Lighting

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Lighting

LIGHTING CREWS AND THEIR COLLABORATORS
LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND FILM STYLE
FURTHER READING

To begin to appreciate the ways in which lighting can shape the ways we respond to a film, consider the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) where a young wife (Joan Fontaine) lies ailing in her bed while her mysterious newlywed husband (Cary Grant) slowly ascends the stairs to her room, advancing through a spiderweb of foreboding shadows. On a small tray he carries a glass of milk that glows with an eerie luminosity. The scene invites us to wonder whether he might be trying to poison his wife. Such mistrust assuredly does not arise from the popular actor's star image; instead, the ominous shadows cast across the set and the covert placement of a light bulb inside the glass combine to arouse unease.

Lighting has come to be an important component of cinema's visual design. It is widely recognized that in film, as elsewhere, it can create a substantial emotional impact. A primordial response to darkness and light is a deep-seated element of human psychology that filmmakers have harnessed in order to influence the ways viewers respond to narrative development. On the one hand, deep shadows can make a character seem untrustworthy or conceal a host of horrors. On the other, bright, diffused lighting can provide comfort and reassurance or create the impression of an angelic countenance. Extremely bright light can cause discomfort, though, and can even be used as a weapon, as in Rear Window (1954) and The Big Combo (1955), where it dazzles the villains and halts their advance.

Brightness is only one variable of lighting that can contribute to the effect of a scene. The choices the cinematographer makes about what kinds of lights will be used, how many there will be, and where they will be placed all require careful consideration. Moreover, color and black-and-white cinematography each allows for different lighting effects. Colored lighting can give rise to a range of subjective impressions that may be systematically used throughout a film for atmosphere, as in the moody and heavily stylized Batman (1989), or for metaphorical significance, as in Vertigo (1958) when Scottie (James Stewart) persuades Judy (Kim Novak) to transform her appearance into that of the dead Madeleine (Novak). When she emerges from her bathroom made over into Madeleine's image, she is bathed in a green light, its supernatural associations accentuating the uncanniness of the resurrection of her alter ego.

Film lighting has three main purposes. The first is clarity of image. It is important for viewers to be able to discern all the important elements in the frame. These might range from facial expressions and physical gestures to the presence of significant props. In early cinema this was the sole purpose of lighting, but around 1905 other factors came into play. Lighting's second purpose is a quest for greater realism. Films began to introduce visual schemes that suggested that the lighting came from logical sources within the world depicted. The use of "effects lighting," as it was known at the time, paved the way for the third purpose: the creation of atmosphere or emotional effect. The development of lighting technique as a significant element of mise-en-scène became an important tool for manipulating audience responses to characters and narrative events. Increasingly, a repertoire of standardized lighting techniques came to be used for particular dramatic situations and particular lighting styles came to be strongly associated with film genres.

LIGHTING CREWS AND THEIR COLLABORATORS

The person responsible for the design and execution of a film's lighting is the director of photography (known in Britain, tellingly, as the "lighting cameraman"). This feat cannot be accomplished alone, however, so directors of photography, or cinematographers, need to work closely with their own support teams as well as with a range of collaborators in other departments. The cinematographer's main assistant is the gaffer, who is responsible for designing and supervising the rigging of the lights that are required to produce the effects the cinematographer desires. The gaffer is, in turn, assisted by the best boy and a range of electricians and grips who handle the often substantial array of equipment.

The range of lights used can, in themselves, require a large crew. First they must be positioned round the set, either on stands or supported overhead, a task performed by the riggers. During filming, the lights need to be operated, which may include dimming or moving them. Some types of light, such as carbon arcs, require constant monitoring by a dedicated operator. As well as the lights themselves, the lighting department uses a wide range of other apparatus that needs to be set up, monitored, and maneuvered. Flags or gobos, screens that come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, each with a different name, are used to prevent light from shining into the camera lens or onto areas of the set where shadows are required. They also may be used to help prevent microphone stands and other set equipment from casting shadows into the frame. Reflectors are widely used, especially for outdoor shooting, to redirect light in the desired direction. The different colors and substances used to make reflectors determine the type of light reflected. A choice can therefore be made between a sunlight and moonlight effect, for instance. Diffusers—translucent screens, often made of fine mesh or textured glass—are used to soften a hard light source. When shooting with artificial lights, it is possible to place a small diffuser close to the light source, but for sunlight shooting far larger screens may be needed.

