Maryse Alberti: HMI's

From ICG Magazine, A Way With Words by Holly Willis (May 2000)

"One of the biggest challenges of the shot was lighting it, and somehow still keeping it dark and moody," she offers. "We lit it mainly from the outside with big lights-- 20Ks-- on a couple of Condors with very small lights inside." One of Alberti's visual quirks is to light night scenes with tungsten balanced lamps. "It looks more like nighttime. HMIs have this hard-edged, shiny white that I don't like for night, unless that's what you're looking for. But Joe Gould's Secret has a very strong feel of realism-- there is nothing surreal or fable-like or otherworldly, so the lighting was designed to be real. The biggest lights we had were a couple of 20ks and Nightlights. For the rest, we just went with the range of a regular tungsten package."

Jean-Marc Fabre: Lengthy Sunset Scene

From American Cinematographer, Sword Pen & Family by Eric Rudolph (October 1998)

Trying to capture the setting sun in a series of shots that included dialogue was, of course, a challenge for Fabre. Additionally, the crew had only a few hours spread over two days to shoot the scenes. Only a third of the scene used real sunsets; the rest was re-created with gelled lights and filtration.

"When Channe was in the house putting on the record, it was actually raining. To simulate the setting sun, I used a 6K HMI outside with a 1/2 orange gel. I cheated by closing a curtain on the window. When the characters are on the porch, the sunset you see through the windows is real. Naturally, the sunset did not last nearly long enough for the dialogue scenes, so for those we used gelled lights and an orange lens filter. The orange filter was also used for the film's final shot."

- Jean-Marc Fabre

Robert Fraisse: Lens, Light & Expose Car Chases

From American Cinematographer, Samurai Tactics by Ron Magid (October 1998)

"Most of the time, we used three or four normal cameras, plus one or two remote crash-box cameras, which were cheap cameras with cheap lenses inside very heavy and resistant metal blimp. With that kind of camera, we got very brief but incredible shots. When you shoot car chases with long focal lengths, you can shoot for 20 seconds, because you see the car far into the depth and you can let it come toward camera. But with very short focal lengths, the cars cross the frame very fast, which I think is a very strong effect. We also shot in Nice, which is an old city in the South of France with very narrow streets, so the shots automatically didn't last a long time. We needed to shoot many setups to have the continuity of the cars going from one street to another.

It was the first time in my career I worked with cars going so fast. John said, 'When I shot Grand Prix, I never cheated on the speed, so I don't want to cheat the speed now.' Sometimes, but not very often, we did shoot at 22 frames per second, or 21. The secret was using very good race-car drivers, who were used to driving at 300 kilometers [186 miles] per hour. It was amazing how fast those cars went — sometimes 160 kilometers [roughly 100 miles] per hour, even though the roads were narrow with a lot of curves.

Generally, there are devices you use when actors are supposed to be driving. For instance, you might have a moving car, with the camera and a small generator to feed your lights, towing the car with the actors. When John told me, 'I don't want to tow the cars; I want the actors to really drive the cars,' I said, 'Oh my God, how am I going to light them?' The cars were going very fast, so I couldn't put any gear on the roof, and it would've been a nightmare to put a generator in the hood. Instead, I decided to go with small 200-watt HMIs, which were fed by batteries in the trunk and fixed onto the hood or in different places outside the [actors'] car. Inside the car, I used small 2' or 1 1/2' Kino Flo daylight fluorescent lights, which now run very well on batteries.

The problem with car chases like these, is that most of the time, you are not in the car. You equip the car with cameras and lights and just let it go. When the sky is blue and the sun is bright, it's no problem — you set the f-stop and you know, more or less, that it will be the right one for the whole shot. Sometimes, though, the sun is going in and out of the clouds. In those situations, you set the stop, the car pulls away, the camera is shooting without you, and the sun comes out. You know you're going to be overexposed, but you can't do anything about it. Quite often, the cars would go from one street to another, and the light was to tally different from one to the next. I therefore had to change the f-stop while it happened. Fortunately, the high speeds of the cars helped. When I had a three-stop difference between two streets, I didn't open the iris three stops; I opened it only two stops, so the second street would still look darker than the first, which was better for the ambiance of the movie."

- Robert Fraisse

Alar Kivilo: Beveled Mirrors

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

For moodier moments, Kivilo used hard light reflected into the sets using beveled mirrors.

