Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

Ambient Plus Accentsevery corner of the set with many different hard or soft light units. Itis often better to establish an ambient base — which means to simplyfill the set with a soft, featureless overhead light. This gives you abasic exposure for the entire set, but it is usually somewhat blandand low in contrast. For some scenes, this might be the desired effect,such as this scene in a frozen landscape (Figures 7.16). In most cases,however, you will want to add some accents to feature actors orambient base can be accomplished in a number of ways:overhead silkChicken coops, space lights, or softboxesLighting with PracticalsThis is a method that may be used by itself or in conjunction withother methods. A practical is something that works — whether it bea table lamp or a refrigerator. Here, we are only talking about lights,whether they be table lamps, sconces, floor lamps, or whatever.Practical lamps play a part in almost any scene they are in, particularlyif it is a night scene. The film noir genre in particular constantlyused practical lamps as a major element in the frame as a lightingsource.One of the few absolute rules in lighting is that every practicalmust be on a dimmer of some sort. In most cases this will be a handsqueezer, a small hand-held dimmer that is usually made from anordinary wall dimmer. The reason for this is obvious — with mostkinds of lights, we can control the intensity with scrims, grip nets,neutral density gels, and flooding/spotting.With practical lamps we don’t have these methods of control, so adimmer is the quickest and most precise way to control the brightness.One possible way to control a practical lamp is to precisely cutneutral density gel and fit it into the lampshade. This works, but itis time-consuming and crude. Given that these lamps appear in theframe, it is essential to be able to control them much more preciselythan that, so hand squeezers are essential.We want them to appear bright, or the lamp won’t look like it’s on.This means they are right on the edge — too bright and they willburn out, which means they are not only overexposed and withoutdetail but they may also be a distraction in the composition.Figure 7.21 and 7.22. Two sides ofscene lit with back cross keys: onelight on each side is one actor’s keyand the other actor’s backlight. Bothlights are from the upstage side. Inthis case, the woman’s key is comingthrough a window and some laceto add texture. His key is hard withoutany softening or texture. Seethe DVD or website for more on thislighting technique.lighting basics117