The Indie Auteur Musings on filmmaking by Stephan Vladimir Bugaj.

Hitchhiker observations, part 2: Location Lighting and Post Fixes

Locations: Easy to obtain, Complicated to use

Shooting on location, especially for a no-budget production, can be challenging. Locations are easier and cheaper to get up and running than a soundstage. After all, they’re already set dressed. But with that convenience comes a litany of complications. Being unable to control the sound environment is a major issue, and one for a future post. There’s also the fact that when shooting in a location your production is utterly at the mercy of the owners of the location (even if you have a signed contract, if they kick you out, you’re going to lose time and perhaps have to re-shoot in a new location). For no-budget shoots there’s the added complication that often the location belongs to a friend whose friendship you’d like to maintain. You must then handle the location with the utmost care, and those kind of locations often have personal items in them which have inflated value in the eyes of the owner. Bad combination. Also, remember that “weird stuff sometimes happens” on-set: On a different shoot than Hitchhiker, someone wearing stiletto heels damaged an expensive hardwood floor. Repairs were quite expensive.

All those issues are things you need to keep in mind when working with locations, but his post is mainly about a case study in location lighting.

Lighting Locations: Watch out for that tree (or fence, or deck railing, or car, or…)

Locations are great because they’re already built and, sometimes, dressed. They can also be frustrating because they’re already built and, sometimes, dressed. When trying to light your location, you may find that there are trees, fences, parts of the building, furniture, and so on that you can’t move (or can’t easily move without risking the ire of the person who is letting you use the location). Your only remaining recourse is to light around these objects.

Sometimes, you can move part of the object (such as tying-back the branches of a tree). Other times you can quickly flag (or barndoor) your light in such a way that the shadow cast by the flag falls inoffensively relative to the frame, hiding a shadow from a location object that was distracting. Usually, however, you need to just keep moving, focusing (if you have fresnels), flagging, bouncing, and dimming until you find the right combination of light position, brightness, and modification that works for you (and the Cinematographer, if that’s not you).

Even so, you still need to run through the shot at least once and pay attention to where the shadows fall (the Cinematographer does, but if you’re the Director or Gaffer, you have to pay attention and be ready to confer with the Cinematographer and/or call-out anything you see that might be an issue). Only by going through the blocking once or twice can you really be sure that the lighting is doing what you want throughout the whole shot.

Sometimes, though, in the heat of shooting the Director and/or Actors will re-block the shot midstream, and it’s not always feasible to stop to relight (either due to schedule pressure, or because the Director doesn’t want to break the Actors’ rhythm). If that happens, the Camera Operator must tell the Cinematographer if they see something unusual through the viewfinder as they shoot, and the Gaffer must also keep an eye on what the new blocking is doing in terms of lighting. You might need to tweak the lighting as the Director gives the actors instructions for their next take based on what you just saw during the last.

Do these adjustments quickly and unobtrusively. During the take, don’t move around to assess the lighting, to avoid provoking any avoidable situations. Rather, you need a Camera Operator, Gaffer, Cinematographer, and Director who all know to work together to observe the lighting from their own vantage points and trust each other to bring any problems to the attention of the Cinematographer. The Cinematographer is then responsible for either deciding to sneak in a fix during the reset for the next take, or asking the Director to hold for an adjustment (the Gaffer and Camera Operator should never bypass the Cinematographer and go right to the Director, that can cause on-set confusion and destroy the trust relationship within the Camera and Electrical/Light department).

Even if you work together well, and have good communications and keen eyes, mistakes will sometimes still be made. Sometimes someone will assume that everyone else sees what they’re seeing and isn’t calling it out because it doesn’t bother them. Don’t assume. Always politely point out (to the appropriate person in the chain of on-set command) any issues you notice. Or, someone will see something that they think is just fine, which someone else doesn’t like at all once they see it in dailies.

On Hitchhiker, we ran into a situation with a shot where (a) if anyone noticed it from their on-set vantage point (I didn’t as I was viewing from the exact opposite angle), nobody said anything and (b) the Director likes the outcome, but the Cinematographer is less happy with it.

This is a frame from that shot:

Original Image

The vaguely knife-shaped shadow on the bottom screen-left side of the Actress’ face was not intentional (it’s probably a piece of equipment that got moved after the key light was placed, or an architectural detail that got overlooked because it wasn’t on the Actress’ face during blocking). Also, the blocking was altered enough that the lighting intended to reduce nose shadow isn’t having much effect. Since we don’t have a lot of coverage, some take of that shot is likely to get used.

It’s ultimately my fault, because I lit this sequence. So let’s see what I can do to fix it.

