Chicago Cinematographer looking to improve lighting.

[Phantomwax]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Hello Sir Roger,</p>
First off thank you so much for having such a wonderful podcast and creating this forum for us to ask questions.

I have been making films since I was in high school and have mostly worked with projects where I depended on natural light for a scene. I never used a lighting and part of that was I didn’t know how or what lights to use. I am really making an effort to be intentional with lighting my scenes in my projects and want to build a minimal kit. I am a little bit intimidated with the options and the pricing. I know that it always depends on the project, the tone and theme.

My question for you is, if you had to start fresh with 3 or 4 lights or tools that would give you flexibility to achieve more than one mood, or theme through out a project, what would you recommend and what would I stay away from?

Sincerely,

 

Andy

Topic

[dmullenasc]

I don’t know if my experience is relevant since I started making films in the 1980s, but I started out with one powerful light I got in a garage sale for five dollars — an open face 650W tungsten movie light made for Super8 home moviemaking in the 1970s. (When the bulb finally burned out several years later, I found out it cost thirty dollars to replace it.)  I was shooting Super8 back then, mostly slow stocks — Kodachrome 40 and Plus-X.

With one strong light, I could create hot backlight for a sunlight effect, I could bounce it off of a white wall /ceiling / bedsheets, or I could create a hard key light. I augmented that one light with paper lanterns for soft light, and some photoflood bulbs in reflector dish housings.

So my suggestion would be to find a strong LED hard light (ideally with a fresnel attachment), bi-color, and start playing with it direct or softened (bounced or diffused). And then also create one LED softlight, something that needs less grip work to soften.  You’ll learn a lot with one hard light and one soft light. Bi-color will help you deal with daylight and tungsten situations and play with warm and cool light.  You can also still use paper lanterns even with LED bulbs.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by dmullenasc.

[Stip]

Perfect advice. Starting out with several lights will just take you longer to learn good lighting, it will also very likely produce more unsatisfying results in the beginning compared to when doing what David suggests.

[Phantomwax]

This is very excellent advice! Thank you so much. I like the idea of just keeping it very minimal until I can get more comfortable and consistent with what I am working on!

[Author]

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