The humble day interior

Ah yes, the four walled white room with a single window. How fun. It’s just a shame that we are shooting it in the directors cousins, best friends, neighbours, uncles house but thats just the way the cookie crumbles right?

So there you are wokring out 700 different ways to light a room, and each one has more lighting and grip than the next and you end up getting to a point where the light is perfect but if that actor stood up from their chair they risk both decapitation by c-stand arm but also they would have to wear the responsibility for your aneurysm…but you know what…

They are gonna do it anyway. Why? Because story is King/Queen/God/Ruler of all…and sometimes it’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s why we are all there.

What I really admire about some cinematographers, and something I strive to do (and failing less now than when i first started) is to give the actors and the diretcor as much space as possible.

But i hear you. We are shooting in that four walled white room with a single window and there is a risk of over complicating it, ruining it and honestly…thats what will make it look shit.

The thing that I notice the pros doing when they are faced with a scene like this (not including stylized pieces here) is they walk into the space and go “What is the most natural thing I can do here?”.

Recently I had a number of things dawn on me - and I think it all relates to this so stay with me on this tangent - I went to see Andrew Huberman talk at the Opera House and he was speaking (I’m paraphrasing massively) that we humans have this ability to do what is known as “Tunnel Vision” or “Predator Vision” I think is what he called it. Essentially, we can become fixated on an individual thing in the center of our vision and narrow our field of view. In doing this we essentially lose our peripheral vision but we are one of a few species on the planet that with a simple act of dialating our vision and tilting our head up and sitting back we can reintroduce our peripheral vision and see the “whole picture”; the full bredth of our optical field.

Still with me? I’m getting to a point here. It’s a good one.

The next day (Post-Huberman as it will be refered to) I was testing for a feature film I am shooting with a great director friend of mine, Claudia Dzienny. I did a simple over head 8x8 neg and a 6x6 half grid just off a frame left and an Aputure Nova 300c through the 6x6.

This is a shot from those tests using that set up.

Now, this is a very standard way to light something but Claudia started talking to me about what lighting she doesn’t like - and this is a really bloody good thing to know because that way you avoid having your director both hate your work and question why you were hired…eek.

Anyway, as the actor in this above image (The amazing Emma Leonard) began to rotate to camera right, Claudia imidiately called out “No, don’t like that - feels very “student film””

So there I am, trying to work out what she meant…”student film?”…how does one define the lighting of a student film. So I tried a few things and it all sort of hit me at once what she was meaning.

It wasn’t so much that she disliked the lighting as it was that the lighting of that moment felt wrong for the scene/environment. It was too contrasty, too “lit” (we all know those moments were you go, yeah this feels like I have over lit this) and overall felt like the ligting was imposing on the scene. Specificly a day light interior shot.

It was upon thinking on this more that it all tied together for me and I am phenominally guilty of this and something I am actively trying to stop but by looking at the process of cinematographers I admire such as Natashe Braier & Linus Sandgren (just two who come to mind) who we will talk about soon (I promise) you can see they are very aware of this and therefore work to not drop themselves in this trap.

THE TRAP:

Now let me tell you the trap, and you can find for yourself that you too have been guilty of this at times.

There is a moment, and it is very common amongst film school students when the story stops being king and not just that but you forget everything about the story. You focus on a scnene, focus so hard imagining how you will craft a scene and make the lighting perfec. You even get to a point where you have decided where the actors will sit because it will work perfectly for that shaft of light you will have after you haze it up a little. You watched that court room scene from “True Grit” where Sir Grand Master Deakins pumps a mole beam through that window behind Jeff Bridges. You know the one…

Yeah you know it. Don’t pretend it hasn’t been on your mood board before.

You have written and rewritten your lighting plans because it’s a bit of a tricly space - negs are perfectly sitting right off to camera left, the roof if negged, the key light and the big diffusion frame in front of it to camera right. It crossed your mind that the actors wont be able to see each other through that diffusions but fuck them, they are the actor, you’ll just chuck a tape mark on the grid cloth for them to look at. It will be fine.

You are so tunnel vision about the scene looking good that you have lost all perception of one key thing and you won’t realise it until you are on set.

You watch the block through and the actors says “I wouldn’t sit here. I would be standing at the window or id be in the doorway”…

And thats when the beads of sweat roll down your face and you realise that you have no idea how to light this space and you must therefore be the worst cinematographer in human history and that award you were picturing holding for this porject is gone because this will look terrible but deep deep down…you know this scene will be better for the new blocking.

…because you have been forced to have your peripheral vision brought into focus and you too can see that you were so set on your own singular vision that you forgot that filmmaking is a team sport.

THE ANTI-TRAP:

My point of that whole essay you have just read above is that the best thing you can do is work out what feels firstly, right for the story and secondly, right for the environment that the film takes place in. Try not to go into lighting a scene from a place of forcing a technique or style onto a scene/shot but rather embrace the reality of your story.