Whereas gaffers and grips deal with the mechanics of delivering the lighting, its design is a product of the cinematographer's collaboration with the director. Although some directors have only a limited understanding of lighting equipment and technique, most have clear ideas of the kinds of effects they are looking for. Normally, they seek to create a particular atmosphere as part of their film's look. They also direct the movements of the actors and the camera, and the lighting must respond to each of these for reasons of visual clarity as well as compositional effect. The lighting styles of some directors can be as individually distinctive as those of top cinematographers. Josef von Sternberg (1894–1969), for instance, had very specific ideas about the way his protégé Marlene Dietrich should be lit in films such as Dishonored (1931) and Shanghai Express (1932) (both photographed by Lee Garmes [1898–1978]) and Blonde Venus (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934) (photographed by Bert Glennon [1893–1967]). More recently, Clint Eastwood's work as a director has been defined by unusually low-key lighting, irrespective of film genre. Like Sternberg and many other directors, Eastwood has shown a preference for repeatedly collaborating with cinematographers who are experienced in delivering his preferred visual style. His most regularly used cinematographer in the 1970s and early 1980s was Bruce Surtees (b. 1937), who was responsible for such films as The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Sudden Impact (1983). Surtees's former camera operator, Jack Green (b. 1946), then continued in the same visual tradition for thirteen films including Bird (1988) and Unforgiven (1992). He, in turn, was later replaced by his former chief lighting technician, Tom Stern, who photographed Blood Work (2002), Mystic River (2003), and Million Dollar Baby (2004).

The camera operator is another crew member with whom the cinematographer must work closely. In America, the director of photography often supervises all aspects of cinematography, including the camera and its operator. In Britain there is a greater separation of roles so that the operator is more likely to take instructions from the director. Irrespective of the line of command, though, a close relationship between lighting and camera is crucial. This is partly because the lighting design and camera placement must respond to one another, but also because the film speed (the type of film stock used and the amount of light it needs to register a clear image) affects the level of light required. The exposure time (the duration that the camera aperture is open) and the lighting levels must also be in accord with one another.

Furthermore, the cinematographer must collaborate with the members of the crew who are responsible for the appearance of the people and objects that are to be lit. Early discussions between the production designer and/or art director and the cinematographer can prove immensely beneficial, although they do not always occur. Set design can have important implications for the type and number of lights that are used, and for their positioning. The presence or absence of walls and ceilings in studio sets are especially critical in determining where lights can be positioned. Sets may be designed in such a way as to conceal light sources within the frame. Alternatively, they may incorporate visible light sources, such as table lamps, that suggest a logical motivation for the lighting used. Sometimes the set design may even include cheated lighting effects, such as painted shadows.

The use of particular colors in set design, costume, and makeup may also have ramifications for lighting design. Most lights are not pure white but have a slightly colored hue, known as their "color temperature," which can change the appearance of the colors in front of them. This affects black-and-white as well as color photography, since two very different colors may photograph identically in monochrome, or else the same color may appear quite differently depending on the color of the light. For trick effects this has occasionally been used to advantage. One of the most famous instances of a special effect achieved through colored light was the transformation scene of actor Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), which was accomplished without any cuts or in-camera trickery. Instead, the effect was obtained by painting the actor's face with colored makeup. During filming, different-colored filters were moved in front of the lights, the technique gradually revealing the dark shadowed effect of his face paint.

The juxtaposition of dark and light surfaces may also raise lighting issues, since providing the correct amount of lighting for extreme contrasts can prove difficult. White bed sheets, for instance, may "burn up" in a dazzle of reflected light. Illuminating the scene at a lower level is likely to result in the face of someone in the bed appearing underexposed. Colored linen has often proved preferable, therefore, especially when shooting in a black-and-white, a situation that requires cooperation between the cinematographer and the art department.

