and down depending on eye lines so that it hits faces nicely and catches the eyes. If you wanted to lose the ambience level that it gives because it is naturally spilling light everywhere, a skirt can be created at the top of the lantern to contain the source a bit.

Overall, omnidirectional units are extremely useful. I recommend considering them when dealing with both large and small spaces, as they come in a range of size and output options. It is hard to go wrong with soft light, and being able to call upon these types of sources can easily help you achieve the look you are going for.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” Her latest feature film, “Women of Light” will premiere in late 2016. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached atjuliaswaindp@gmail.com.

We cannot deny how quickly lighting technology is advancing, nor how certain technologies are taking over and replacing those of the past. However, units such as HMIs, tungsten and fluorescent fixtures continue to be major players on set, consistently proving effective for lighting specific scenes.

No matter what situation I am in, I make sure to have a variety of units to choose from for a scene, while still maintaining a level of specificity. Naturally, when on location, we run into an array of available units—incandescent bulbs, fluorescent overhead lighting, large windows. Every light we use to match available light or to supplement a source is going to have its own unique characteristics.

LED LIGHTS

LED lighting LED units are rapidly showing up more predominately on set, both in the studio and on location. The great thing is that LEDs are becoming more accurate in terms of color and undeniably efficient with power. They can be turned on and off easily, without having to warm up like an HMI would. So for lighting gigs that need a quick save or strike, these are great.

It used to be that LEDS would not be sufficient in supplying the powerful outputs that I often need. For example, shooting against windows usually makes for a beautiful shot. To expose for what is outside the window and still expose the subject in the room, a very large, soft source is needed on the inside. HMIs like the ARRI M8 or the K5600 Jokers are great for this. To make the light look as natural as possible when trying to expose for the window, it must be softened a whole lot, so the bigger the unit the better in terms of wattage.

Placing an HMI outside the window to give the daylight some direction is also always a home run. Though I still defer to HMIs for these situations, and believe the color is a much better, seamless match, there are a large variety of strong LEDs that provide incredibly strong outputs and daylight color for the job.

TUNGSTEN LIGHTING

Tungsten lighting Tungsten incandescent units have the perfect 100 CRI, and are beautiful when it comes to lowlight interiors. I have always been a big fan of tungsten. It is great on skin, and having very focused beams allows for strategic placement of the light. A very directional, focused light can be placed across a room and shoot into a bounce board, for example, on the other side.

Tungsten can be an excellent choice in many circumstances. When shooting something set in a world of incandescent practicals, there is no question. The shooting situation, even the time period the project is set in, and knowledge of our countless lighting options will indicate what is best to use, but tungsten lighting is still a powerful tool.

There are LED varieties that provide tungsten color temperature, and can be focused, which have easily replaced the older, very large tungsten systems, but I have yet to discover an LED that gives me the same quality and color match of a tungsten incandescent. Yes, LEDs are replacing old streetlights and showing up inside new homes, but that incandescent quality is still a look that is often called upon, and with new ways to possibly make incandescent higher in efficiency, it may make an even bigger comeback.

FLOURESCENT LIGHTING

Flourescent lighting Fluorescent lighting is unfortunately still difficult to ignore on location, where the bulbs present a green tint or other spike in color that can be difficult to correct. They do not heat up like other units, but are harder to shape and focus.

Even though our technology is advancing and we may not use as many fluorescent fixtures in our lighting packages, these are important to understand and work with. A common mistake is to run into fighting green and magenta, not knowing when to stop trying to color correct. If there is a spectrometer around, it may save a lot of work later trying to fix color. In a controlled studio environment, fluorescent fixtures can still be found, and be quite efficient, with reasonable power requirements and onboard dimmers.

On location, it is sometimes best, if possible, to replace what bulbs are present with more efficient, higher-end brands.

Our industry has not completely abandoned older lighting technologies for newer ones, and there are so many uses for every unit. The colors and qualities of older lighting technologies are still very much everywhere in our world. It is very useful to have access to a variety of tools, and even keep items such as tungsten bulbs and tiny LEDs in any personal kit.

Every shoot is unique, along with its budget and locations, so a lot should go into selecting a package. It is never about any one type of light, and it really opens up many creative solutions and strategies when a vast knowledge of lighting technologies is present.

Julia Swain is a cinematographer based in California, whose narrative films include “Killing Animals,” “Jilted” and “Cassidy Red.” Her latest feature film, “Women of Light” will premiere in late 2016. She continues to shoot on a variety of formats, seeking to create compelling visuals for every story and brand. She can be reached atjuliaswaindp@gmail.com.