"I'd pick a dead corner of the set and have Joey black it out so no light was there. I'd then aim Par cans or sometimes HMI Pars into the mirrors and splash light into random spots on the set. I'm always searching for the best kinds of slashes, which have an organic feel, and these beveled mirrors provided that. It was perhaps the only slightly stylized addition I made to our otherwise simplistic regime, in that there was no logical source for that kind of light; my thinking was that it was perhaps coming from a streetlight outside or something. Those scenes were about mood, and it was great to use the mirrors rather than backlight an actor. I'd just bounce a slash into the background and silhouette them against the set."

- Alar Kivilo, CSC

Vittorio Storaro: Non-Incandescent & Single Source Lighting

From American Cinematographer, Storaro and Bulworth by Garrett Brown (June 1998)

Vittorio doesn't use HMI's and tries to avoid fluorescents- he doesn't like the color spectrum of either, and they aren't dimmable. He never erects forests of flags and nets and teasers.

"He will cut, and he likes large blacks and large silks, but if the light comes through the window, then he plays the whole scene around where that light comes from. He'll add a little fill , a little silver board to pick up the eyes. It's amazing-- as if the world stood still when that perfect light came. And that's how he does the close-up, without relighting, unlike a lot of other cameramen who would turn off and start over."

- Gary Tandrow, Gaffer for Vittorio on Bulworth

Adrian Biddle: Moonlight Approach

From American Cinematographer, Paging 007 by Ron Magid (December 1999)

Cool blue moonlight proved to be an important source elsewhere in the film, though, and Biddle generally creates his version of this lighting effect though some basic timing work. He details,

"I don't particularly like the blue color of HMIs, so instead of using one of those, I'll use a tungsten source for the moonlight, and then warm up my interior lights with some sort of CTO for [temperature] contrast. I then have the lab to print the scene for normal skin tones, which makes my tungsten moonlight key go slightly cold."

- Adrian Biddle, BSC

Peter Suschitzky: On HMI's

From American Cinematographer, Flesh for Fantasy by Eric Rudolph (May 1999)

"There is an artificiality to the uncorrected blue of HMIs on night exteriors. However, I go in phases. Sometimes I'll use only HMIs on night shots, but I'll never use them straight; I always half-correct so they don't look quite so blue. For this big night scene in eXistenZ, I decided to go for a different look by using only tungsten light."

- Peter Suschitzky, BSC

Les Kovacs: Precision Soft Lighting

From American Cinematographer, Of Loss and Hope by Zade Rosenthal (March 1999)

"The only additional lighting we did was on a couple of takes where I hand-held an LTM 200w HMI with a Chimera and a 30 degree honeycomb, in order to pick out Whoopi [Goldberg] and give her a bit of fill. Both Stephen and I like to use the Chimeras, especially with the honeycombs, because they make such a greatly controlled soft source. I could pick out Whoopi with the 200w HMI and not hit Michelle [Pfeiffer] at all."

- Les Kovacs, Gaffer for Stephen Goldblatt, ASC on The Deep End of the Ocean

Stephen Goldblatt: Use of Helium Balloons

From American Cinematographer, Of Loss and Hope by Jay Holben (March 1999)

...In lighting the sequences, Goldblatt and longtime gaffer Les Kovacs decided to take a rather unorthodox tack, employing the relatively new 12'-diameter HMI balloon as a principal light source in the hotel lobby. While covering a large scene in a relatively short period of time, "Stephen surprised me," asserts Kovacs. "We sent up the 12' balloon, and I thought we were going to anchor it and simply use it for the overall ambience in the lobby. All of a sudden, we started dragging it down, dollying around with it and using it as a key light, because Stephen loved the way it looked on Michelle."

"For close-ups," adds Goldblatt, "we would drop the line and bring the balloon down, still keeping it 30' or 40' away. Instead of being above it would be virtually eye-level, and we got this beautiful light that was very quick to work with. This technique provides a very naturalistic look. Then for reverses, we just pulled the balloon down, moved it over 40', let it float up again and tied it off."

"This was my first experience with the 12-footer," Kovacs continues. "But I own two of the swix-footers, and we put those to good use as well. Of course teh 6' 4k balloons are tungsten, so I had some blue skirts made for them to keep everything at 5600k. Then we had fun with the 12' balloon. For the shot where Michelle walks through the hotel's front door, we covered that with a steadicam and just dollied the balloon along with it-- which is amazing enough, because it's this big 12' diameter thing, but it worked like a charm."