As well as collaborating with other members of the production crew, the director of photography will normally try to foster a close relationship with the laboratory that develops the film. Both the apparent lighting levels and the color tones can be adjusted during the process of timing (or grading, as it is known in Britain). By deciding in advance how far this potential will be exploited, the cinematographer can choose to forego difficult on-set lighting setups in favor of emulating their effects in the lab.

LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND FILM STYLE

There has always been a reciprocal relationship between technology and film style. The development of different types of lighting equipment and the introduction of new film stocks have both expanded the range of lighting methods and effects available to the cinematographer. Many types of lighting units were first developed for nonfilmic uses, such as street lighting or searchlights. Only later was their potential for producing cinematic lighting effects explored. Although certain styles of film lighting arose in response to technologies that already existed, many other technical innovations were the result of experiments by enterprising cinematographers and gaffers. In some instances, the name of a certain lighting effect has derived from its first use in film. One example is the "obie," a small spotlight that was designed by the cinematographer Lucien Ballard (1908–1988) during the filming of The Lodger (1944) in order to conceal the facial scars of actress Merle Oberon. The history of film lighting is a complex chronicle of intersecting influences involving technological and aesthetic innovations, periods of relative stasis, and the gradual development and refinement of existing techniques.

The lighting techniques used in the early cinema of the late 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century were astonishingly primitive in comparison with those used in still photography. Filmmakers of that era did not adopt the range of artificial lighting that was already standard equipment in photographic studios and widely used by photographers to enhance the aesthetic appearance of their work. Instead, filmmakers relied almost entirely on bright daylight. For this reason, when films were not shot on location they were filmed on rooftop sets, or else in studios built with either an open air design or a glass roof. Thomas Edison's famous Black Maria studio, built in 1892, was based on a rotating structure that allowed its glass roof to be maneuvered to follow the direct sunlight. A greenhouse-like studio built by the French filmmaker Georges Méliès (1861–1938) in 1897 that featured both glazed roof and walls and a series of retractable blinds proved to be an influential model for the design of later studios. The availability of many hours of bright sunlight was so important to early filmmakers that it has often been cited as one of the reasons that the American film industry shifted its base from New York to California (although other reasons, such as the wide range of landscapes California could offer for location shooting, also were important).

The use of daylight as the main source of illumination provided visual clarity. It did not allow as many opportunities to create dramatic effects as artificial lighting did, however. Nor did it permit indoor or night-time cinematography. The first uses of artificial lighting have been traced back as far as 1896, when the pioneering German filmmaker Oskar Messter (1866–1943) opened his indoor studio in Berlin. By 1900 the Edison studio in America had begun to make regular use of artificial light to complement naturally available light. Examples of this practice can be found in Why Jones Discharged His Clerks (1900) and The Mystic Swing (1900). Although the use of artificial lighting was initially confined to replacing or augmenting sunlight in order to provide a clear image, by 1905 filmmakers had begun to explore the creative possibilities of artificial light. In spite of the fact that the technology had long been available, the potential value of harnessing it to further the aesthetic development of film style does not appear to have been recognized in the early cinema.

Two main sources of artificial light were used at this time. One source was arc lights, which produced illumination by means of an electric spark jumping between two poles of carbon. The other was mercury vapor lights, which worked in a way similar to modern fluorescent lighting tubes. These sources allowed the creation of directional lighting, meaning that a chosen area of the set could be lit more brightly than the other parts. As the practical and aesthetic benefits of electric lighting came to be accepted both in America and abroad, some producers adopted it as their primary source of lighting, and the first "dark studio" opened in Turin, Italy, in 1907.

