Lighting Plans: And Then There Was Light!
As our productions will start off by filming 'A Good One' first, I decided today to settle my colour schemes and lighting plans in order to be prepared for the shoot where I will fulfil two job roles at once. Since I need to constantly change hats as camera operator 1 and lighting person, I want to be prepared as much as possible so that we manage with our production schedule in time.
Three days are not much after all.
'But wait!', will my avid blog reader say: 'You already have your colour scheme settled! Why would you want to change that?'
Well, that is true and that was true until the test shooting last week. For while my colour schemes made perfect sense in my head and even during the pitch, the reality of the location do not allow for many of the colours that I would have loved to pick for the project.
As the set colours in and of itself are kept rather dark and intense (with dark grey stone walls and dark reds, oranges or browns), it was extremely difficult to create a strong green, light blue or even white lighting that would not clash with the rest of the set design. The huge windows in the set are already gelled in orange and purple, and since we do not have any green, blue, or white gels in that amount and size, I decided to make the best of these restrictions and reconsider my lighting scheme to match it with the situation at hand.
Hey, that's called flexibility!
But that is why I decided to ditch most of my colour schemes and find some that fits the reality of the set (and maybe even the story itself) better. For, while I initially liked the idea of visually contrasting 'the morning of day' with the 'evening of life' in my previous scheme, the scene might even work better if I keep the lighting itself to dark browns, dark reds, and strong oranges as highlights.
Hayden's life, after all, has been somewhat sombre, dismal and unfulfilling - as have his views on the world - so dark browns and reds might work well in that thematic regard. Furthermore, he is well past the end or 'evening' of his life as he finds himself dead, so that does also fit the brief.
Personally, the reds and browns in combination with the Gothic-style stone walls evoke an image of 'Hell' in my mind as well. As Hayden is not too happy about meeting his supreme self and even comments that 'This is hell!', it would prepare the viewer subconsciously as to the nature of the situation that is to come. I don't know whether I will be able to create the lighting scenario as I imagine it right now, but if it works out, then that would enhance this aspect of the story as well.
With that in mind, I thus browsed the internet and found a couple of lovely images that had the colour palette I wanted:
I will see whether I manage to get the lighting colours as dark as well. I fear that it might lead to an underexposure of the image. But researching on that is a task for another day, so let's get on with the rest of the lighting schemes!
For the crisis of Hayden, I imagined the colours to be stark and contrasty, signalling not only despair but also demise. After Hayden has found out about his alter ego, this being his last task on earth, it is unclear as what is to happen next. Will he enter oblivion? Will he grovel for his life?
This is a scene that I, as a scriptwriter, have imagined to be both full of tension and emotion. I wanted the audience to feel with Hayden, to pity him and to be moved by his plight. I wanted to play with the obvious assumption that Death is not, cannot, be a benign character and I wanted to touch upon the fear that death itself eradicates the meaning of life.
Dark stuff, I know. But in order to achieve that feeling and the crisis in a visual sense - at least for now in colours - I wanted to use greys and greens. 'Grey' signalling the grim reality of dying and being forgotten, and 'green' signalling the toxicity of despair. I was lucky to find that the set offered these two colours right where I needed them to: Integrated into the bridge-part of the set design.
However, since we have - at least visually - changed the time of day in the diegesis, I decided that I would adapt the colour palette for the last scene - the rebirth of Hayden - to that circumstance. Which is why I will introduce you to what I call 'the hour of the wolf':
The hour of the wolf or 'vargtimmen' in Swedish, is an expression for the night time shortly before dawn, when the dark blacks give way to the blue and purple tones, eventually fading into the reds and yellows of sunrise. This time is usually considered a time of contemplation and calmness for those who are already up. It allows for clear thoughts and is a calm start into a hopeful, new day.
Since I do not know yet how often we will have to swap between different settings, I want to minimise the risk for confusing gel numbers or LED settings just to find out in the edit that the continuity will be broken lighting-wise. Now, in accordance with my preparation, I also wanted to go one step further and create lighting plans that not only help me in keeping a clear head on the day of production, but also to keep the lighting consistent throughout the entire production.
A lighting plan, or a lighting diagram, is an overhead plan devised by a cinematographer in pre-production of a film or TV series to be able to design the light for every location, scene and shot and to give these to the lighting apartment to rig up accordingly and well in advance. This is done to help plan the budget and production schedule as well as to avoid any unnecessary delays on the day of shooting.
