My Go To Lighting Package Part Two: The Basics
Here is part two of our ongoing series regarding the go-to lighting package that I use in the field. Many of you commented on part one of this post that the lighting package was huge. That was only a 20th of it! I am asked to slim it down all the time and I love it because it challenges me as a DP to not always look to the obvious light package, but to use the natural light in a space to serve me well. I wanted to break it down into a much smaller package that will be great for a short film, documentary, interview, and/or corporate media.
The Basics of Light
When you have a small team to tell your story, you need to find lights that do many things and provide many color temps. You need some that can focus and ones that are a broad source. I am on a web series right now, and it is not the blow-up action that I have done in the past. It tells a story about families, friends, upbringing, values, morals, honor, integrity, and courage. These interviews are personal, intimate, and revealing.
Deliverables from the DP Viewpoint
The director and executive producer are Maurice Marable, an incredibly talented artist from NYC. We have been working together for over 15 years.
- Maurice Marable
- Twitter: @MoTheDirector
- Instagram: @MoTheDirector
Maurice said, “I want to tell stories, not just cover them.”
Look at the line above. This is what all of you have to find in your soul. Be a storyteller, not just a shooter. There is a difference between being a Director of Photography and a shooter. A shooter asks the director how he wants it to look and feel and is constantly asking for guidance.
A Director of Photography takes the treatment and visually dissects it, looks at what the story is and how he can best tell this story and presents a visual landscape to deliver the director’s vision. A DP has a point of view; a shooter needs the director to give him the point of view.
So with this in mind, how am I going to put together a package that will be small, nimble, versatile, and inexpensive? We have a smaller budget and still need to deliver the visual landscape that I pitched to Maurice.
Lighting Ideas for Small Spaces
I knew that we were going into family homes and that they were not going to be palatial mansions; they were working class. We needed a B-Roll run and gun package that required no generators. We had to plug this into walls and not blow circuits.
In thinking this all through, you need to be very versatile with your lights and be able to react to things that are thrown at you. We knew that we were going in without seeing many locations ahead of time. I wanted to give Maurice a much bigger look than expected, but keep it real.
Here is the deal. We can go for a stylized look, shallow focus, swing a tilt, contrast in lighting, pool lighting, top light, etc. But is that conveying the message? We want to present these people as real people, in their family homes, so anything other than natural lighting will fail to tell the story.
Start with the Key Light
I like to start with my key light first. With limited space, I need a light that will have a punch. So if you are in a situation where you have to balance the inside with the outside, it works. Something that is not long, so you can put it in a small room and still have the space to diffuse it.
I will need a daylight source option as well as a tungsten one. Looking at the photos, I see a lot of windows. One thing that says corporate videos more than anything else is warm key lighting and the light out the windows goes a cobalt blue. Don’t do this. Bring a light that you can gel or make it daylight-balanced so that you don’t get this effect.
Suggestions for Daylight Key Light:
1200 Watt HMI Par:
You can plug this into the wall, 5500-degree color temp. This light has four lenses — Narrow, Medium, Wide, and Super Wide. It is a very resourceful light. We are looking for lights that multi-task. This can also cheat sunlight through a window, be a hard backlight, or to be used as a book light.
Buy the 1200 Watt HMI Par:
B&H – amazon.com – eBay – Adorama
800 Watt Joker:
Same as the 1200-watt HMI Par except for lower wattage and cheaper to rent.
Buy the 800-Watt Joker:
B&H – eBay – Adorama
575 Watt HMI Par:
Same as the 1200-watt HMI Par, just half the wattage and cheaper to rent. This is about as low as you can go in the wattage and still be able to do all the things that I described above. You will have to go much harder with your key light in trying to balance the inside to the outside. That is why I like the 1200 par. I can shoot it through thicker diffusion.
Buy the 575 Watt HMI Par:
B&H – amazon.com – eBay – Adorama
Suggestions for Fill Light:
If you are going with a daylight key, which I had to do, I try to use the natural light first. I prefer to orient the talent in a way that works with the natural light in the location. Turn off the lights in the room and see which direction the natural window light is going. Then make that side the key. Try not to fight what is already happening in the room. Embrace it. If you go against it, you will find yourself using many more lights to overpower what is already there and burn time. Open up a window, a door, etc. Use anything that is already there. The natural light will look so good. It takes a lot to create the look of natural light and you will not have that arsenal in your package. So go with it.
575 Watt HMI Par:
This is a great compact source that will be perfect for a bounce to give you soft light fill onto your talent.
