Conrad Hall: Lighting to Draw Attention

From American Cinematographer, Leader of the Pack interview by Caleb Deschanel and edited by David E. Williams (September 1998)

Deschanel: Your lighting always feels real, but in many shots, there’s often light in a particular place that draws the eye to the key element in the story. It’s as if you’re using light to make the audience understand where to look in the frame.

Hall: Again, it’s like working on a canvas. I look through the ground glass and when I’m putting things together, I’m filling in the important aspects of the story which have to be told in that shot. Whether that means keeping the characters dark and lighting the background, or whatever else, the story is telling me to hide or illuminate something.

Conrad Hall: Composition

"Composition is terribly important, and such a critical tool in storytelling. You use the frame to communicate the feelings you want to convey in the shot. By centering a character, placing them on a side, or short-siding them, you use the composition to support the movement that counts dramatically. The one moment where the composition makes a dramatic statement is what is important. Otherwise, in a lot of situations, composition isn't as critical. You don't necessarily have to have a great composition every second. But when the dramatic import of the scene is crucial, the composition should reflect that and aid the shot is being effective."

- Conrad Hall, ASC

Conrad Hall: Approach to Lighting

"I'm not like a lighting cameraman, who can light without looking through the camera. I cannot light if I can't see the movie that I'm dealing with. I've always imagined that cinematography is like a writer with a blank, white paper in front of him. Cinematographers have a blank screen that has to be filled with the story. I don't necessarily have one mental checklist of how I approach the lighting on a film, but I do have a frame. And in that frame, you have a subject to deal with that's involved with a story. You have to create visualizations that suit the theme and utilize all of the techniques at your fingertips to enhance the right mood. Being a visualist , I often absorb the environment around me and make mental notes. I don't even do it consciously, but I'm always noting how someone looks in a certain scenario. That impression gets stored away in my mental computer. When you're working on a film, all of your past comes with you, with all of the observations you've stored away; you bring forth the observations that apply to the particular story at hand."

-Conrad Hall, ASC