These plans can either be drawn by hand (duh!) or can be drawn on the computer, using various bits and pieces of software to navigate the jungle that is lighting planning.
So I did a bit of research into the various softwares that were out there and regularly named in forums in order to get a good grasp of which one I could start out with using for my purposes.
Not many, as it turned out.
Don’t get me wrong: There are many, many programmes out there that do create lighting plans, from Visio to Sketchup and Publisher, Omnigraffle to Vectorworks, and WYISWYG to Celtx. However, when looking closer into each individual programme, my choices got narrowed down quickly.
Visio (for Microsoft) offers the possibility of creating overhead lighting plans with the use of preset stencils. However, these stencils only consist of theatre lights and are thus not really applicable for what I need. I do not want to start off with a theatre solution if my ultimate goal is to use it (and use it properly) for film.
Thus, I proceeded to look what Sketchup as a 3D-software had to offer. I have read a lot online how that software takes a lot of time and exercise to master and that it is far too complicated for quick drawings. When I wanted to give it a try nonetheless, it turned out that Sketchup wanted $49 for the registered student version. Which unnerved me greatly, as I currently do not have the funds to pay for that program. Much less so for a program of which I do not know whether it will suit me at this point in time. So I decided that this has to wait for later implementation, when I can afford that.
A similar experience occurred when looking up Omnigraffle which is designed to run on a Mac, using a strong library of stencils that could be gradually purchased in sets tailored to specific demands in planning. While I liked the fact that it allows exports in various different file formats, the extremely proud price of $99 -$199 is much further away from what I can afford as a student. So this option fell under the rug as well.
Vector works came with the same issues as Visio, even though it was available for both PC and Mac.
Publisher, very much like Photoshop, allows for layering of different objects, which is really helpful if you need to create different printouts for different departments. It furthermore allows for detailed blow-ups of lighting plans and apparently saves the plans as a JPEG. However, I received these pieces of information second-hand from a forum. When I was looking for said software, it did not turn up in my Google search. I decided then that I would look for other options and leave a more intensive search of publisher for the summer break.
Now moving on to that wonderful tongue-twister WYISWYG, I quickly realised that this was not only mainly a software for creating theatre and rock concert lighting, but furthermore cost - depending on the package - $1000, $2000 or even up to $4000… Which is truly depressing since it has, so far, been the only software that came with gel colours as elements of the lighting diagram.
I then moved further on to Celtx, as they reportedly have a 'Studio Shot Blocker Tool’ that has received overall good reviews. But here again, browsing through the Celtx homepage led to no results. This tool does not seem to be part of any of the bundles that are offered starting by approx. $15 and going up as high as 250 Pounds.
Having been frustrated by the outcome of my research, I looked into various different lighting planners for photographers, but quickly realised that they as well were strictly tailored to the needs of a photographer, not a filmmaker. By sheer luck of research, I stumbled over the blog of an indie filmmaker in the US who recommended Shot Designer. Being unsatisfied with the overall number of options (and tied down by budget as well), he gave a quick introduction into the uses and benefits of that program, which furthermore seemed to be pretty generous in the free version. So I downloaded it and started experimenting on my own.
After a couple of hours of using Shot Designer, I already feel quite competent in the use of the free version. As it was designed to be used on touch-screens as well, the interaction with the software is quite intuitive, even though it takes a bit of experimentation to find where everything is located in the menu and to establish a bit of a workflow.
You start of by either drawing walls or by uploading a background image of a set blue print. If that is done, you can then add a variety of props into that plan to furnish it more, before you can then start to digitally rig the lights and place them. Finally, you can then start putting your characters and cameras in. You can lock each group of elements (set elements, props, lighting, characters) so that they cannot accidentally be moved around while you are working on other aspects of your lighting plan. Which is a nice feature to have as soon as your lighting plan starts to become even a bit crowded.
You can furthermore insert descriptions, change colour, direction, and size for every light or lighting equipment that you chose for your setup. These elements, as with most lighting planners, come as a stencil package, but here, they are obviously designed for filmmakers in mind.
Which is why I will now introduce you to my plans:
So while 'A Good One' experienced a lot of reconsideration due to the fact that the set colours did not match with my initial vision, the ideas for 'Broken Planets' almost remained the same.
