Light tips. How to light a subject with a wrinkled face.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with a wrinkled face.

Do not use a harsh Key Light: it will produce deep strong shadows and intensify wrinkles.

Do not use Back Light on one side: a side light enhances textures: placing a back light on one side of the subject will emphasize wrinkles.

Do use a frontal Key Light: a light placed in front of the subject will reduce textures. Avoid placing it too high or you will have the same negative effect of a side light. Place it low instead.

Do use soft low Fill Light: it will fill up the shadows of the wrinkles created by the Key Light. Lowering the contrast will also help to mask wrinkles.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!

The colors of Autumn in Montreal

I was walking around Montreal the other day, a rainy one. All of the sudden the sun managed to come out for a brief moment lighting the trees across the street. I didn't hesitate and took a pic with my iPhone. Sometimes the camera isn't really important: it's all about light.

Film review. An analysis of the cinematography of Barry Lyndon, by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon didn't receive a big commercial success when it was released back in 1975. But now it is considered one of Kubrick's finest film. It is a film on a grand scale which abounds in meticulous technical  craftsmanship and it owes its success to Kubrick, of course, but also to cinematographer John Alcott and electronic engineer Ed DiGiulio.

The Plot. Barry Lyndon is a slightly thick, hungrily ambitious young Irishman who longs tu pull himself up by his low-born origin into the superficial and illusory world of the nobility, and he almost succeeds in doing it.

Cinematography: John Alcott

Camera: Arriflex 35BL, Mitchell BNC

Lenses: Canon K35, Zeiss  ƒ 0.7, Angenieux 25-250

Aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Format: 35mm

Film Stock: Kodak Eastman 5254 100T

John Alcott already worked with Kubrick as cinematographer in his previous works (2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange), he was actually promoted by Kubrick during the shooting of 2001; but saying that Barry Lyndon's cinematography is Alcott's job would not be right. It is instead a close collaboration between Alcott and Kubrick, who was a fine photographer himself. The result is a delicious feast for the eye, where each composition is like a painting by one of the old Master.

They actually studied and searched for lots of references in the paintings of the Dutch Masters but they seemed to them to be a bit flat so they decided to light the scenes a bit more from the side. Anyway, they went after a pictorial style with a soft and subtle rendition of light and shadows.

John Alcott used to define himself as a natural light cameraman: he managed to master light to naturally light the scene in all of the features he DP'd and, of course, Barry Lyndon is no exception; in fact it was the first historical film to be lit in a natural way: lighting in a more theatrical way was the trend at that time for that kind of features. Throughout Barry Lyndon, there's a constant feeling of natural light coming through the windows of the locations simulated by Mini-Bruts always placed outside the houses where they shot. Anyway, there are some scenes, like the one with Barry and Captain Potzodof, lit with light placed on top of their head which is no really justified nor natural.

They had to gel windows and use different ND to stop down the light and, despite the "rules", they never used a 85 filter to colour correct the light to give an overall consistent balance throughout the film and because of the low light conditions of exterior light they had to deal with sometimes: in this way they managed to keep the extra 2/3 of a stop the filter would have taken down.

Shooting exteriors was a problem because the brightness of the day changed a lot so they had to change the aperture constantly to match the brilliance (not always achieving it thou), finding themselves to shoot with full aperture: the Canon K35 T1.2 come quite helpful in several shots.

Instead of using diffusion filters, quite trendy at that time, Alcott and Kubrick decided to use Low Contrast Filter which is not really consistent throughout the entire picture but doesn't affect the overall cinematography. In the wedding sequence we notice the use of the filter combined with a brown net which gave Alcott a more control over the highlights. Another filter Alcott used unconventionally is the Graduated Neutral Density filters, making use of them for interior shots (Was he probably the first one to do so?).

Another interesting technique used by Alcott is the use of mixed coloured light during the film. In the scene of Barry's room after he has had his leg amputated, for example, a warm effect is achieved by placing 1/2 sepia gel over the light coming through the window. While, when Barry's boy is dying, the natural blue day-light comes trough the window without colour correction.

Camera movements are used in certain sequences but without making an excessive use of them, like travellings and handheld camera for the scenes of the battle. But the use of the Angenieux zoom is always preferred, zooming in to close ups from very wide shots in a voyeuristic manner, and the other way round, opening from a close up to reveal the whole scene. The zoom was used along with travelling too, like the scene of the battle, where a very long travelling is used and the zoom starts at 250mm with a close up.

But, the most interesting and probably most technically difficult scenes to shoot were definitely the candle lights scenes. The naturalism in the way of lighting reaches its extreme because no natural light was used whatsoever: the scenes are lit exclusively by candles, which was something technically impossible given the available means  of those years. But Kubrick's stubbornness and Ed DiGiulio's expertise made history. Kubrick discovered some Zeiss lenses which were designed for the Hasselblad NASA took to the expedition to the Moon and which had a maximum aperture of ƒ 0.7. DiGiulio made the necessary adjustments to fit the Mitchell camera. 