There are three basic paths you can take when faced with this kind of situation:

Embrace it

One extremely cost effective and morale boosting way to handle this kind of situation is to say to yourself (and your crew): I meant to do that. There’s not really any particular reason why that result has to be considered bad. The shot reads, so it’s then a matter of opinion whether or not the image is bad because something in it is unintentional.

Striving to keep shadows off faces, while it often flatters Actors, isn’t necessarily even the best shot design. Contrast gives visual interest. And there’s more to contrast than “hatchet lighting” (though that can be very effective). Check out the nose shadows (and the two slashing shadows the Actor’s arm is casting) on this shot:

Is it a bad shot (i.e. one that fails to be visually interesting and convey the Director’s intentions for the scene)? No, it works perfectly for the film it’s from. Sometimes, high contrast hard light is exactly what’s called for.

Reshoot

Before you choose to reshoot, which is relatively expensive even with a no-budget crew (in the no-budget case it may cost you more in goodwill than in money, depending on the attitude you take to your crew when you ask for the reshoot), ask yourself: Do I really hate it that much?

Reshooting is expensive. On a professional project, it costs a lot of money. On a no-budget project, it may not cost much more cash, but too much reshooting burns enthusiasm and goodwill. Avoid doing it unless it’s crucial. There was a crucial reshoot on Hitchhiker due to equipment failure causing a day’s shooting to be totally unusable, the above image is not totaly unusable, and sensibly we did not reshoot because of it.

Fix it in Post

Fixing it in post is also an option. You should never let something slide on-set because you assume you can fix it in post, but once you get into post, there is the opportunity to fix almost anything if you can afford to.

In this example, there’s not much we can do to make the two offending shadows go away. So, I decided to try to adjust things to make it seem more intentional (it already reads as possibly intentional, so there’s also the option of doing nothing mentioned previously — and given that Hitchhiker is a thriller and the shadow looks like a knife, that was my first suggestion).

I did a single-frame proof of concept so the Director and Cinematographer on Hitchhiker could have some ideas about what we could do with the shot if they decided something needed to be done. Under most circumstances, attempting to do the entire paint/roto fix on a shot shouldn’t occur until after it has been edited into the film. You only want to spend time and money on fixing frames you’re actually going to use.

Since the lower cheek/chin shadow is the more glaring, I started with that.

Option #1

1. Darkening the fill calls less attention to it.

Option #2

2. I tried adding a corresponding shadow slash at the top of the forehead. I didn’t like the direction that was going, but if I had, I’d have fixed the angle to match the angle of the bottom shadow.

Option #3

3. I tried making the darkening of the fill more subtle. It’s not a big difference from the original plate, but reducing that contrast makes it call a bit less attention to itself.

Option #4

4. I decided to try hiding the nose shadow in a hard shadow on the face. I realized I probably took it too far, but decided the general idea of darkening the whole left side of the face had promise.

Option #5

5. Trying to connect the nose and chin shadows but leave the eyes totally readable seemed an interesting idea. I have mixed feelings about the result. Mixed feelings is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Next.

Option #6

6. A more subtle darkening of the screen-left side of the face, combined with the subtle darkening of the chin highlights, led to pretty good results.

Option #7

7. Taking it a little darker also looked pretty good. But it was starting to go too far again.

Which option is correct?

Whatever fits within your budget (embrace, reshoot, fix it in post), and looks best to you, is the right choice. As for the selection of paintfix options, while there are some above that I personally dislike (and others that aren’t shown which also have their merits and detriments), there is no one overall right choice. These sorts of decisions are a matter of preference on the part of the Director and Cinematographer / DP.

Since you probably want to know my personal choice: I’d go down the path of #6/#7 (#3 would also work, as would #0 — the original image). Some fine tuning would occur, of course. I’d likely make the neck and ear shadows and laugh-line highlight a little closer to #7 while leaving the rest more like #6, and spend some time tweaking the shadow shapes and falloff gradients.

There were options 8 – 12, but I realized I was noodling way too much, and creating too many options. Two of the biggest problems you can run into in post are creating too many options, and overworking the image. The former can lead to indecision in the face of a number of subtle variations that all seem “could be the one,” whereas the latter can lead you to abandon an otherwise promising path simply because you’ve failed to exercise restraint where it was called for.

When making this kind of decision, also keep in mind what the shot is about. Does the original mistake detract or distract from the intention of the shot? Is the cost of fixing the mistake worth your while, given the length, context and purpose of the shot when cut into the film? A number of great moments in cinema have started off as accidents, so before you make everything “perfect” in post ask yourself: Does this mistake look worse than what I originally intended, or better?