‘In Time’ – Lighting Questions

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins and all the cinematographers here on this fantastic (new) forum. I really like the new forum but I’m also so sad if everything on the older one was lost, it was really a giant lighting encyclopedia to study every time 🙁
I hope you are well and enjoying your time. Is it true that you could come here to Italy for a Byways event? If it is so I will do everything I can to be there and see you live!

About 20 days ago I ended up shooting my first feature film (it was such an intense, powerful, inspiring, frustrating, and improving experience) and after some “relaxing” days is time to study again and learn.

Yesterday I was watching again “In Time” and studying some awesome patterns you created in the urban night scenes (it would be fantastic if you have some diagrams to publish in the “looking at lighting” section – I think this movie is so underrated as lighting).
I remember you said that movie did not have a big budget so you had to “embrace” existing sodium streetlamps and “boost” some areas with your own fixtures.
I think this is maybe more “difficult” to re-light an entire area because you have to create pools and shapes with something that you can’t manage at 100%.

I was studying, angle by angle, one of the first sequences where the “mom” ends her ‘time’.
I think it was a complex sequence for the number of angles and light patterns (did you shoot that sequence in one single night?).
I was so captured by the wide dutch angle (I attach the link to the frame below) with that big pool of light, it gives me a noirish look that blows my mind.
I was asking myself how to achieve that kind of light result. The light is “focused” on the center but has soft and saturated edges.
Following shadows on the floor of the ropes, building, and pole I could be thinking that you use more than one lamp (maybe projected through a big diffusion?) with different intensities to create the soft fall-off. Or maybe could have been Dino lights?
Image:

The second frame that I would like to ask you for insight into (attached link below), captured me not only for the pool that “wash” the subjects (that I think you had repositioned to “hit” them) but also for the light pattern on buildings into the background.
Did you use fresnel lamps? (maybe something like 5k?)
By chance are those that I see placed into the background on the floor, or did you project those from the roof of the building on the right?
Image:

I like to understand and analyze alone what’s going on, frame by frame (it helps me to learn better maybe), but I also think that I have a giant occasion and a big honor try to ask you “how” and most important “why”, and learn from your words.
This is priceless for me (but I think for all of us).

I want to thank you in advance for your patience and your time, I’d be hours and hours listening to you and asking questions but maybe you would kick me after 3 minutes LOL.
Apologies for my bad English.

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max.

Topic

[Max A.]

I apologize for the incorrect way I used to attach images. Here are the two references:

Question 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tI7Bo7ZEYujvo5eKtwiBT_1qSHv2np6a/view?usp=sharing

Question 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1joiU45F1s4OoospmoGM_WpAki8Y96Io9/view?usp=sharing

Thank you as always for your time.
Max.

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins, I saw that the links that I posted don’t work very well and last few days it was added a new function for posting images.
Unfortunately, I can’t edit the original post (and also my reply with links) and I just post now the two frame references that I was referring to.

Question 1:

Question 2:

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max.

[Roger Deakins]

Sorry, I thought I had posted an answer already. Glitches I guess!

The main source lighting the center of the road would have been a 10K Fresnel, probably with a 5K to each side of it, rigged on an articulated crane arm. I like to use a multiple of lights as this gives a slight softness to the shadow. The lamps would have had 013 straw as well as 1/2 CTO on them. The two 5K lamps would have either been dimmed down or the intensity taken down with scrims (wires). The backgrounds were probably lit using 5K, 2K Fresnel lamps or/and 2K Blondes and these would have been on high stands.

[Max A.]

Thank you very much for your answer Mr. Deakins! It’s always fantastic to read and learn from you.

As I said in the original post, those light patterns on all the night street scenes are fantastic (as usual).

Thank you again for your time and your reply.

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max.

[Jules2022]

Dear Roger,

i also had the problem that i could’nt find the replies from the old forum. You have answered many questions already, but for some reason i cant find them nowere nomore. Will this be fixed, or is the old forum “gone”?

best regards Julius

[Roger Deakins]

I wish we knew how to retrieve the old forum posts but we don’t.

[Mike]

I would have thought that the running costs of the forum would be incorporated in the annual expenditure of your business dealings. If that is the case then a webmaster or software designer would resolve the problem by designing a new forum that also includes the archives of the old forum. Would that be the way to go!

just my thoughts, that’s all.

[Author]

Replies