This is the first week on the topic of Cinematography. The class is all about controlling light and the camera to create a specific mood or effect. Successful lighting is all about mastery of these two elements in filmmaking. We're going about this by running through tests to see the subtle differences between intensities of lights and how to use camera handling techniques such as tilt, pan, handheld and dolly moves.
I hope the explanation of Key/Film ratio is understandable. Simply put, the key is the brightest light shining on the person, at about 45 degrees to one side of the front, and the fill is positioned on the opposite side of the key also at 45 degrees. Both lights are above eye level.
The key creates a shadow on the far side of someone's face and body and the fill, which is not as bright, lightens the shadow enough to show detail, but not to remove the shadow. You play with how dark you want the shadow to be to create an effect or mood.
I want to note an error I made when I listed F-stops, I listed 1.2, which is an error, it should be 1.4. These are important details.
Showing posts with label scrim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrim. Show all posts
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
#9 Wk4 - Light up everybody
In this episode there’s a lot of information about the character of light and lighting hardware. To our eyes light is white, but light is always changing color and knowing how to describe it and measure it is very important to filmmaking.
Measuring light
Two ways of measuring light is CRI, the Color Rendering Index and the Kelvin color temperature. CRI measures the strength of light and how consistent it is. CRI values are on each piece of professional lighting equipment and the best piece of information you can learn is to never buy a lamp that has a CRI below 90%. You can find useful information about CRI on GE’s site, including graphs displaying the color consistency.
Kelvin measures the color of light. The two lights used most frequently in filmmaking are tungsten and daylight. Tungsten, which is a red/orange color, is about 3200 degrees Kelvin, Daylight, which is bluish is about 5600 degrees Kelvin. These values are not heat temperatures, they measure color in a range from black on the low end to white on the high end.
Light kits
There are three different sets of lights we use at school. Arri are tungsten lights and they use Fresnel lenses which concentrates light and directs it straight ahead. Lowell are also tungsten lights and Kino lights are fluorescent lights that are color accurate to either daylight or tungsten. The key thing is to not trust your eyes or the LCD on the camera, trust the monitor.
You can control the light by adding on elements such as barn doors, scrims, gels, gobos and diffusers.
Handling electricity
WARNING WILL ROBINSON: Be very very careful when dealing with electricity and make sure yhou understand how to handle lights before using them. I’m giving you a brief overview, don’t rely on what I say alone.
I do my best to explain about calculating the load your lights are putting on your electrical system. Watts, Amps and Volts are the three variables. You get to do the math everytime you set up lights so that you never blow out the circuit.
Watts / Volts = Amps
Amps x Volts = Watts
Lighten up
Finally, a little more information about matching the color of lights. Don’t be so precise, Leave a little room for variation in color within a scene. As long as it matches your intentions, bear in mind that in the real world, we’re looking at multiple colored light sources all the time and don’t think anything of it.
Chapter times
Measuring light
Two ways of measuring light is CRI, the Color Rendering Index and the Kelvin color temperature. CRI measures the strength of light and how consistent it is. CRI values are on each piece of professional lighting equipment and the best piece of information you can learn is to never buy a lamp that has a CRI below 90%. You can find useful information about CRI on GE’s site, including graphs displaying the color consistency.
Kelvin measures the color of light. The two lights used most frequently in filmmaking are tungsten and daylight. Tungsten, which is a red/orange color, is about 3200 degrees Kelvin, Daylight, which is bluish is about 5600 degrees Kelvin. These values are not heat temperatures, they measure color in a range from black on the low end to white on the high end.
Light kits
There are three different sets of lights we use at school. Arri are tungsten lights and they use Fresnel lenses which concentrates light and directs it straight ahead. Lowell are also tungsten lights and Kino lights are fluorescent lights that are color accurate to either daylight or tungsten. The key thing is to not trust your eyes or the LCD on the camera, trust the monitor.
You can control the light by adding on elements such as barn doors, scrims, gels, gobos and diffusers.
Handling electricity
WARNING WILL ROBINSON: Be very very careful when dealing with electricity and make sure yhou understand how to handle lights before using them. I’m giving you a brief overview, don’t rely on what I say alone.
I do my best to explain about calculating the load your lights are putting on your electrical system. Watts, Amps and Volts are the three variables. You get to do the math everytime you set up lights so that you never blow out the circuit.
Watts / Volts = Amps
Amps x Volts = Watts
Lighten up
Finally, a little more information about matching the color of lights. Don’t be so precise, Leave a little room for variation in color within a scene. As long as it matches your intentions, bear in mind that in the real world, we’re looking at multiple colored light sources all the time and don’t think anything of it.
Chapter times
- 00:08 This week
- 012:9 Lighting terminology
- 02:48 The color of light
- 03:51 CRI
- 05:42 Kelvin color temperature
- 06:40 Light kits
- 08:41 Scrims, gels, barn doors
- 11:22 Changing color with gels
- 13:20 Electricity
- 16:57 Cookies and gobos
- 18:10 Don’t try to match exactly
- 20:34 Close
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