Kris Malkiewicz - Film Lighting: Talks with Hollywoods Cinematographers and Gaffers

NEWLY REVISED AND EXPANDED, FILM LIGHTING IS AN INDISPENSABLE SOURCEBOOK FOR THE ASPIRING AND PRACTICING CINEMATOGRAPHER, BASED ON EXTENSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH LEADING CINEMATOGRAPHERS AND GAFFERS IN THE FILM INDUSTRY

Film lighting is a living, dynamic art influenced by new technologies and the individual styles of leading cinematographers. Reporting on the latest innovations and showcasing in-depth interviews with industry experts, Film Lighting provides an inside look at how cinematographers and film directors establish the visual concept of the film and use the lighting to help tell the story.

Using firsthand material from experts such as Oscar-winning cinematographers Dion Beebe, Russell Carpenter, Robert Elswit, Mauro Fiore, Janusz Kaminski, Wally Pfister, Haskell Wexler, and Vilmos Zsigmond, this revised and expanded edition provides an invaluable opportunity to learn from the industrys leaders.

KRIS MALKIEWICZ author of the classic work Cinematography , is a graduate of the prestigious Polish State Film Academy. He helped design the film department of the California Institute of the Arts and taught film at the Film Division of The Polytechnic in London, England.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Malkiewicz, J. Kris.
Film lighting : talks with hollywoods cinematographers and gaffers / by Kris Malkiewicz ;
drawings by Leonard Konopelski.2nd ed.
p. cm.
1. CinematographyLighting. 2. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)History. I. Title.
TR891.M35 2012
777.52dc23
2011018969

ISBN 978-1-4391-6906-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-0739-3 (ebook)

I am greatly indebted to a large group of marvelous people who generously contributed with their expertise and their time: Richmond (Aggie) Aguilar; the late John Alonzo, ASC; Michael Bauman; Robert Baumgartner; Dion Beebe, ASC; John Buckley; Stephen Burum, ASC; Colin J. Campbell; Russell Carpenter, ASC; the late James Crabe, ASC; the late Jordan Cronenweth, ASC; Richard Crudo, ASC; Allen Daviau, ASC; Caleb Deschanel, ASC; David Devlin; Robert Elswit, ASC; Mauro Fiore, ASC; the late Conrad Hall, ASC; Richard Hart; Adam Holender, ASC; the late James Wong Howe, ASC; Slawomir Idziak, PSC; Robert Jason; Janusz Kaminski; Ian Kincaid; Richard Kline, ASC; the late Philip Lathrop, ASC; Len Levine; Matthew Libatique, ASC; the late Alexander Mackendrick; M. David Mullen, ASC; Wally Pfister, ASC; James Plannette; Rodrigo Prieto, ASC; Harris Savides, ASC; Steven J. Scott; Dante Spinotti, ASC; Haskell Wexler, ASC; the late Robert Wise; Ralph Woolsey, ASC; Jerzy Zielinski, ASC; Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.

There are others, too numerous to mention by name, who over the years shared with me their knowledge, either directly or as authors of books and articles. American Cinematographer magazine was a particularly rich and inspiring source of information. Last but not least, I am particularly grateful to Barbara J. Gryboski, who was my invaluable assistant on the first edition of this book.

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Since the first edition of this book in 1986, the filmmaking world has entered a technological revolution comparable to the transitions from silent to sound and from black and white to color. The revolution is digital. When a film production is photographed on film stock, it will most likely be timed (corrected) as a digital intermediate. When a film is photographed on a high-definition camera, it will most likely be distributed to the theaters on film stock. But it may also stay digital as DVD, Blu-ray, or some other format of the future.

Everyone with a cell phone in his/her pocket is a potential filmmaker.

However, before we get tempted to dismiss photochemical film altogether, lets pause for a moment. As it is, one of the greatest advances in filmmaking in the last twenty-five years was the amazing progress in film emulsions. They are much faster, with wider latitude, better color rendition, and less grain. Parallel with the changes in shooting media are huge advances in lighting technologies.

The question often asked is, if new film emulsions are more sensitive to light, why are the companies designing bigger and more powerful lights? The answer given by one cinematographer: The lights are bigger because you want to place them further away and emulate nature.

Light sources are put on cranes and inside helium balloons. Fixtures range from a six-inch-long fluorescent Mini-Flo to a 100,000-watt SoftSun. Moving lights, also known as intelligent lights, seen at rock concerts, are being employed now in many feature film productions. At the same time, film electricians are using household bulbs to build strips of light covered with diffusion and often used for creating ambient light.

Like their older colleagues interviewed a quarter of a century earlier for the first edition of this book, the cinematographers and gaffers interviewed and quoted here were very generous in sharing their aesthetics and their techniques. I am humbled in the face of this wealth of visual imagination and knowledge. With so many new technologies available, cinematography becomes an even more individualized art, where different experts often achieve their goals in unorthodox ways.

The reader will notice that the voices of older masters from the first edition were also preserved. These are the classic practitioners, whose aesthetics and wisdom are timeless and whose advice is priceless. A few of them are not with us anymore, yet their visual genius is eternal.

In todays Hollywood one meets cinematographers from various countries and cultures, which makes for a very rich offering of styles and sensibilities. Light as always plays a crucial role in creating screen reality. Fast film emulsions and very sensitive digital cameras have liberated the lighting domain. Cinematographers and gaffers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what has been done before. Film lighting is an exciting field and the future is bright. (Pun intended!)