They placed candles all around the scene and used a 70 candles chandelier  with metal reflectors attached to the ceiling bouncing light down. The had lots of trouble with focus because of the very shallow depth of field and the impossibility of checking on a viewfinder due to loss of luminance, but the result is superb.

Barry Lyndon is a marvellous film, the composition of every scene is perfect and precise, one of the great and emblematic Kubrick's characteristic, and its cinematography is beautiful and innovative, and, even if more than 35 years have passed, today it keeps on being a reference for every photographer or cinematographer.

The kiss. A tribute to Love on black and white film

Definitely my favourite pic of this shooting because of the contrast, the pose, what the models express and, of course, the theme...

The psychology of colour in cinematography. A study of The Last Emperor

Vittorio Storaro is one of the best cinematographers of all time. We can admire his magnificent use of light in film that will remain in our memories, like Apocalypse Now, Last tango in Paris, 900, Dick Tracy and, The Last Emperor. In the latter, his studies and experiments with colours as a mean to communicate emotions reach a high grade of expressive maturity that powerfully enhances the already magnificent cinematography of the film. As you all know, the film deals with the last emperor of China, from his birth till he becomes just another worker of the People's Republic of China, it is an introspective story of the Emperor. According to Storaro, every particular colour is not only a bridge with a particular emotion but light and colour make react body and mind in different ways (daylight is associated with activity, for example, while night is with reflection); colours can also be associated with a particular age of our life,  so he decided to separate the different ages of the Emperor chromatically, lighting with different tone of lights accordingly to the age and mood. But he didn't limit himself to just play with hues, he also created contrast with colours (as he already did in Apocalypse now) and played with the colour of objects in scenes using what in literature is called anaphora, a repetition of the same colour, in our case, to emphasize a concept.

In The Last Emperor's first scene we see a group of prisoners arriving to a station and waiting for being transferred to a prison. The Emperor is among them. The scene is quite dark, in a grey tone, with practically no colour. Grey is an undefined colour; it represents the waiting, the reflection, the preparation for a new journey, for the start of a new life. All the scenes in which the Emperor is in jail are in grey. 

 

While at the station, the Emperor try to commit suicide, which is itself a symbol of death and rebirth, and we see the first colour: the red of the blood. The following scene opens with big red doors opening; the baby emperor is taken away from her mother; all this scenes have red tones. Red is the first colour of the chromatic scale. It symbolizes the birth, the vital impulse, the start of every thing (later, when the emperor gets married, red will be the predominant colour in objects in the scene). In the first scene it also symbolizes, of course, Communism and its effects on the Emperor

The second colour is orange. It is associated with the range of age between 5 and 8 years; it leads us into the life, it is the warmth of the family, the domestic colour. In the scenes with orange tone, Pu Yi arrives to the Forbidden City, to his new family.

Pu Yi is still a child when he becomes emperor: the tone of the scene becomes yellow. Yellow can be associated to 10 to 15 years of age; it is the colour of puberty, it's intuition and awareness. It is the colour of light, it symbolizes the sun, the divine and its presence, it's the colour of the empire. Storaro uses it throughout the film not only as a tone but even placing in the scene objects of this colour, like the scene of the little emperor playing with the yellow banner which lifts up revealing the courtyard of the Forbidden City full of eunuchs: the rise of the emperor above his subjects.

Till this moment the chromatic world of the film is quite poor: red, orange and yellow, alternated with the grey of the scenes of the prisons. Pu Yi has been living in the Forbidden City, ignoring the world outside it; when he starts to acknowledge the existence of that world,  the chromatic scale expands along with this knowledge. This change is represented by green, the colour of spring, of the nature that flourishes, of life that starts again. It represents the age around the 20 years, the study, the knowledge that takes us to freedom. It is brought with the introduction of the British tutor and the green bicycle he gave the emperor as a present.

The centre of our life is represented by blue. It is the colour of freedom,  perspicacity of thinking, the intellect; while red is the past and green the present, blue is the colour of the future. It is the complementary of yellow: while the latter represents the sun, blue is associated with the moon. The tone of the scenes changes into blue when the Emperor leaves the Forbidden City for the first time, exiled by communist: he always wanted to leave his "prison", his limited world but never could because they wouldn't let him. The exile is his freedom.

When Pu Yi realizes he want to be again the Emperor of China, the tone of the images becomes indigo. It is the colour associated to the age around 50. Indigo represents full maturity, material power, the achievement of a level of life, a new balance between reason and passion.

During the years Pu Yi is held in prison, the Chinese Government tries to re-educate him to communism. The tone of the scene shot in the prison is always been grey but, as soon has Pu Yi starts to accept his responsibility a violet tone appears. Violet is the full balance between passion and reason, is the diffusion of knowledge, it represents the cyclic nature of life and the age between 70 and 80.

