ILLUMINATING
Filmmaker talks with Miguel Arteta, Peter Sollett, Miranda July, Aaron Katz, Kelly Reichardt and Ronald Bronstein about the relationship between lighting and their creative process.
MIGUEL ARTETA'S THE GOOD GIRL. PHOTO BY: DALE ROBINETTE
Miguel Arteta
director, The Good Girl
I think lighting is intuitive. It is one of the key tools with which you can communicate with the audience. But it‘s always the balance of all the tools available to you that you have to consider. Composition, costume, performance, dialogue, casting, camera movement, music and production design are also there. I always ask myself: What is the heart of this scene? Usually that leads me to one close-up that I can totally imagine and that contains the pulse and meaning of the scene. Then I build the scene backward from that one image. And lighting will be part of it. Will an actor have walked into shadows for this close-up? Or are they more exposed than the rest? Were they always in a soft light environment? There are an infinite number of ways of seeing that close-up lit. The balance of all the cinematic tools is usually revealed organically to me by letting myself picture that key close-up after the first few rehearsals.
I rehearse the scene usually until my d.p., more than anyone else actually, believes the scene. Then I try and communicate to him, as we‘ve seen it, what that key close-up looks like. I will get his input on how to make the most meaning of that frame and then he and I go back and, most times, restage the entire scene so that the right actor hits the right spot for our imagined close-up. At first it confuses actors a bit, but after a few days they start getting into it because they understand that the way a scene starts only matters with respect to where it is going to end. And that making the most out of that one sublime, hilarious, scary or whatever specific emotion the scene holds is always most important. How brightly, how moody, how darkly — it‘s always revealed in that moment in a scene where we are surprised, moved and most affected.
PTER SOLLETT'S NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST. PHOTO BY: K.C. BAILEY
Peter Sollett
writer-director, Raising Victor Vargas
director, Nick and Norah‘s Infinite Playlist
My guiding light, so to speak, is what I find in the world around me. While location scouting I like to see how spaces are lit naturally and use that as a basis for our lighting design.
If we are working with a color palette in the film I will propose to the d.p. that we supplement what we find in that environment with a color from our palette so long as that doesn‘t interfere with the reality of the scene.
I will think about the scenes before and after the one we are designing and consider whether or not it would benefit the transition between those scenes to have a contrast in the lighting, and, if so, what kind.
An example of this from my new film, Nick and Norah‘s Infinite Playlist, is a love scene that d.p. Tom Richmond and I shot in a recording studio. The scene that follows it is on a street, late at night. We had a significant degree of freedom on how to light the recording studio because of the amount of lighting design that naturally goes into one of those spaces. We kept our color temperature warm, as we did with all of the film, and softened the shadows as much as possible. The scene is a very positive experience for our characters and we wanted to reflect that. Transitioning directly from that into a street scene at night felt a bit scary to me. I didn‘t want to follow up a lovely intimate scene with something that might feel at all dangerous.
Tom and I chose to shoot under a scaffolding that was naturally lit with a row of bulbs. Our motivation to do this was to avoid plunging our characters into darkness after they finally found one another within the story.
All of that said, though, I usually say little to a d.p. on set about their lighting unless I think something is way off the mark or competing with the scene.
MIRANDA JULY'S ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.
Miranda July
writer-director, Me and You and Everyone We Know
The light is something that I begin to see as I am writing the script — it has to do with the tone of the movie. With the last movie I remember I saw a kind of orangey light, and the word “kalidescopic” was in my mind a lot. I‘m not sure I ever actually told this to the d.p., Chuy Chavez, although he did capture that. For my new movie I keep thinking about how dark it is, but in a simple, undramatic way. I first realized this when I was looking at a photo of a Paul Klee puppet that was made out of a black flower-print fabric. I knew that that ordinary-looking black fabric had something to do with my movie.
I am a little more aware this time of how you can really choose what kind of lighting you want, and when I don‘t have the words I point to pictures. I have several .mac galleries for each department of the film: pictures scanned from books, stills from other movies, even from ads. Because I don‘t know much standard film vocabulary, I‘ve been asking my new d.p., “How would you describe the light in this photo?” Then he‘ll describe it and then I‘ll say: “I can see that being really good for this scene.” I would say that this is the area that I have the least confidence in. Writing, acting, directing actors, costumes, production design — I really trust my intuition on all these things. But somewhere along the way I think I decided that everyone knew more than me about lighting and shooting, so I really have to cheer myself on, keep reminding myself that my way might somehow be interesting.
