Working with limited lighting

[ceciliah1738]

Hello Mr. Deakins and everyone in this wonderful forum!

I’m shooting a micro-budget short film at a collge basketball gym where we can’t redress the lighting on the celling. My cinematographer and I are currently trying to count it as natural lighting and factor it as something we can’t control and try to either find ways to block it out (ex: put negative fills in the corners of the gym overhead) but we are not too sure on how to do with limited lighting in such vast space.

(Courtsey of Pepperdine Basketball)

I believe with the control of limited lighting, it could either look like a youtube sports videography or cinematography (Thin ice we are walking on!). My first thought was that we need to figure out the lighting first and then move on the cameras/composition; or is this something that can be done after we consult the latters? or Should we go ahead and forgo the celling light and light our own lights around the court to mimic it ? Some of the shots will also be black and white, so idealiy, we would like there to be some type of contrast against the exisiting flat lighting.

Any insights/two cents would be very helpful. I apologize for bringing back a major flashback of  any “limited lighting” days. Thank you so much for giving me the space to ask questions and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Respectfully,

Cecilia H

Topic

[Roger Deakins]

I’m not sure why you want to change what is there. I certainly wouldn’t consider reproducing the existing lighting with my own, no matter what budget I had. Is in not possible to turn off a single bank of lights if you want a little more contrast. If you are shooting from one side of the ring you could have less light coming from behind the camera.

[gx42]

Here’s some thoughts and ideas to get the forum conversation going!

I think part of it will depend on the story and mood you’re after. Is it a brightly lit daytime story? Or is it dramatic and moody? Is it actual players on the court or a scene with people hanging out in the stands talking? Just some random first thoughts about the overall look!

In a general sense, see what you can control. Can you turn some of those lights out selectively? Or in groups?

Also yes negative fill will help a lot. Bring it in close to the talent and use more to block out areas in the background from getting hit with light. Can also put a flag/floppy overhead on the talent to block ceiling lights from hitting them.

Just check that you can get properly trained crew members for this type of rigging if you decide to do it. Anything overhead on talent, or very tall stands to block stadium lights, should be done by a pro Grip. You don’t want anything tumbling down, or catching fire if they are too close to hot lights!

Hope this helps spark some ideas!

[Roger Deakins]

I think knowing something of the story would help explain your problem.

[LucaM]

(again, sorry for posting it twice but the previous post got cancelled)

 

As always, my lack of experience makes my opinion of limited help, but if i understood you’ve got too much light and there’s no way to turn part of them off, is it correct?

As Roger and gx42 wrote, i was wondering too what kind of scene are you going to shoot, or better what kind of effect you want your scene create on the audience.

If the problem is that the light of the gym is too even and can’t create a dramatic effect or make the talents stand out , besides the negative fill (but i guess it’s not easy to use them in such a great space, and i suppose you’ll need to consider also the bounce from the field on the walls too, not only the lights from above) you could use an ND filter to make everything darker, adding some other lights just on the talents to make them stand out. The ND filter should avoid to overexpose them and you’ll obtain a wider  contrast between them and the background and more control on what you are actually lighting. It won’t look very naturalistic but, again, it depends on what kind of story you are telling and in what kind of shot.

Perhaps it’s a stupid idea but in theory it should work, at least i think so (i’m not experienced enought to judge how well it could work, i leave the judgment to Roger, David and the others).  You could do a test and see what happens. I’d limit the ND to one stop or two, or it will look a theatre stage more than a basketball field.

Another possibility could be the secondary color correction in post production of the areas you want to be darker, but you’ll need somebody  good with masking and rotoscoping if the shot is very dynamic.

[ceciliah1738]

Hello everyone, thank you all for the wonderful feedback. I apologize for the late response, I hadn’t been this sick in a very long time.

I truly appreciate all the questions and amazing ideas that you’ve brought to surface. I feel like a caveman discovering fire!

For the celling lighting, I was mostly worried about the picture looking flat despite our efforts to control it due to our dynamic movements (we should certainly double check on whether it is possible to turn off a single bank of lights because in all honesty, we were scared of the school’s personnel and didn’t think to ask) so Luca, you were right on point with too much lighting in the scene. The camera will be a medium close/ close up tracking and we were scared of losing the possibility of producing contrasting shots with different takes as there will be slight movement changes of both the camera and the players. I can’t upload the video here but we filmed a video of our friend playing at a rec center with the similar celling lighting and did a pan move and the lighting didn’t look the best most of the times but maybe I’m focusing on the wrong thing here…

The black and white shots we are shooting are flashbacks that are first presented as a nightmare that a character is having. As a writer, I didn’t want the audience to view it as mere black and white flashbacks but if I want a more dramatic lighting , I should probably make another shot list with a seperate lighting set up or NDs, experienced colorists as suggested, right?

Again, all of your insights have been amazing. Thank you Mr. Deakins, Luca, gx42 for all of your time and great points!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LucaM]

ceciliah1738 wrote:

…we should certainly double check on whether it is possible to turn off a single bank of lights because in all honesty, we were scared of the school’s personnel and didn’t think to ask

I work in a school as a teacher and while I met a lot of strange people working in schools I never met someone actually scary, ah ah! Just kidding, but go and ask them when you can, for two reasons:

1) If i understood correctly, you’ve asked the permission to shoot in the school gym yet, so you did the most difficult part yet. If you will turn some light off you’ll actually do them a favour (saving on electricity bill, lights consumption, etc).

2) You won’t have a second chance to shoot there – maybe you will, but let’s pretend you will not for the sake of dramatic effect ah ah! – so you need to do that in the way you envisioned the scene. What will matter in a few years? that you have to face the school ogres to ask to turn some light off or that you couldn’t shoot as you wanted because you were scared to ask? I’m a shy person and perhaps i understand why you are scared to ask, but i learned in life that you don’t get a special medal for being shy, you just lose opportunities. If that’s the problem, forget the shyness and do whatever you need to create your movie. If you are going to direct it, you have to direct it. If turning off some lights is actually the best solution is a complete different issue, of course. But start by solving simple problems: find the switch for the ligths and see what happens.

I think it requires a bit of experience and skill to give the idea of a nightmare by only working on lights in black and white (unless the scene is so horrorific that it’s obvious that it’s a nightmare). If the flashback is actually a nightmare you could think also to other solutions: for example you could go “full Suspiria” and alter the colors instead of the lights, using unnatural colors and palette to create a dreamy sequence – even if a scary one. Or you could use some visual effect to give the idea of a sort of allucination. It has nothing to do with nighmares but think for example to the Deakinizer that Roger used for The Assassination of Jesse James : the scenes shot with that effect could be easily adapted to a dream sequence, together with some other work on the palette for example.  Or some other type of distortion of the image, it’s actually quite easy to create them in post production even with some basic software (you may need to create some turnaround to obtain that effects, working on modification and keyframes for example, but it’s not that difficult) .

Both solutions (an odd palette or some strange visual effect) are not very original to create the idea of a nightmare, but they are easy to do. It’s up to you to see what it’s the best solution to obtain the effect you desire.

And don’t be scared by school personnel. They don’t eat people. Not usually, at least.

[Author]

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