In America, experiments with lighting effects continued, both indoors and out. A range of new techniques were discovered, although no significant technological innovations appear to have been introduced until the 1910s. The director D. W. Griffith (1875–1948) and his cameramen were particularly active in their exploration of lighting effects, which can be found in such films as Pippa Passes (1909), The Thread of Destiny (1910), and Enoch Arden (1911). The last of these is often cited as the film that introduced a significant new technique: the creation of a soft lighting effect on faces by using reflectors to redirect strong backlight. The innovation was claimed by the cameraman Billy Bitzer (1872–1944), although questions have been raised as to whether he was really the first to use this strategy. In the mid-1910s, Griffith also began to make increasing use of high contrast lighting that cast deep shadows across characters and sets. This style had emerged a few years earlier in the Danish and German cinemas. Due to its earlier use by the famous Dutch painter, it is sometimes known as Rembrandt lighting, a term attributed to the Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959), who used the technique in films such as The Warrens of Virginia (1915) and The Cheat (1915).

During the latter half of the 1910s, filmmakers adopted two significant new techniques, both derived from other art forms. One was the use of carbon arc spotlights, which had previously been used in theater and which allowed a strong light to be directed from a distance onto a particular actor or area of the set. The other was the use of diffusing screens, which already belonged to the repertoire of the still photographer. Diffusers could be used to transform a hard light into a soft light that did not cast such severe shadows. The increasing use of soft lighting techniques, whether they relied on reflectors or diffusers, had particular benefits for facial lighting. Soft lighting produced more flattering effects and, with the rise of the star system during this decade, it was becoming ever more important to make the actors look attractive.

The range of lighting sources that were used in film, and a growing appreciation of their potential to create specific effects, encouraged the development of more sophisticated lighting styles. It became common to use a combination of several lights to create a pleasing aesthetic that flattered the appearance of the actors and the sets as well as serving the film's narrative requirements. One of the best known lighting setups is the so-called three-point system, which was used primarily for figure lighting. The brightest of the three lights was the "key" light, which was directed toward the actor's face from the front-side. If this light were used on its own it would leave one side of the face in virtual darkness and cause the actor's nose to cast a large, unflattering shadow. To prevent this from happening, a second softer light known as the "filler" light was directed at the other side of the face. This light was normally positioned close to the camera, on the opposite side from the key light. It helped to balance the composition, reducing the dark shadows cast by the key light while preserving the facial sculpting. A third "backlight" was positioned behind the actor in order to create a halo of light around the hair. This served to separate the actor from the background and also helped to emphasize the fairness of blonde hair, which did not otherwise show up well on the monochromatic film stock that was used until the late 1920s.

A third type of light that came to be used in conjunction with the arc and mercury vapor lights was the incandescent light, which used a glowing metal filament, much like most modern domestic lighting. The cinematographer Lee Garmes (1898–1978) claimed to have used this type of light as early as 1919, although its first use is more commonly identified in Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924), which was photographed by Ben Reynolds (c. 1891–1967) and William Daniels (1901–1970). Whatever the case, it was not until the introduction of panchromatic film stock in 1926 that it came into common use, when it was found that the color temperature of incandescents, or "inkies," was better matched to this stock than was that of the arc lights. Studios were quick to embrace the benefits of incandescents, as these lights required less electrical power and less manpower than other forms of electrical lighting. It was widely predicted that their use could halve the cost of film lighting as well as significantly reduce the amount of time spent in setting up and operating lights during the film shoot. A further decisive factor in the wide adoption of incandescent lights was the temporary abandonment of arc lighting with the coming of sound. Filmmakers discovered that the humming noise emitted by arc lights was picked up by recording equipment. Only in the early 1930s, after a way was found to silence them, were arcs reintroduced as a supplement to the incandescents that had taken their place as standard studio equipment.

The wide range of easily governed incandescent spotlights introduced in the 1930s allowed an ever more precise control of lighting effects. Complex systems were designed to ensure that every detail of the image was carefully governed. In his 1949 textbook, Painting with Light, the Hollywood cinematographer John Alton (1901–1996) described an eight-point system for close-up lighting (p. 99). It was based on the three-point system described above but included some extra lights that helped to improve the aesthetic effect. Three were directed at the actors: an "eyelight," which brought out a sparkle in the actors' eyes; a "clothes light," which showed up the details of their costumes; and a "kicker light," which added further definition to their hair and cheekbones and was normally positioned between the backlight and the filler light. Additionally, a "fill light" provided diffused lighting for the entire set while a "background light" illuminated the set behind the actors.

