Eric Kress Lighting Workshop - part 1 - The American Society of Cinematographers

For the past 3 years I have organized cinematography workshops & master classes at the Gothenburg Film Studios during their annual Gokinema event.

The Danish cinematographer Eric Kress led the first of these workshops, demonstrating the lighting of matched close-ups.

This is the first of several posts about Eric's workshop

Eric Kress

Eric Kress, DFF, is a leading European cinematographer whose credits include:

The Kingdom

Flickering lights

Arn the Knight Templar

Monica Z

and my personal favorite, the original 2009 version of

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Eric has also shot some Danish television episodes, notably for the wonderful series Borgen, about a woman Prime Minister.

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the Gokinema workshop

During the workshop Eric demonstrated simple variations of lighting close-ups of a man and a woman near a window. When we designed the session, Eric and I chose the theme of dual close-ups because lighting matching close ups is something that every cinematographer has to do often.

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stills

In part 1 of the workshop video, Eric introduces the workshop and then demonstrates 3 lighting variations around a window on the sound stage set:

1. one exterior soft source

2. adding an exterior poly bounce as a background light

3. adding an interior fill

These set-ups are illustrated in the slide show below

(you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the slide show)