Karl Walter Lindenlaub: Speed & Pre-Rigging

From American Cinematographer, This Old House by David E. Williams (August 1999)

"My general lighting approach for the entire film was to be relatively soft on the front of the faces, and then use backlight to give things shape and direction. That method helped quite a bit, given what we were doing with the camera. It would have been interesting to try more dramatic techniques with the lighting— using higher, more frontal lighting and cutting more—but we didn’t have the time to do it. Jan wanted between 18 and 20 setups a day, with one camera, while constantly switching between Steadicam, cranes, normal 35mm cameras on dollies, and VistaVision for effects work. With that many setups, we had about 20 minutes to light each shot, so we ended up doing much more pre-rigging than I normally would."

- Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK

John Toll: Inspiration from Painting

From American Cinematographer, The War Within by Stephen Pizzello (February 1999)

"During the shoot, Jack Fisk brought us this book called Images of War: The Artist's Vision of World War II [1992, edited by Ken McCormick and Hamilton Darby Perry], which presents 200 paintings by many different artists. These were artists who spent time in the front lines and came back with this fantastic artwork depicting the scenes they had witnessed, including many combat situations. All of the artists had different and unique styles. We didn't necessarily try to reproduce these pieces of art, but they did give us good ideas about color schemes and so on. The illustrations basically served as a guide to the kind of atmosphere we were after.

We'd looked at many photographs from the war, but they seemed too detailed somehow, and I wanted the imagery of our film to be a bit less clearly defined. The paintings were great because they were much more impressionistic and abstract in a way that I found more interesting than the photographs. For example, there was one drawing of Japanese prisoners sitting on the ground, and the light they were drawn in — bright contrasty sunlight which left their faces in shadow — looked very similar to the light conditions we were shooting in. There was detail in the prisoners' faces, but the highlights of the background were bright and burned-out. I thought it looked fantastic.

In some scenes [that I'd shot to that point], I had lit the actors' faces or had used fill in situations with heavy contrast, but I'd begun doing it less and less because I started to like the way the film looked when I didn't use fill — overexposing quite a bit, getting detail in the shadows and letting the highlights burn out. It looked much less controlled in an interesting way. After seeing the drawing, which was a much more exaggerated version of what we'd been doing photographically, I went with less and less added light."

- John Toll, ASC

Alar Kivilo: Snow & Contrast

From American Cinematographer, The Root of All Evil by Jay Holben (December 1998)

"We wanted to avoid blue skies and sun, and we were lucky for the most part. On overcast days, I would simply employ some negative fill so that the light wouldn't bounce around as much from the white snow. We covered the ground with solids and brought in more solids on one side to give the light more direction. Then, for close-ups, we'd shape and refine the light slightly with a bit of bounce fill off a card. During the few days when the sun did come out, I wanted to bring in a big crane with a huge silk to take care of the situation, but again, budgetary factors didn't allow it."


- Alar Kivilo, CSC

Robert Surtees: Color vs. Black & White

From American Cinematographer, Photography for The Last Picture Show interview by Herb A. Lightman (Jan. 1972)

From the cinematographer's standpoint, which do you think is more difficult to shoot, black-and-white or color?

"From a technical standpoint, I still insist that black and-white is more difficult. For example, while shooting an actual interior in color, if you pan from a well-lighted figure to an area that is dark but too cramped to place lights where you really like them, you can just flatten that area out and get by. But in black-and-white, if you want shadow, you've got to put it in there, man. You can't depend on fill light to take care of it. You really have to model the subject with light instead of counting on the colors for separation. Of course, the right makeup, wardrobe and sets become more important in color photography. You can sometimes get by with the wrong makeup in black-and-white, and you can help a bad set. You can use smaller lamps, get in behind chairs, and break up walls by putting shadows on them. But on the other hand, in shooting black-and-white, you have to do it. You can't count on the process you're using to do it for you."

- Robert Surtees, ASC

Giuseppe Rotunno: Cinematography Analogy

From American Cinematographer, Renaissance Man by Ron Magid (March 1999)

Rotunno likes to say that he has created a great deal out of very little; he points out that just as music only has seven basic notes, cinematography has only three lights:

"You've got the key light, fill light, and back light, out of which comes an infinity of results. The light is like a kaleidoscope, but those three lights mixed together are more touchy than the kaleidoscope. It's difficult to ask a painter, 'How did you paint the picture?' I go with my eyes and intuition. I like so much to light, and I cannot stop. When I was shooting with Fellini, I was always lighting the next shot, because I was afraid to lose the idea of the light. My love for this work made it really easy. I work very hard, but the days seem only five minutes long. It's a business I'm very, very proud of, because I was able to crate wonderful harmony with my directors, and to release their fantasies."

-Giuseppe Rotunno, ASC, AIC

Matthew Leonetti: "Croney Cones" and "Phoney Cones"

Pat Blymer served as Chief Lighting Technician (gaffer) for Matthew Leonetti on Star Trek Insurrection.

"Above the Bridge set, there were 12 pie shaped ceiling pieces made out of muslin, and we had a 5k senior hitting into each one of them-- this gave us about 12 foot candles of ambient light throughout the entire set. We then hung lights as needed to accentuate the actors, usually tweenies with special diffusion cones on them. Jordan Cronenweth [ASC], who shot Blade Runner, had these devices called 'Croney Cones'. They were 5' long and made out of tinfoil, and he put them on the front of seniors and 10Ks. The paper diffusion on the front, either 216 or 250, softened up the light. Through the years, we made our own version of them out of showcard, which we call 'phoney cones.'"

-Pat Blymer

Conrad Hall: Approach, Source Lighting, Practicals & Roomtone

"Source lighting is something that the inventors of cinema brought forth as a technique, and it's a good starting point when you're telling a story, but that doesn't mean you have to follow it. If I have an interior daylight scene, I usually struggle to use one light coming in through a window. Inside, I use smaller units and practical lights, and I also figure out how to take light away and create the little separations that provide depth. I can use practical lamps a lot as lighting sources, but will often add to that with additional 'movie' lights. However, you have to make sure that the additional lights you're using on an actor are not also lighting the practical. Finally, I add the proper amount of fill light, which I call room tone, to give the blacks the right tonality. Light bounces off of every surface in a room-- the walls, the floor, the furnature-- and that's what room tone is. I usually hit a white card above the set or directly on the ceiling so that it doesn't cast shadows on the walls. If you were to turn off all the other lights, you'd barely see anything, but everything would still be visible. There's no directionality to it. Room tone is very improtant, and you can use varying amounts of it depending on the speed of your film."

-Conrad Hall, ASC