Lowel 1000 Watt Tota Light into a Silver Umbrella:
This is a great fill light to clip your CTB gel to it. Nice color contrast with your daylight-balanced key light.
Buy the Lowel 1000-Watt Tota Light:
B&H – amazon.com – eBay – Adorama
1K Open Face:
You can use bead board or foam core for a bounce, or sometimes if you have white walls, you can just use the wall. I try not to select rooms that have white walls, but most of the locations had white walls. How do you attack this? I try to light through windows because you will not have a big grip package to control your light.
By shooting it through a window, you are using the physical attributes of the home to assist you in controlling your fill or key light source. This is critical. Diffuse your light outside of the room as well so that the source doesn’t fly all over the white walls. If you can use some flags, then go for that, but in most of these rooms, if you set a flag, it is probably in the frame.
Buy the 1K Open Face:
B&H – eBay
Utility Lights:
I always bring some utility lights that help take my visuals that much higher and help tell the story.
Kino Flo:
See my go-to Kino Flo package in part one of this post.
Fluorescent Bulbs:
You can replace Daylight and Tungsten balanced bulbs in existing fixtures. Cool White and Warm White bulbs added to your Kino Flo fixtures balance your key light and fill light with what is in your location.
One Light Fay:
This is a great little light that offers a ton of punch for 650 watts. I use these to bounce a splash of hot tungsten light in the background.
Buy the One Light Fay:
eBay
Home Depot Clamp Lights:
I use these to place in the BG sometimes to give out-of-focus bokeh if the story warrants it. They are also great for splashes of tungsten light. You can use flood or spotlights in them.
Read the posts on Home Depot lighting — Part 1 and Part 2.
Shaping the Light
The lights are important to your look, but a particular mood comes from lighting control. This is your grip package.
Having a small flag package is essential. Use some 4 x 4 empty frames or flex fill diffusion for your key lights. Remember, flex fills are cool, but they have no way to support themselves. They require much more grip support to be able to use them for traditional lighting.
Light Rigging
Apple boxes for camera support, Wedges furniture pads, and some light rigging. Don’t forget sandbags. These are essential for camera support and keeping flags and diffusion frames safe.
C-Stand
C-stand is probably the most useful piece of grip gear I have ever used. There are not many things you cannot do with that stand. That is why they call it a Century-Stand — because it has a hundred uses.
Cartellini Clamps
A few ladders are needed to be able to get to the lights, rig sources in the ceiling, etc. Cartellini clamps are another grip rigging essential. These things will grab onto anything and are useful for light rigging as well as camera support and car mounts.
Chimera Softbox
Last but not least is a Chimera softbox. I usually get the medium bank with a 1200 par ring and a tungsten open-face ring so that I can use this soft quality of light either daylight or tungsten. Just because you have a daylight source doesn’t mean you need those Chimera daylight banks. They are too big and cumbersome. They would never fit into these tight locations.
A Few Ideas from Camera
In the lens department, for interviews, I feel it is absolutely essential for zoom lenses to be in your package. This doesn’t make you a lazy filmmaker. It makes you a proactive storyteller. It enables you to react to serendipity moments from the talent.
Reacting to these moments with a fixed focal lens can be impossible with the restrictions of the space. In these tight spaces, I rarely find a prime lens that makes the right frame. So unless you want to carry a large number of primes, I suggest a few lightweight zooms. I am using the Canon 15.5 to 47 and the 30 to 105mm.
Motion Options
Camera motion was very important to Maurice. He wanted the camera to be in constant motion. For this, I employed two different devices. Why two different ones? Again, we did not know what cards we would be dealt at our location.
I selected a Cineped for stability and versatility. These allowed me to be able to take off the slider and put it on apple boxes for low slides. I knew this would be huge for all the B-roll footage.
The second motion device was the Dana Dolly. The reason to use this tool was that I could go longer than three feet.
What are your ideas about lighting packages that have worked well? How have you been creative with a small footprint?
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About Filmmakers Academy Cinematographer Mentor Shane Hurlbut, ASC
Director of photography Shane Hurlbut, ASC works at the forefront of cinema. He’s a storyteller, innovator, and discerning collaborator, who brings more than three decades of experience to his art. He is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, the International Cinematographers Guild/Local 600, and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Hurlbut frequently joins forces with great directors: McG’s Netflix Rim of the World and The Babysitter, plus Warner Bros. We Are Marshall and Terminator: Salvation; Scott Waugh’s Need for Speed and Act of Valor; and Gabriele Muccino’s There Is No Place Like Home and Fathers and Daughters. His additional film credits include Semi-Pro; The Greatest Game Ever Played; Into the Blue; Mr 3000; Drumline; 11:14, which earned Hurlbut a DVDX nomination; and The Skulls. Notably, his television credits include the first season of AMC’s Into the Badlands.
