Art Direction for Film and Video Read online

  THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  Glass shots, first used in 1907, offer another scene replacement technique. By carefully determining the desired area to be covered, an effects artist paints the added scenic material on a large sheet of glass, which is placed in front of the camera.

  MATTE PAINTING

  Matte painters paint a portion of a scene, which is photographed and laboratory-processed, to replace a portion of another film scene—similar to a glass shot except that two pieces of film create the effect. Matte painting techniques can save a great deal of production money by eliminating the need to construct large pieces of scenery.

  Production consultant Bruce Block compares the traditional matte painting art to the way the technique is used today:

  Every studio had their own matte painting department and just regular movies had a half dozen matte paintings in them just to change the sky or add the top of a building or room. The true craft of matte painting is on the endangered species list. Now matte painting is primarily done on the computer and there are no apprentice painters sitting next to you. The painters coming up now are coming up through computers instead of the fine arts and they don’t really understand light or volume or what a shadow is or how to plot multiple-point perspective—hard to plot on a computer. Most of the really good matte painters working today actually paint the scene on glass or masonite and then put it in the computer.

  LABORATORY EFFECTS

  Optical printers offer a wealth of effects to filmmakers. These devices combine projector and camera so that the operator can transfer different projected images onto one piece of film to produce dissolves, fades, and superimposition of one image over another. The optical printer can replace the glass-shot technique by combining separately photographed portions of scenes.

  REAR PROJECTION

  In common use during the 1930s and 1940s, backgrounds produced by projected images through translucent screens offered many advantages to the major studio system. A producer could send a second photographic unit anywhere in the world to shoot background footage. Doubles for the actors could appear, as long as they wore similar costumes and were not seen at a recognizable distance. Back at the studio, directors used the background footage behind actors walking, riding horses, in cars, or gazing at the view. Studios kept libraries of background film and used these images over and over again.

  Bill Hansard, CEO and Operational Director of Hansard Enterprises, Inc. (Culver City, CA), has seen the advantages of rear projection during production of over 300 feature films, 500 television shows, and 5,000 commercials:

  With rear projection you have the advantage of the actors and crew seeing what is beside them, behind them, or around them. The actors can interact naturally with what is in the background. The crew can do interactive lighting with confidence since they can also see the background. Most importantly, you see in the dailies [next-day film viewing] on the large screen exactly what the scene will look like.

  MODERN EFFECTS

  In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ushered in a new era of special effects. The film used front projection, computer-controlled camera movement, and extensive use of blue- and green-screen techniques.

  Blue and Green Screens

  Although rear projection of images through translucent screens enhances many films and saves location shooting costs, the vistas it can present are limited to the size of the projection screen. Blue- and green-screen effects require the actors to move in a void without the aid of surrounding scenery, but this method offers the possibility of larger vistas and sophisticated laboratory processing. The actors’ and objects’ images are then combined in the laboratory with the background. Bill Hansard describes some of the disadvantages:

  Green and blue screens can sometimes be a false economy. When you are on stage, the blue and green screens go up rather easily, get lit, and you shoot the scene with your full production crew and people or objects in front of the screens. It may have been simple enough to shoot, but it doesn’t end there (as with rear projection). What most production companies don’t always think about or understand are all of the steps the film has to go through in postproduction. The negative has to be scanned into a digital source, composited with the background, rendered, and finally output back to a new negative. All of this is additional cost and extra time. For every blue- or green-screen shot the process is the same. Additional shots mean more time and more cost in postproduction when the meter is running.

  The film Blues Brothers 2000 has many special effects that used models, green screen, and computer compositing. Available Light Postproduction Effects Supervisor John Van Vliet and staff created the finished effect shown in Color Plate 1. The script required the effect of Valkyrie-like ghost riders galloping through clouds over a live action rock concert stage and audience.

  In front of a green background and floor, green-clothed puppeteers manipulated the skeletonized horses and riders (see Color Plate 1).

  A separate shot captured the fire-breathing effect produced by flames in front of a black background (see Color Plate 2).

  A puppeteer and a puppet horse figure (see Color Plate 3).

  Artists and technicians then computer-composited the final effect seen in Color Plate 4.

  Front Projection

  A specialized projector sends the background image on the same axis as the camera lens onto a highly reflective screen behind the actors or objects. Light levels on the subjects wash out the background image projected on them.

  THE DIGITAL PRESENT AND FUTURE

  As we have seen, today’s production designers have a wealth of techniques at their disposal, compared to the early designers’ dependence on paper, pencil, hammer, nails, and paint. Computer technology already produces major portions of feature films and promises to become even more important in the future. If we can produce digital dinosaurs and gorillas today, are digital actors next?

