Robert Primes: Chimera Soft Light

From American Cinematographer, Big City Girl by Stephanie Argy (February 1999)

In spite of these difficulties, Primes has managed to carefully maintain the photographic approach that Reeves wants for the show.

"Almost all of the light is soft, and it's very often shining through Chimeras, or frames of 1000H, Chimera cloth, 216, 250 or opal. Those are the diffusion materials we use... One of the nice things about hard light is that you can really shape it. But how do you cut soft light?"

In recent years, the cinematographer has found the answer in Chimera's honeycomb grids, which attach in front of the company's flexible softboxes to concentrate the light, rather than letting it scatter. The grids come in 30-, 60- and 90-degree increments, referring to the angles to which the light is allowed to spread.

"In the past, I was using the 60s most of the time, the 90s some of the time, and the 30s not very much. Marshall [gaffer Marshall Adams] started using the 30-degree grid, which takes a tremendous amount of light. You need 10,000 watts to get anything out of it, and by golly, there it is, just a soft little spotlight. You can have someone in a little glow, and light nowhere else... Our extra smallest Chimeras use 650W tweenies, while our largest use 20Ks."

- Robert Primes, ASC

Emmanuel Lubezki: Artificial Sky

From American Cinematographer, Galloping Ghost by Stephen Pizzello (December 1999)

"One day we had a big meeting with everyone, and we talked about building everything at Leavesden Studios. When we went to England on the first scouting trip, they showed me the sets on the stages, and I thought they were joking-- all of the stage ceilings were really low, and the sets were less than 20' high. That created some big limitations, and as a result, I had to throw out my initial plans for the lighting. My first idea had been to employ huge sources, most of which would come from the back to create silhouettes, and to use very little fill light. However, the approach I eventually adopted worked out much better: I decided to create a huge toplight, which I had never done before. The stage ceilings were so low that we couldn't really hide lights in the greenbeds. Instead, we created a huge sense of sky for the exteriors shot in the stages. We installed over 500 space lights up in the ceiling, very close to each other, and then pumped smoke into the rafters to create a false sky and obscure the fixtures. That was, all of the light would seem to be coming from the sky, as it would in reality. Being low helped me because I was getting the stop I wanted, and it was easier to control the smoke."

- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC

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: Soft White, Invisible Light

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

"Once we'd set a wide shot, I liked to take out a wall and place a 20k through two muslins 30' or so away and get this very soft, white light into the room that we would cut closer in to the action to keep it off the walls. That all worked very well. It was a very beautiful, soft source that looked as if it wasn't there at all."

-Stephen Goldblatt, ASC

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."