Thank you for your blog posts Mr. Hurlbut. There are very informative and very inspirational. I love your embrace of DIY/re-purposed lighting when it is appropriate. As a low budget filmmaker I really appreciate that and has inspired me to look for lighting instruments from different, out of the box sources. One light bulb that I have found that I think could be very useful as a re-purposed film light source is a Halco 500 watt R-40 frosted reflector flood which was originally as a replacement bulb for swimming pool lights.
http://www.amazon.com/Halco-104042-R40FL500-Reflector-Flood/dp/B0002Z0MJW/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1376614909&sr=1-2
They have very good output, have an amazing smooth beam spread, and last way longer than 500 watt photofloods. They can be used in any suitable medium based fixture rated for the wattage. I have some 4 socket batten lights (That I learned about from your blog, Thank You) and with those Halco R-40s they make a very light weight and inexpensive 2Ks. If you get a chance, you should check out a few of those bulbs. I never would have thought about looking for bulbs like that without reading you blog. Thanks again.
David G. Smith, thanks for the kind words and sharing with our readers. I will check these things out, sound very cool.
Excellent post. Truly helpful. Also thanks for providing the shot diagram. Better to work with the sun, because if you fight it you most likely will lose.
N.K.Osborne, you are very welcome, thank you for the kind words, yes, Mother nature always will win.
Kinos are a absolute must. I also like to to bring a few redheads 800w open face, they are practical for bounce and making ambience. Lately I’ve also been using LED panels a lot on closeups – not on people, but rather close ups of things – like that standard cellphone shot etc.
I also bring chinaballs at all times – they’re easy to carry, I can hang them anywhere and the light quality is beautiful =)
Tom, I love china balls. They are a beautiful light. Philippe Rousselet is the king of using those units.
Hi shane, great post! Just curios what program did you use to make the lighting schematic of the home?
I hand draw my schematics, but to post here we used Illustrator/Photoshop and some lighting icons so it will display nicely for reading. Thanks for your support.
There is a ‘proper’ app I’ve been using for this – Shot Designer by Per Holmes (http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/sd_index.html). It’s quick, easy to share (pdfs to email, dropbox, etc), pretty much platform agnostic. It’s not particularly pretty or dimensionally accurate, but as a replacement for scratchpad sketches, and you can use photos, illustrations and blocking information. Beats getting all arty in Illustrator.
I’ve got no affiliation with it – just like using it.
Hi Shane:
Another excellent post. Freaky to see a 1200 HMI Par leading your list. I spent two years shooting a bunch of programming for the long gone Monitor Channel in Boston. Lot’s of run ‘n’ gun, just a sound guy and I. We hauled around three LTM 1.2k HMI pars, fell in love with them. Back then our lens kit came with an intensifier; a highly polished chrome cone that we attached to the Super Wide lens. Gave us a great soft yet intensive (?) exterior fill. Don’t see these intensifiers much any more, maybe too fragile for the g&e truck?
Hey, what’s up with the “Arri 1k Open Face Fresnel”; a trick question?
Always a joy to read your posts.
Cheers,
BD
Bob Demers, yes I love that light as well. Just works. The Arri 1K open face works well with a chimera on it or a book light bounce. Thanks for all of your support my friend
Shane,
Thanks for posting information for many to benefit from. On this last comment I think you missed Bob Demers’ friendly correction to your post. In your blog after the bit about the 1K open face you post a picture of an “Open Face Fresnel” As I’m sure you know this is a contradiction since a Fresnel is a lens by definition.
David Renken, OK, copy I will look at it.
Hello Sir,
How r u…? Thanks for ur information. Am karthik from India.. Sir am working as asst Cinematographer I want to know how to use sekonic light meter and how to take reading.. I like to learn practically if u post videos means it wil be helpful for me sir…
Karthik Baskar, I am running a blog post in a couple weeks that will go into all that.
