Today we will reveal some exclusive lighting setups of the film ‘True Grit’ directed by the Coen Brothers, with the legendary Roger Deakins as the cinematographer. It’s Mr. Deakins himself who lets us discover these few lighting setups. So without further ado, let’s get started right away;

The Courtroom Scene

This scene was primarily lit by the light coming through the windows, created using three 18K HMI PAR lamps. Those HMIs were used directly without diffusion. The beams were created using a little smoke, and the lamps were about 20′ from the windows. The windows gelled with half CTO. The blinds, a warm yellow, and the gas lamps on the walls, which carried 250-watt globes dimmed way down, created warmth in the room. “When we were looking away from the windows,” said Deakins. He knew he had to augment the light with a couple of 2K Blondes bouncing off some muslin hung between the windows.

In that courtroom scene, Deakins was shooting the close-up shot at the same exposure as the wides, but he just added a little bit of light to the actor’s face with a bounce card.

“The problems we faced in lighting this location,” He said, was the windows he was going to light through faced south. This necessitated not only lifts of some kind to carry lamps but also lifts to carry large solids to cut any natural sunlight.

The yellow blinds were designed for the windows to cut down the opening through which the artificial sunlight was falling but also to heighten the feeling of the warmth and intensity of the light.

Lighting With Practical

“All the firelight scenes were augmented,” Said Deakins. He had some half-circle metal strips made with sockets for 250/500-watt halogen bulbs with 3″ spacing. Each series of bulbs were broken into three circuits, and two were run to flicker generators. All the bulbs were dimmed to mimic the warmth of the fire. In the cabin, he has made the back of the hearth removable, and three of these ‘gags’ were mounted behind the fire. The oil lamp on the table was rigged with two 200-watt bulbs.

The Evening Scene

The scene was shot in the evening under fading light to allow for good exposure from the match. I used 5217 (tungsten) with no correction to enhance the twilight look, and the match naturally came out with a warm glow.

The Moonlight 

Deakins; “That night scene was lit by the rig we used for all our night work at that location.” This was a series of 12K HMIs, 18K HMIs, and 6K PARs rigged in rows on the tops of the Hillsides. There were a total of 55 lamps used for the rig, but at any one time, there was a maximum of 29 burnings. The second set of lamps was set so that they could change the direction of the light during their shooting night without taking time to re-set lamps. The lamps were set 4 feet apart on long walkways constructed for ease of operation. The tops of the hills were rocky and would have been treacherous for the electricians to work on at night. A row of lamps created a soft wash of light rather than one significant point source. Deakins was still shooting at a T 2.0 with 500ASA stock with all that light.

Deakins; “There were three very different parts to the night work outside the cabin, and I had to have the basics of each lighting scenario rigged from the start.” He added that Some lamps were moved from the first lighting position to the third position by his rigging crew during the daytime hours to save some of the rental cost of such a large total.

Deakins does underexpose for a ‘moonlight’ look but depending if the light is a backlight, sidelight, or a frontal light. His exposure might vary from a stop under to one and a half stops under. He underexposes a front light about two stops. “For a backlight, the face may be as much as three under while a pure backlight may be something over a stop under,” He added. “This is just a basic level, which is close to what I worked with on TG, and it will vary depending on the contrast within the shot.” For example, a dark subject will demand less underexposure. Of course, the levels will vary depending on the nature of the film and the scene in question.

Deakins; “Often there are practical considerations to whether I choose to bounce light or go direct.” He used mostly direct lighting for the large night scenes around the cabin to create the moonlight effect. The space was too big to light with a bounce source; besides that, any bounce source would have been uncontrollable in terms of what was lit and what wasn’t. To create a soft ‘look,’ He ganged up some 30 lamps with 5′ spacing between them. For closer shots, He finds a softer source often, though certainly not always, “which seems more ‘natural’ even though natural moonlight is virtually a point source.” He said.

The Galloping Horse

For Deakins, the far more complex work was to photograph the galloping horse in the forest, and for this, He used a large crane with a row of nine 18K HMIs softened with a diffusion frame. All the shots of the galloping horse were done on location. Only the close shots of the actors were done on stage against a green screen.

Deakins said that he never considered Day for Night viable for any of True Grit, though their line producer suggested it as an option. He added, “The fact is that, even if I could have accepted the ‘look’ of Day for Night,’ shooting to maintain any sort of continuity of lighting direction, at that time of year and given the complexity of the sequences, would have been impossible. Night for Night gave me far more control over the shooting even if it did demand a complex lighting rig.”

Source: Rogerdeakins.com

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