There is everything you need to learn about practical lighting in this article.
I listened to a podcast on Team Deakins’s channel and I also read some articles on Roger Deakins’s official website about Practical Lighting, so today I will share with you what they talked about on the subject. Without any further ado, let’s get started right away:
What is practical light?!
There is no exact definition, but Practical light is any source of light that appears on a frame; a lamp, candles, lantern, fixtures … literally any type of light that appears within a frame.
Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:
Why is this important?
Well, there are two reasons; firstly, Practical light can serve as motivation for your off-screen sources. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at this scene from No Country for Old Men.
We have two Practicals here, one for the background on the left side of the screen and the other on the right side just near the subject. There it is to believe that it is the practical light that enlightens the actor. It is true that the lamp does its part for the lighting, but it is far from the only source. Here’s what Deakins said on his blog:
“That shot of Javier was lit using a Tweenie bounced off some unbleached muslin. There was no ‘special’ used for the eye light as that just fell in naturally. I rarely use any small individual source for an eye light unless I am photographing a night scene and I want the eyes to ‘pop’.”
Here is the diagram that represents it all:
Secondly, Practical can serve as the only source that illuminates your scenes if used intelligently. Here are some examples:
Sometimes, practical lights are already on the location. Still, usually, they are well planned by the cinematographer and the set designer for the feel and the mood of the scene, to give a natural look to the scene. The most important thing is consistency. Don’t put Practical on all your shots just because it looks good or for cinematic vibes. There should be a purpose behind those Practical. Remember that.
Now, to give you insights, let’s look at these few shots and explanations Roger Deakins gave on his blog about how he puts them into practice.
Roger Deakins: I will always set the practicals first, and as this was a set, I worked with the designer to make sure the practicals were of a kind that worked for me. The shot was lit mainly by the light of the practicals, but there were two Pups (IK Fresnel), which were dimmed and wired down quite a bit as I was shooting at 2.0 on 5218, bouncing off some unbleached muslin taped to the wall left of the frame. The muslin is just off the right of the frame, and the reflection which separates Javier from the wall is from the muslin.
In Moss’ trailer, the practical bulbs were probably standard 75–100watts and there were some bare 60-watt bulbs hidden behind existing fixtures and some bounce light was used in both situations, generally, tweenies (warmed with a little with 1/4 CTO) bounced off of unbleached muslin taped to the wall. My shooting stop was 2.0.
For that sitting room scene, I was using 4 Tweenies rigged to the ceiling and bounced off some 4′ x 4′ unbleached muslin bounce material. the lamps would have been on dimmers and probably had a quarter CTO on them as well.
The stage was lit using a bank of 45 Tweenies to give a soft but directional light that is focused on the stage and off the audience entirely. I used a similar rig for the movie theater on ‘Jarhead’. In neither case did I have more than 18″ of headroom to work with.
New to film lighting? Or do you want to learn much more about lighting? Discover these books, written by great cinematographers, helped me a lot in learning and increasing my knowledge of the different types of lighting techniques and methods without going to a school film. Best Cinematography Books
For my lighting Plan, I use the Lighting Diagram Toolkit by Ci-Lovers
Note that if you purchase items through my links, I will receive a small commission to help me maintain this site and share these contents with you.
That’s all for today, I hope you learned some new things. Don’t forget to subscribe by filling out the form at the bottom of the page so you don’t miss the next episode. This was Marco Robinson for Ci-Lovers, see you soon. Tchaouuuuu!!!