AARON KAT'S QUIET CITY.
Aaron Katz
writer-director, Quiet City
Before he arrived in Brooklyn d.p. Andy Reed and I spent quite a bit of time talking on the phone about the general look of Quiet City. We agreed that we wanted it handheld, that we wanted it warm, that we wanted to have a lot of practicals in the frame, that we wanted to use a lot of long lenses and that we wanted to see some things in the out-of-focus foreground. Once Reed got into town, with those things in mind, we visited each of the locations and talked about a few specific shots and potential problems, and we tried to get an idea of what the blocking might look like. Because the film had a lot of improvisational qualities to it we couldn‘t be sure of what was going to happen and we didn‘t have a shot list. During production, before shooting in a location, Reed and I would remind ourselves of what we had to get to make each scene work, but it was pretty free-flowing and we tried to respond to what was right in front of us. Within scenes, we would usually discuss a shot, come to an agreement on what it should look like and (along with the assistant director) how long it would take, and then I would go talk to the actors while Reed would get it set up. Then I would come back, have the actors stand in and take a look at the frame. Reed would usually have a couple of options for me both in terms of framing and lighting. We‘d talk it out a little more and then agree on what we wanted to do.
We used a lot of practicals in conjunction with bounce cards and a China ball. We also had this contraption that Reed made. The thing was a bank of four shop lights screwed into a frame of 2x4s with different color temperatures of florescent tubes as needed. It was seriously unwieldy and difficult to transport on the subway, which was how we got around. It was used in a couple scenes when scheduling dictated that we would run out of daylight before we had shot everything. We would shoot the stuff facing the windows first and then turn around and use this thing afterward. It also served as a source in a couple of nighttime shots that needed more than the soft light the China ball could provide. Additionally it makes a cameo in the movie as a piece of art in the gallery scene.
KELLY REICHARDT'S OLD JOY. PHOTO BY: K.C. BAILEY
Kelly Reichardt
writer-director, Old Joy
I‘m thinking about lighting when I‘m working on the script, and those thoughts work their way into how I‘m going to approach the whole project. Since I want to work small, with as little equipment as possible, my writing partner and I try to write for exteriors and make as much use of available light as possible. I don‘t think there is any one way of working with d.p.s any more than there is one approach that would work with all actors, each relationship has its own life. The lighting conversation comes up when the d.p. and I begin to talk about the story and setting. It comes up when we‘re figuring what part of the country to shoot in, what time of year to shoot, what lenses and stock to use. It works into everything. Having said that, the nature of low-budget filmmaking is that you could spend a year planning all these things down to the last detail, poring over photo books, discussing contrast, grain and lighting, doing test shoots at the location, and at the last minute some unexpected change occurs and you find yourself standing in the rain with a whole new reality, whether that be created by the natural elements, equipment or crew issues. In low-budget filmmaking the best-laid plans of mice and women often go awry.
RONALD BRONSTEIN'S FROWNLAND.
Ronald Bronstein
writer-director, Frownland
With Frownland, my d.p. Sean Price Williams and I made the decision to go with the grainiest film stocks available (most of the film was shot on Kodak‘s now discontinued 800 ASA) and to limit ourselves to using only two lights for any given interior. We did this for aesthetic reasons as well as to minimize labor and fuss. But in our case, minimal lighting was an aesthetic decision. Rather than try and hide our monetary limitations, or view it in negative terms, we wanted to maximize and exploit the expressive value that an unpolished look can have in and of itself. In movies, and particularly with American independent cinema, a pretty strict inverse relationship has been set between budget and vision. Meaning, historically, the more uncompromised the vision, the smaller the budget has been. And of course, less money means smaller crews, which means less room for technical refinement. This relationship has calcified over time to the point that there‘s almost a Pavlovian effect in place now for people like me who value wayward maverick art. You see a movie with lots of grain and inelegant lighting and – click, whir - it reads as a kind of instant purity. Heh. Romero, Cassavetes, Paul Morrissey, George Kuchar.... These were just a few of our cruddy muses.
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