It is ok for a day interior scene to feel a bit flat, why? because the light is coming into the room and bouncing around, it is natural - it feels real and ultimately if you have to sacrifice a little bit more contrast on the faces in order to give your actors and director freedom to move then you accept that and move on…(it’s never that easy but I wanted to make a sweeping statement, I feel your pain)

BUT…there are tricks and concepts that we will start looking at about how the pros go about setting themselves up to create beautiful “authentic” lighting whilst keeping a few aces up their sleeve for when the director asks you to man with the actor as they walk across the room. It is all about being preppared…and hopefully we can learn a few things together.

HONEY BOY & LA LA LAND:

I think Natasha Braier is a master of the “authentic” day interior. She has a way of always managing to find depth within a frame, she isn’t affraid of lighting not being perfect because it always feels right but often but Natasha and Linus will add “intentional mistakes” in order to make the scene feel real. Light never perfectly back lights us in reality or gives the perfect side light, it is unpredictable at times.

The intentional mistake is part of the PLACE vs FACE lighting concepts. Some people light the face, shot to shot and some light the place and allow the actors to be free and sometimes they are in the light and sometimes they are not, but it never feels fake or contrived. This doesn’t mean because they are lighting the place that they have sacrificed control, quite the opposite, often times that intentional mistake might be a direct/hard/sun source hitting a wall rather than a person but what they have enabled themselves to do is light a face through indirection.

Have a look at these two shots below. The left is from ‘HONEY BOY’ shot by Natasha Braier and the right is from ‘LA LA LAND’ shot by Linus Sandgren.

What these two scenes have in common is the basic techniques.

WHAT IS THE STORY YOU ARE TELLING - Whats the subjext of the scene? how should the character feel? If it’s sad and lonely should you be leaning into a cooler tone? What is a key emotive word that you can use as a theme for how you light? Make sure you inderstand this as it will be your barometer for what feels wrong and what feel right.

IDENTIFY WHAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL - In both cases, the uncontrollable is the window. Both cinematographers have chosen where they would like their exterior exposure to sit and used techniques such as hard ND gel on windows, or simply just exposed the camera to a point in which they are happy with the +1 or +2 expoure outside.

CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL - The contorllable is what you don’t see. Bradford Young is famous for immediately adding black neg to all walls that you cant see or wont see (even the roof). The trick here, if you are going to add neg is to make sure you don’t walk into a trap of making a room feel unnaturally dark, remember your story.

DAYLIGHT - Daylight is make up of multiple sources and its something to consider when lighting interiors wether on location and you want control, lighting a stage set or even sim trav. Skylight - is the ambient blue tone coming from the sky above, or could be from the clouds (this will help you dial in your colour tone), Sunlight - Duh! but what time of day and where are you will help you define your beam angle, the type of light unit you use and your colour temp of that light, Ground light - This is one that people forget, if you are driving on a road then you will have a grey/stone bounce from underneath, if you are in a field it will ba a green or gold/warm bounce. You can cut this but more and more people are bringing this back. Compaines like “Bluff Bounce” are building bounces that encourporate all the above “ambient” sources into one textile and finally Bounced back - What outside is the sun reflecting off, if it is coming into a room direct then it might be the opposite wall or a warm bed sheet or if the sun is facing the other way maybe it’s a car window and you can add an interesting caustic-esq effect across the wall. All these elements are thing sto think about when creating “real-world” lighting.

ADD YOUR MISTAKE - In both cases (LA LA LAND & HONEY BOY) the mistake is also their biggest weapon, the “gaffers slash” as i have heard it referred too. The slash adds texture to your shot, giving you another element apart from the inherent softness in your scene but also it acts as motivation for your key light.

Bluff bounce as mentioned in “DAYLIGHT” section.

Lets break these images down further because you will see they all use the same techniques.

A hard “gaffers slash” has been used to add interest and motivate the return/bounce back which key lights the actor. In this image above you can see it is fairly strong bounce back and it is why i would imagine that it is a soft light below, you can see from the shadow on his shirt and the shadow on the lamp that it is in front of Ryan rather than from the side of the wall, I would image it is due to the fact he turns his head to the camera for much of this scene and if it was more of a side 3/4 then you would lose his face entirely. There is also an ambient sky light coming through the window.

What i love about this scene, is if Ryan lay back or stood up and walked to the camera, you can motivate light from anywhere, you always have the ability to have a soft light coming from the window, or from the back back at the floor of if you did and overhead of him lying on the bed it would be the bounce back from the wall. Very very clever and ultimately you have so many options.

This is a flatter look overall but again same principals. you have you sun hitting the young boy, the hair of Shia but motivating the bounce back from camera right which lights the faces of the actors. The clever use of the “ambient” light adds interest to that wall between them as well as helping give some directional light, the frame might feel unbalanced and a bit bland in the center of frame if you didnt have light there, in theory you could just pan your sun source but you would have a nice piece of interest similar to the LA LA LAND shot but you would have a very dark frame on that right hand side of frame, and if those actors get up and move which according to what I have read of Shia, you would be stuck because you only have a small portion lit of the room, so by splitting the difference you give yourself the ability to motivate light from the center of the room as it travells all the way to the other wall.

You cleverly open yourself up to light for both actors, on the kid it is the soft light from the window and on Shia it is the soft light returned from the warmer outfit on the kid. I imagine there might also be a small soft unit between them on the floor, just to help fill the shadows.

Ok, thats me done now. My hands hurt. Thanks for reading.