  •

  In the next chapter we will leave the digital effects world and see basic lighting instruments used by lighting directors and cinematog-raphers to illuminate the production designers’ work.

  6

  LIGHTING EQUIPMENT

  A set standing on the stage needs to be carefully lit to make it visible to the cameras and to give it mood and atmosphere. Production designers with basic knowledge of lighting instruments and techniques can work with the video lighting director or film’s director of photography to bring out the set’s qualities. This chapter describes what instruments produce different qualities of light.

  TWO TYPES OF LIGHTING INSTRUMENTS

  Stage lighting has two fundamental qualities: diffuse and directional. Diffuse light covers broad areas and is flat such as the light given off by a bare frosted lightbulb or daylight on a cloudy day. Focused light is directional such as that given off by a flashlight.

  Diffuse Lighting Instruments

  The following types of instruments give off diffuse light:

  • Scoop—A large bulb in a scoop-shaped reflector.

  • Broad—A group of lamps set next to each other on a white surface.

  • Softlight—A lamp hidden from view, reflecting off a white surface.

  • Striplight—A row of lamps used to illuminate large areas of backings or walls.

  Directional Lighting Instruments

  The following types of lights give the lighting director control over the direction, shape, and color of the light beam:

  • Fresnel [freh-nell] spotlight – After struggling with the old thick glass spotlight lenses, which were inefficient and tended to shatter and fall on actors’ heads, Augustin-Jean Fresnel invented the Fresnel lens which overcame these difficulties with a series of concentric ridges and immortalized the name Fresnel. His lens produces a beam of light that can be shaped.

  • Ellipsoidal spotlight—This light can produce a sharply defined beam of light. It gets its name from the elliptically shaped reflector inside the housing. Metal slides placed inside the lens
housing can cast patterns and shapes on set surfaces.

  LIGHT CONTROLS

  Long strips of electrical outlets hang in the stage grid. Lighting instruments secured to the counterweighted pipes are plugged into individual outlets. Each circuit connects to a patch panel on the lighting board below where groups of lights can be connected together. Dimmers control the amount of electricity flowing to each lamp or group of lamps, giving the lighting director control of light intensities.

  The following sections describe other means of shape and pattern control that help the lighting director, besides the intensity of the light beam.

  Barndoors

  Each of the Fresnel-lensed spotlights carries a set of four black metal flaps called barndoors attached to the front of the lens housing. This set of flaps can rotate and swing in and out to shape the light beam.

  Color

  Channels on the front lamp housing can accept frames holding a sheet of gel, short for gelatin, which was used before plastic gels were available. Transparent gel sheets come in hundreds of colors, patterns, and frosted mediums.

  Pattern

  To produce soft patterns on surfaces, lighting technicians hang or stand-clamp a cutout called a cookie, or cukie (named after a Mr. Cukaloris), a few feet in front of a light. These wood or metal cutouts carry patterns of window frames, foliage, or abstract designs that can break up an otherwise blank surface.

  Flags

  To further control the spread of a light beam in front of a light’s lens, technicians use flags. These are metal rectangular frames filled with opaque black fabric, which keeps the light beam from spreading.

  Reflectors

  The unclouded sun produces harsh light and deep shadows. To bounce reflected light into unwanted shadows, directors of photography use reflectors surfaced with foil or white surfaces. Supported on stands, the reflectors can be adjusted at many angles and directions. Large panels of translucent fabric, called silks, are stretched over a set to soften harsh sunlight.

  •

  Now that we have seen lighting’s basic tools, in the next chapter two lighting directors demonstrate their methods of lighting a set. See which one you want to light your next production.

  7

  TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECTIVE LIGHTING

  Film directors of photography and video lighting directors work carefully to make settings and actors look good to the camera. To help them achieve the best results, production designers and art directors need to be familiar with some basic lighting methods.

  FILM AND VIDEO

  Film Lighting

  For a film, the director of photography (DP), after discussing the mood, style, and general look of the photography with the director, shoots tests using various lenses, filters, and film stocks. The DP determines the elements and chooses the type of instruments to use and where they are to be hung and focused. Because film photography generally uses one camera and many changes of angle between takes, the DP directs the relighting of the actors between setups as they move from place to place and between wide shots and close-ups.

  Video Lighting

  The video lighting director confers with the director and video technicians to provide correct working light levels for dramatic effect and electronic requirements. A video director commonly uses three cameras or more and cuts from camera to camera in real time without stopping to relight each time. The lighting director, then, has to light the actors and set to accommodate different angles without relighting.

  LIGHTS FOR THE ACTORS

  Lighting directors commonly use a triangular lighting configuration for the actors: key light, backlight, and fill light.