That was mostly due to the fact that Chloe had a strong idea about how she wanted the scenes to feel and play out lighting-wise, so that was already settled early on. In case, you did not know or have not yet read that blog entry, this is what I found:
Lighting Scenario 1: Romantic (If I Stay)
Lighting Scenario 2: Moody Lighting (Arrival)
Lighting Scenario 3: Dramatic (Dr. Who - The Girl Who Lived)
Option for Lighting Scenario 2: Moody (Enemy)
The last scenario presented here has been an option that I have found on the internet but that has been discarded by Chloe as it did not contain the dark blues she had in mind. Which sent my head spinning after the test shoot before Easter break, as we already then could establish that blue as a lighting colour will be difficult to pull off...
Since blue light, as radiation, does not travel as far (or rather loses a lot of intensity during its travel), it is really difficult to cover the natural light that is falling from the window in the ceiling. As I have read that red light does travel the furthest without losing much of its intensity, I thought that a combination of both blue and red lights might save the lighting concept on that set. However, as I dislike the combination of red and blue and rather associate the streets of Tokyo instead of a lonely dystopian sci-fi story, I wanted to tweak the red aspect a bit.
Which is why I looked for combinations of blue and pink, as well as blue and purple lighting to see what the effect of it would be like:
Blue and Pink (Atomic Blonde)
Blue and Purple
And BAM!, this is what I envisioned! Okay, I will still have to see whether that concept survives being tested by reality, but at least both concepts convey a science-fictionesque feeling. Currently, I unfortunately don't have access to the gel sets that our college does have, so I don't quite know, which gel it is going to be and what its number would be like. But I feel that I have found a viable solution to the issue that is the sky light.
And as much as I have created lighting plans for 'A Good One', I decided that I will get into the habit of doing them by also creating lighting plans for 'Broken Planets'. This has not only helped me keeping a clear head, but will also help me in rigging as well as de-rigging efficiently:
References:
Ævar Guðmundsson (2013) The Still of the Blue Hour in Áðingvellir, Iceland [online] Image taken from: http://www.vagabondish.com/photo-blue-hour-iceland/ [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Anonymous (n.d.) Untitled [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2jhgZ0Y [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Anonymous (n.d.) Untitled [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2JCIrkZ [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Anonymous (n.d.) Untitled [online] Image taken from: http://goodtymesdj.com/entertainment-menu/#dj-event-services [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Anonymous (n.d.) Untitled [online] Image taken from: http://www.desktopwallpaperhd.net/sunset-clouds-background-wallpaper-desktop-sky-21575.html [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Anonymous (2010) Untitled [online] Image taken from: http://wingspace.com/dramatis-personae/ [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Antunes, J. (n.d.) 5 Tools to Create and Share Studio Lighting Diagrams [online] https://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/5-tools-to-create-and-share-studio-lighting-diagrams--cms-23285 [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
CookeOpticsTV (2017) My approach to lighting || Ben Smithard || Masterclass [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=K1wnb6VKBjE [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Fusco, J. (2017) Watch: Why Cinematographers Should Hand-Draw Lighting Plots [online] https://nofilmschool.com/2017/06/cinematographer-lighting-plots [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Mendes, S. (2012) Skyfall UK and USA: Eon Productions Image taken from: https://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/Skyfall/pages/Skyfall-0589.htm [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Leitch, D. (2017) Atomic Blonde Germany, Sweden, and USA: 87Eleven Image taken from https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/02/28/bisexual-lighting-is-your-new-favourite-viral-meme/
Nice Off The Beaten Path Hotel (2016) Our Room With The Blue Light Outside By The Canal-Sexy! [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2HZjDWY [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Nicoué, P. (2015) L'heure Bleue [online] Image taken from: https://www.focus-numerique.com/exercice-photo/dossiers/l-heure-bleue-1049.html [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Randall Collis (2014) Untitled [online] Image taken from: https://plus.google.com/115989115647650400571 [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Utter, N. (2017) How to Plan (and Diagram) Your Video Production Lighting Setup [online] https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/video-production-lighting-setup/ [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Walters, R. (2012) Part 05: Creating A Lighting Diagram [online] http://indiecinemaacademy.com/part-05-creating-a-lighting-diagram/ [Accessed on 31 March 2018]
Screenshot taken from: Cutler, R.J. (2014) If I Stay USA: DiNovi
Screenshots taken from: Villeneuve, D. (2016) Arrival USA: Lava Bear Films
Screenshot taken from: Dr. Who. The Girl Who Lived. (2015) UK. BBC 1. 24 October. [Television]
Screenshots taken from: Villeneuve, D. (2013) Enemy Canada, Spain, and France: Pathé