White is the sum of all the colours, therefore it is the sum  of all the ages, of all the phases, feelings and passions. It is life as one, the union and the completeness of it and it is associated with the last years of life. The pure white appears for the first time with snow, when Pu Yi earns his freedom and gets out from jail as a free citizen of the People's Republic of China. He returns to the Forbidden City but this time the image is balanced, with no prevailing tone.

Throughout the film there's one more colour which is always present: black. It is the matrix, the matter, the birth of elements. It is the beginning and the end, the presence and the absence of something and, of course, the unconscious.

The Last Emperor is not only an example of great cinematography by Storaro, it is the demonstration that philosophy, psychology, history, painting and every kind of art go hand by hand with cinematography to achieve a creative and unique way to visually tell a story, it is a must-see film for every cinematographer, Dp or photographer who wants to improve his art.

Film review. An analysis of the cinematography of Kon-Tiki, by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sanberg

Kon-Tiki is a co-direction between Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg who already directed together theirs previous features (Max Manus, Bandidas). It is the Norwegian film with the highest budget ever produced and it is the official submission of Norway to the best Foreign language Film of the Oscar 2013.

The plot. It's a true story about explorer Thor Heyerdal who, in 1947, decided to cross the Pacific Ocean from Lima to Polynesia in a balsa wood raft to prove that Polynesia was first settled by south Americans and not from Asians.

Cinematography: Geir Hartly Andreassen

Camera:Arri Alexa Plus,Red One MX, Sony NEX-FS100

Lenses: Zeiss Master Prime, Fujinon Alura

Aspect ratio: 2.35:1

Format: ARRIRAW, Redcode RAW

Film Stock: -

As he already did for the previous two directors' features, Max Manus, Gair Hartly Andreassen is in charge for the cinematography of Kon-Tiki. I don't know his previous works so I am not able to say if the way he lit for Kon-Tiki is his own style or not. But, to be honest, I found that the cinematography did not have a structure throughout the film apart from few characteristics.

Since the beginning of the film, Andreassen makes use of wide angle lenses offering us some beautiful landscape shots, like the opening one, in the snowed Norwegian countryside, and, particularly, the shots of the raft while in the ocean. 

Light, at the beginning, has a natural feel: every light source is justified; day light, windows and artificial lights are used as sources, always softened by diffusers or, sometimes, smoke. Anyway, there are some shots where the light looses its naturalism and becomes a bit more theatrical, without really a reason. In the second half of the film, all the scenes are shot in the balsa-wood raft and light looses completely its natural feel. In the daytime scenes, contrast is never as high as it is under the sun in open ocean neither as harsh; in the cabin, I like the way Andreassen plays with the reflection of the sun passing trough the wooden roof, but I really miss some more contrast: light is very soft and the worry of filling up shadows caused problems of double shadow in some shots.  At night time, light imitates the moon light or lightning but not always with good results: there's always a Back Light cutting the characters out from the background that sometimes is too strong and sometimes unnatural, like in the storm scene, where moon light and lightnings coexist.

The strong Back Light is not a negative point though. This is another characteristic we find throughout the film and I quite like it actually, especially  I find very interesting the use of on set lights as light sources placed as Back Lights: lampposts, shop signs and neon lamps are used for this purpose, creating some very pleasant images. Even on the raft, characters are placed between the camera and the sun, producing beautiful flared or washed images. But it's true that sometimes the Back Light is far too strong, which can be disturbing and the problem is that we don't know if it is for a chosen aesthetic inspired by the original documentary Thor shot or the necessity of getting chroma right.

As it has become usual shooting with digital cameras, a soft filter has been used, probably a Pro Mist, to soften the image. Also we can notice some grain which add an organic look, though there are some shots, particularly the ones in low light conditions, where the presence of grain is too strong and not really pleasant: working at high ISO or shots taken with the NEX?

Kon-Tiki is a film with a lot of CGI which offers us some really spectacular images. It is entertaining even without the tension and the twists you normally expect from a film of this kind. Its cinematography, though, is quite fair to be honest, with very good approaches but with unhappy solutions too.

Light tips. How to light a subject with deep-set eyes.

Every subject is different and has different characteristics, that's why we have to light every subject with different light: lighting is a powerful tool to hide or enhance features in a portrait. Here are some tips about how to light a subject with deep-set eyes.

Do not use a harsh Key Light:  a harsh light will produce heavy deep shadows that will intensify the deepness.

Do not use a wide angle lens close to the subject: it increases distance between objects changing the apparent relationship between them, so the deep-set eyes would appear more sunken then they are.

Do use a low soft Fill Light: placing a Fill Light lower than the eyes will brightening them up eliminating the shadows. You could also use a reflector to bounce light up, as well as lowering the Key Light; and remember, softer the light, softer the shadows.

Do place the camera at lower angles: this will change the perspective, making the back-set eyes less perceptible.

Hope you find it useful! Stay tuned for more lighting tips!