  • Key light—A spotlight, usually a Fresnel-lensed instrument, lights actors from the front or from a slight angle to provide modeling.

  • Backlight—Another spotlight directed from the back; this light separates actors from the background.

  • Fill light—A broad, scoop, or softlight fills in shadows cast by the key light.

  Art director Dena Thomson recalls a disappointing experience with bad lighting:

  I designed a set a couple of years ago for a video production set in American Revolutionary times and was most proud of the room where the Continental Congress took place. I did a lot of research and tried to make the set very authentic to the period. A couple of scenes took place at night and the lighting director just totally ignored the fact that the room was supposed to be candlelit! He just poured the light on and that was the end of my set.

  DIFFERENT LIGHTING METHODS

  Lighting directors Jones and Smith will now demonstrate their ways of using diffuse and directional lighting instruments. Besides having to light the set, they also need to light the actors. Both lighting directors have consulted the director, who has told them where the actors will stand and move, as well as the time of day, which is dusk in this example. Both lighting directors, light meters in hand, stand in the set at the appropriate places, and direct the lighting technicians who hang and focus the lights.

  The Jones Method

  Jones floods the walls and acting areas of our lovingly designed suburban living room set with the required amount of light per square foot, roams the set with his light meter, calls the set lit, and goes to lunch. This approach get Jones and his crew to lunch early and makes the meters in the camera control system register the correct numbers, but causes much complaining from the director and art director. Jones, however, believes that he has done his job.

  The Jones Result

  When we look at the Jones-lit set, the ceiling of the room appears to have been ripped off, and brilliant shadowless light floods the interior. The script says that the time of day is dusk, and the heroine is expecting her neighbors to drop over to admire her new sofa. Bright light at this time of day makes no sense at all. Besides, after we carefully designed nooks and crannies into this room and have rummaged through junkyards to find terrific old moldings to go around the doors, the carvings are hardly visible in the video picture, and the set walls are as flat as cardboard. The Jones method has destroyed the character and mood of the set, and does not let the audience sense the time of day.

  The Smith Method

  Enter lighting director Smith. She lights the acting areas using key lights, backlights, and fill lights, but the key lights are softened with frost gels, and the backlight comes from the direction of the picture window. Great. Things are looking up. At least the audience can see that light is coming through the window.

  Smith directs some low-angle light at the outside of the front door so that when the neighbors come over and step through the door, they are backlit with what we will perceive to be the lowering rays of the setting sun. Aha! It’s late in the day. Smith also places a metal slide in a spotlight that casts a window-frame shadow on the opposite wall; another clue that the sun is low. To prepare for scenes that are to take place in full daylight, Smith sets the light levels on the backing outside the window somewhat higher than those inside the set. The smart computer-controlled lighting system remembers the two light levels.

  Enter: More Motivated Lighting

  We have placed some table lamps at decorative and sensible places in the room. Jones treated them as he did every other object in the set: more things to reflect light to make the meters point to the right numbers. Smith replaces the 50-watt bulbs with which the lamps came from the property rental house with 150-watt bulbs. She then connects the lamps to a dimmer circuit so that if the director decides to have our sofa-hostess draw the drapery in front of the picture window when the sun has set, Smith can bring up the intensity of the lamps to put across the idea that night has fallen. Already the room looks as if someone lives in it.

  Firmly Ensconsed

  We have placed a pair of wall sconces at either side of a painting. Once again, Jones treated them as more things to make the meters bounce so the sconce bulbs cast their own shadows on the wall, which is impossible in real life. Some lighting directors, the minute their eyes land on the
wall sconces, direct a small spotlight on each. The light bulbs then cast their own shadows on the wall, which is also impossible in real life.

  Having fallen into this trap early in her career, Smith avoids it by hanging spotlights in the grid above and has the light fall at a sharp angle behind the sconces, thereby casting a soft glow on the wall but not on the sconces. We now have candles and bulbs not casting their own shadows on the wall.

  Smith turns her attention to the set walls. She has the sensitivity and taste to see that we have spent a lot of time finding interesting moldings to go around the doors. She isn’t going to let them go to waste as Jones did. Using just enough light, which appears to come from sources such as the table lamps and the front window, Smith brings out the three-dimensional qualities of the room’s shapes by casting shadows. However, she does not let the lighting call attention to itself. Smith does not want the lighting or the set to distract the audience’s attention from the dramatic action.

  Three Cheers for Smith!

  When Smith finishes the lighting, the set looks three-dimensional, the audience will know the time of day, the actors will look good, and our carefully selected set decorations will give the audience a sense of who lives in the house. What more could anyone ask? Answer: a raise for lighting director Smith.