LIGHTING A SET: A STUDENT GUIDE

So there’s a set, some lights and some actors. You’re in a studio. It’s almost dark, eyes are studying you expectantly and you’re frantically trying to remember what that bearded man mentioned in that lighting workshop you had once.  The 1st A.D. is bulging with panic – ‘We’re 45 minutes behind schedule. The studio closes in an hour and we’re 45 minutes behind schedule. We have to keep to the schedule!’ – and you’re tempted to express your annoyance on his shin.  Clenching your eyebrows to concentrate your thoughts, you resolve to start with the basics, to take away all the light and begin with what you know. This is what you know: you want to create an atmosphere, to subtly but sufficiently light the varying skin tones of the actors, and you do not, if you can absolutely avoid it, want the set to look like a set.

Placing a few practical lamps within the set, you manage to create pools of light and shade that suggest certain objects: the fringe of a curtain, a picture frame, a desk scattered with fragmented notes. You’ve decided not to use any of the studio lights, opting instead for a naturalistic scene lit only by the lamps within it.  There’s no denying this scene has atmosphere. Timidly, the director points out that it might be useful to see the actors when they speak, and you’re shaken from your smugness. Clamping a small Dedo light onto the wall of the set, you direct its light into the standing lamp below to expand its halo, before repeating the same for the desk lamp. A devious moment of lighting trickery and you’ve brightened the practical lamps without a dimmer switch.

To prove that the actors have faces, you consider bouncing the light from a Redhead off the floor, the wall, the ceiling or the soundman, to illuminate the actors within the scene. Ultimately, you choose a white polystyrene board (more commonly known as a bounce board or a reflector). You diffuse the light further with something that resembles tracing paper and a rectangle of black mesh (these probably have more common names too) – the resulting light softly reveals the actors, creating lively eye-glints and a complete, mysterious setting.

So there’s a set, some lights and some actors. You’re in a studio. It’s almost dark, but eyes are focused on scripts and cameras and clapperboards. You return to that happy, mindless place at the edge of thought, and check your Facebook notifications.