Hi Shane,
You have some amazing tutorials on your website. I thought this lighting page would be fitting to ask a question I have had for awhile. In this B-Roll footage from “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK3zYCSLB8A . Starting at the :16 second mark, Ben Stiller walks out of the building and the camera follows him, then two grips immediately move in next to the camera with diffusion nets. My understanding of diffusion nets was that the Yellow border nets drop light 1/2 stop, Red Border dropped 1 full stop. What would the purpose of having these nets right next to and directly behind the camera? I see they are bouncing light through the window in the upper right. Do you think the purpose of the nets in this application is to stop any spill from light coming off the bounce outside as well as any spill that would be coming from inside the house through the doorway? If so, why are the nets directly next to the camera? Ive seen this done in other B-Roll footage and have been boggled by it. Thank you very much for your time!
Just came across it in this Need for Speed B-Roll as well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xhgKlxb77E starting at the 3:00 min mark.
Brett, thanks for sharing the Need for Speed BTS, that’s awesome!
Do you know why the nets were used in that behind the scenes of Need for Speed footage shown at the 3 min mark?
My apologies Brett! I mis-read your comment, yes, we were accomplishing the same thing in NFS as was being done in the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We were using the Red Double Nets to knock down the wind on our steadicam operator as he was moving to get that shot.
Brett,
They are holding those next to the steadicam operator to keep the wind off of him. That is John Moyer, the steadicam operator, who was my “A” camera operator on Fathers & Daughters.
Shane thank you so much! That had me so confused. Makes perfect sense! Thank you for taking time to answer that. I came across your website last week and have been reading every single article on your website. I want to become a director and after reading your articles it gives me even more drive like you would not believe. You take all the mystery out of how movies are filmed and show that you do not need all the big expensive equipment to get stunning video. Every article you write I find myself having those “Ah-ha!” moments. Im a military guy and want to get into film after I serve my time. Thank you for all you do!
Brett, no problem. I’m glad I was able to clear up the confusion! Sorry about that! And I’m excited to hear you’re an avid reader, that’s what this blog is all about! Thanks for your dedication to growing as a filmmaker and for your time serving our country. I cannot say thank you enough.
Hey there Shane, thanks so much for this post!!! I’ve never been to film school, so these tutorials help immensely in filling the gaps of my knowledge.
One question I have is, when your on location with a medium to large camera set up (say 30 – 50lb) how do you get the camera where you want it? I recently upgrade from a DSLR to a RED ONE and I’m finding more and more that I can’t get the shot I want because the camera is so damn heavy.
Is the answer better equipment? Do I need to stop being a wimp and work out? And what is the deal with all the dovetail plates? Mine jams constantly and then I have to flip the whole thing upside down to fiddle with it.
Sorry for all the questions, this has just been on my mind a lot lately because I have a shoot coming up that is going to require me to use this camera for a week straight.
Hi Jack,
Yes, lots and lots of lifting weights haha! Just kidding. Upgrading your equipment is essential when going to a larger pay load. You don’t have to get the newest and biggest equipment out there, but having a solid tripod that can handle your payload can make a world of a difference. When you start getting into the world of having a camera package that builds out into a 30-50lb size, you want to start looking at larger tripod heads, beefier sticks, etc. This is where having a Mitchell Mount tripod head and sticks becomes a near must have at times. This is an example of a Mitchell Mount Hi-Hat from Matthews – http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=99254&gclid=CNaeqImws8QCFdcXgQodnG8ADQ&Q=&is=REG&A=details. When you have this much weight on a ball head, 75mm, 100mm, 150mm, you put a lot of force into the head and it can slip in the tripod, your camera becomes top heavy because your tripod and head cannot support it. In the case of O’Connor equipment at 2575 fluid head is built for the weight of 25lbs to 75lbs. The O’Connor 1030 is built for 10lbs to 30lbs and so on. Those are just a few examples. If I were you, I would consider looking into renting a beefier set of sticks, you would be surprised how cheap you can get a set of Mitchell based sticks and a fluid head these days, don’t be afraid of the rental house in your area! :)
As far as your dovetail plate, did you buy it used or was it new? They can be a little tight if they are new and it can take some time getting used to it.
Keep those questions coming!
Hi Shane . I hope that we see ” My Go to Lighting Package” part 3, 4 and 5 very soon in the inner circles . Also i have a request can you tell me when you prefer to use celeb or HMI Par ? And if you make a comparison between them it will become very kind from you . Thanks
That is a great idea to continue in this process. Thank you so much for reminding me to continue these. Celeb will be a much softer and less intense source, easy to control, easy to focus and contain. The par light can deliver that same feel, but will take much more grip work to do so. The par would be amazing to cheat natural sunlight, or day exterior or interior bounces, where you need more output.