Eric Kress Lighting Workshop - part 3 - The American Society of Cinematographers

This is Part 3 of the Lighting Workshop I organized with cinematographer Eric Kress during Gokinema at Gothenburg Film Studios.

Thanks again for all the encouragements and thoughtful comments about Parts 1 & 2 !

If you haven't seen them, I strongly recommend viewing the 2 earlier videos -- starting with PART 1 -- before watching this one. Here Eric shoots a matching reverse angle to what he shot before.

Eric Kress Lighting Workshop part 3 - C Pontus with side fill -thefilmbook-

Pontus Tornqvist Loven in side-fill variation from the Workshop by Eric Kress

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variations

In PART 1 and PART 2 of the workshop video, Eric demonstrated 6 lighting variations around a window on the sound stage set, framing Matilda over Pontus' shoulder:

A. a single exterior soft key source

B. adding an exterior poly bounce as a background light

C. adding an interior fill

D. an exterior hard light "sun" source (with gaffer tape finger)

E. an interior backlight

F. replacing the side fill with an interior top light

In PART 3, Eric does the reverse angles, shooting Pontus over Matilda's shoulder with six similar variations.

One noteworthy difference is in variation B, where Eric found that the wall behind Pontus was too dark, so he added an interior background light, in addition to the exterior poly.

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diagrams & stills

Illustrated below are diagrams and keyframes for the six lighting variations in Part 3

(you can use the left and right arrows on your keyboard to navigate the slide show)

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the video

In Part 3, Eric works faster, as he is mirroring set-ups that he presented in detail in Parts 1 and 2. As before Eric shares every step of his creative process.

At the end we look at an on-set edit that intercuts between set-ups of the dual close-ups.

Watch on YouTube

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notes

In general Eric's lighting of Pontus is a little darker than what he did with Matilda. But as we see at the end of the video, the dual close-ups still match, except in the case where the editor cut together shots from 2 different variations, and there we can easily see that shots of Matilda with fill do not cut well with shots of Pontus sans fill.

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download the dailies

I have uploaded the dailies for some of the variations on Matilda and Pontus to thefilmbook wetransfer channel. This is my first attempt at crowd distribution of dailies. Email me if you have any problems: kressedit "at" thefilmbook.com

Here are the links to the Alexa HD dailies in ProRes 422:

Variation 1 (single source) -- Matilda & Pontus 1820 MB (both takes)

Variation 2 (no fill) -- Matilda 748 MB - Pontus 863 MB

Variation 3 (with fill) -- Matilda 613 MB - Pontus 980 MB

Variation 5 (final) -- Matilda 658 MB - Pontus 690 MB

Variation 6 (final with top light) -- Matilda 713 MB - Pontus 865 MB

This will allow those interested to see what the camera original looks like. The links will be up during the month of April 2014. Please email me if you would like me to extend these links past April at: kressedit "at" thefilmbook.com

Note that dailies need to be resized, with a horizontal un-squeeze of x1.3,

yielding 2496 x 1080 pixels.

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is there an editor in the house?

Also, any editors out there? I would love to see your different edits matching or mismatching the two close-ups, and will post them on the web. Feel free to put in your own audio track :)

If you would like to share an edit you made, email me:

kressedit "at" thefilmbook.com

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workshop & video credits

cinematographer - Eric Kress

moderator - Benjamin B

cast

Matilda Jelse

Pontus Tornqvist Loven

crew

gaffer - Luisa Fanciullacci

1st AC - Filip Lyman