The table scene
The dreaded sit down, boardroom, five page scene, multiple eyelines, multiple people speaking, lots of glass and reflection but that is all ok. That’s just sort of business as usual…but…the more you think about it…the more you ask the question.
“How the hell do I light this?”
I have windows but my shots are crossing the line so it will be a heavy front light, but even then I’m the 27th floor and our budget doesn’t extend to hiring hot air balloons with underslung 20k’s. I have an existing pendant above the table that looks great in shot but is very harsh and uncontrolled and then I have some gross 6000k 1x4 LED plates all through the ceiling and they all happen to be on one switch.
Does this sound like your internal monologue at 3 am after a sweaty panic induced wake up? Me too! Let's talk through how some other homies have done it and maybe we can all have a bit more collective sleep and a few more tricks up our sleeves.
So I thought we would limit our examples to just four, as there are infinite ways to light them. I chose the most stylised in their techniques. Some are board rooms and some are just for technique and the example may be at a table but it is absolutely something you can carry through; it’s about the technique not the usage.
Examples:
Mindhunter - The Soft Top Light
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The Table Bounce
Tenet - The Light We Don’t See
The Goldfinch - The Window
Let’s do this in random order because I am fascinated by number three as it’s something my brain struggles to comprehend. Although this is still technically “motivated light” I struggle to theoretically place light in a room that has no practical motivation but Hoyte’s logic I guess is that there “could be” a practical motivation for the light in that direction but we never see it.
Tenet - The Light We Don’t See
So you find a great location that has everything you want. Great pracs overhead for the wide that provide light and depth, you can replace the bulbs and have control. Nice windows and nooks to give dimensions to the space but…you don’t want to hollow the eyes, so what do you do?
Let me help you out. I’ll tell you what you do. You create some negative space in your image motivated by a wall, and tuck a big soft source with a grid on the front behind it to side light you actors.
…and that's it….
That is literally all there is to it.
It is beautiful.
You then just move that light based on your shot and you never have to explain what that light is because you can cheat the table rotation to make sure you never shoot that way. No one ever will ever know.
I imagine for the closer shots you would kill the small spots about the table and just leave the big warm house light, even put a diffusion frame and a net over the top and maybe even just to control the contrast lay a black rag over the table to avoid the bounce coming back and that way you can bring your soft side light source closer and use that to wrap the light more pleasingly….but that's about it. There is a lovely cool liner/edge light on them both but I imagine that light just be bounce from the white tablecloths on the tables behind them.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The Table Bounce
Speaking of bounce lights, let's have a look and Mr Richardson’s work on Tarantino's “Once upon a time in Hollywood”
Ok…so you are in a corner booth or you are in the middle of a room. How can you light the table evenly in an interesting way - put a tungsten spotlight over the table and slam that puppy into the middle of the table top. If you can convince your production designer to let you put a white tablecloth down then you are really in the money!!! Or even a checkered table cloth for some fun visual interest.
The one thing I worry about, as I have done it a few times, is overexposure on the white table cloth. On film, you don’t need to worry so much but digital you want to be rathing your camera at at least base ISO or a stop over to maximize the latitude you are placing above middle grey. If you are below 800 ASA you are risking lowering your amount of free latitude by displacing your scale of dynamic range and giving yourself more lower end latitude, which ultimately means your highlights are going to clip much much faster.
*If you don’t understand how the use of ISO above and below your base works as a tool to maximize latitude above and below your median dynamic range, shoot me a message on Instagram and I might do an article on it if people are interested.
I guess the only thing I might add, it will help to add some color separation to your background as ultimately you might find your characters disappearing into the ether. Alternatively a liner/edge might help bring them out.
Mindhunter - The Soft Top Light
I love this look when it is done well but my lord does it scare the shit out of me.
It looks awesome in wides, an undisclosed soft top light that may have a grid on it or be skirted so that it doesn't hit the walls of your set and is hidden from reflections in windows (it definitely helps to be shooting in a wide screen ratio, as you can easily have it out of frame).
It just looks great, you can shuffle it away from camera a bit more so your foreground character, Jonathan on the left in the blue, does not have it trailing over his head and down his back. This adds depth, separation and draws your eyes to the center of the table. Using a similar technique to the previous, you can add lots of papers and files to the center of your dark wood table to help bounce up and bit and fill in the eyes on the wider shots.
Now this is where my fear sets in. Do I leave the top light only? Do I fill in the eyes? Is it too dramatic? Do I add a backlight? Will I be fired? Have I lit myself into a corner? Is it just super flat and shit?
See the overthinking happening?
This really comes down to your director! How bold do they want to be? Fincher…is pretty bold. That is just the top light and god it looks good. My suggestion with this is to have two things on standby.
A half stop net, just to place directly over them. Again, the inverse square law, what you might find is that a person with a bald head or further-back hairline or bigger forehead might carry a lot of highlights as it is closer to the light source than their hands. So get your makeup artist to powder them down and put the net just above their head out of frame so it knocks their head down to a similar place to their hands. Be careful they don't move around a lot as this wont work otherwise and will give the trick away.
A small catch/eyelight to place near the lens to add a ping into the eyes if the director is worried it is too dark.
Having these things on standby means you can keep the momentum! If your director isn't happy and you have to send someone all the way down in the elevator to get a light from the truck then your actors fall out of the moment and you have held everyone up.
Be prepared! If you think it might happen, then get it on a stand ready to use! Trust your gut. The more you do this job, the better you become at predicting the issues that may arise. It is called thinking with your peripheral vision.
The Goldfinch - The Window
Finally a favorite of mine but often a difficult one to pull off.
What I love about this straight out of the gate is you immediately get color separation. You have internal tungsten sources like wall sconces and a daylight window. Granted, at night this is harder to achieve but for the purposes of this shot - similar to the ‘Tenet’ reference, you have a large soft source off to the side of the table.
In the wide shot you can see it is a window, outside the room you can put your big HMIs through frames to have a lovely, controlled raking light and then on your close shots you bring that soft controlled source inside and close to the edge of frame so that source is lovely and soft.
To be honest that's about it! Really simple to do on this scale but much harder to do in a boardroom but still possible.
You can show your ambient window in your wide and motivate a moving soft daylight source side lighting your actors based on the shot.
SOOOOOO yeah…..hope this helped.
BYE BYE.