Around 1947 a new lighting aesthetic was introduced that had arisen in response to the techniques used for shooting newsreels during World War II. Shooting combat footage did not allow filmmakers any opportunities to create complicated lighting setups; instead, they had to rely on daylight, or else on a handful of powerful lights that provided a general illumination. The photofloods first introduced in 1940 were ideal for this purpose. Some fictional films began to emulate this rough and ready aesthetic. A wave of documentary-like thrillers ensued, which eschewed such complicated schemes as the eight-point lighting system in the service of greater realism. Many of these, such as Boomerang (1947) and Call Northside 777 (1948), were based on real events and filmed on location.

The 1950s saw a further erosion of the dominance of the lighting techniques that had characterized films of the 1930s and 1940s. One reason for this was the growing popularity of color filmmaking. The range of different hues meant that fewer lights were needed to differentiate between one surface and another. The backlight, which had been used to separate figures from the background plane, passed into near redundancy for a time. It still had other uses, though, one of which was to illuminate rainfall, far more visible when lit from the rear than when lit frontally. Some of the other changes in lighting technique during the 1950s can be attributed to the rapid expansion of television production. Television relied heavily on the use of live, multi-camera shooting on a studio stage. The lighting style that best suited this mode of production was one that offered a bright, even illumination of the whole set. Even though theatrical films continued to light shots with greater individual care than did TV productions, the high-key style associated with television became a widely accepted norm.

JOHN ALTON
b. Johann Altmann, Sopron, Hungary, 5 October 1901, d. 2 June 1996

Regarded as one of Hollywood's most eminent cinematographers, John Alton is best known for his work in film noir during the 1940s and 1950s. His contribution to more than a dozen noirs helped to define their characteristic style of high-contrast black-and-white photography. Alton was also responsible for some very fine work in color, and he received an Oscar^® for the ballet sequence of the lavish musical An American in Paris (1951). His enduring reputation was cemented further by the publication of his classic textbook Painting with Light in 1949, the first book on lighting technique by a Hollywood professional and still one of the most revealing and readable.

Alton's work is characterized by a tendency to use as few lights as possible, an approach that allowed him to create arresting images both quickly and cheaply. The speed with which he worked and his refusal to follow in the established traditions of lighting technique reportedly made him extremely unpopular with other cinematographers and lighting crew members. Nevertheless, his economical working practices and the innovative effects he achieved made him the cinematographer of choice for such renowned directors as Anthony Mann, Vincente Minnelli, Richard Brooks, and Allan Dwan.

John Alton entered the film industry as an MGM lab technician and soon became a cameraman, working for some years in Europe and then in Argentina before returning to Hollywood. The film that first propelled him to the status of an A-list cinematographer was T-Men (1947), although he had previously racked up well over forty credits. T-Men was the first of his six collaborations with Mann, which would later include Raw Deal (1948) and Border Incident (1949). While it is considered one of the first "documentary-style" noirs, at times Alton's highly stylized lighting aesthetic anticipates his most famous work: The Big Combo (1955).

Like most of the films on which he worked, The Big Combo was a low-budget affair whose apparent production values were greatly elevated by the accomplished lighting technique. Alton's sparse lighting sources sometimes bathed faces in light against backdrops of blackness, or else concealed them in deep shadow. In the final shot, now seen as one of noir's most iconic images, he silhouetted the characters against a dazzling white haze. In this scene, as elsewhere, the set dressing is virtually insignificant since the players act out their parts in a world delimited by little other than darkness and light. For the seventeen-minute ballet sequence of An American in Paris Alton used some of the same techniques including silhouetting and deep shadows. These effects were sometimes used to draw attention away from cuts, producing dramatic results. Throughout the sequence, the rapid shifts between different lighting effects and colors within a single shot are dazzling.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), He Walked by Night (1948), An American in Paris (1951), The Big Combo (1955), Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography (1992)