Danny Cohen’s (DOP) work on The Danish Girl is some of my favourite cinematography, probably ever. One of the rare films in which the cinematography is so informed by character. At it’s core, The Danish Girl is about two married artists that have to grapple with their relationship as Einar transitions to Lily, a transgender pioneer. The film is set against the backdrop of early 20th century Copenhagen and the art of the characters is such a profoundly important ‘character’ in the film. Einar’s landscapes and Gerda’s portraits are seen everywhere in the film in both the background and the foreground.

One of the extraordinary things about this scene is the softness of the light. Tom Hooper, the director became incredibly inspired by the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi, a danish artist from the same time period as the principal characters. The production design team replicated Hammershøi’s apartment from his paintings and Cohen attempted to replicate the lighting characteristics of many of his paintings within the space that was constructed. Hooper explained in a documentary that they were, “trying to capture this incredible softness in the light you get in these long summer evenings in the north.” What makes the cinematography of the apartment even more breathtaking is the way it is so often seen in wide shots.

Cohen’s framing is also important in this scene. Early in the scene, framing Redmayne off axis and without speaking room, this creates a sort of tension in the way the composition relates Lily and Gerda. The edit appears a little jumpy because they appear on the same side of frame and Lily is at first framed wider than Gerda which again, highlights the distance between the characters. When the camera eventually does move in, it becomes evident that there is at least some fill from the ceiling that adds a really beautiful highlight to Lily’s hair as well as obviously the copious amount of soft key from the window. The colour in the scene is rather measured and feels a little bleached, as does most of the film. I think this is most likely because of the historical nature of the film but also the way the film feels so much like a painting. So many of the images, especially later in the film with the night scene by the window or the scenes at the end of the film where a little more colour is present, feel like Hammershøi’s paintings and this is a testament to the way they so elegantly blend story and character through lighting.

A comedy of errors. Our group really didn’t think enough throughout this process. In fact, I dare say a combination of things occurred with Exercise 3-7. Not reading the script, not understanding the script in preparing the scene, not understanding the script in shooting the scenes and not understanding the script in assembling the scene. The worst part was that in regard to the scene that I directed at the cafe, we literally attended to every single note on the page except the most critical one and that so easily could have been avoided and should have been avoided.

Rewind to production day, I would have been quite content to be 2nd AC and just be smacking the sticks together all day. For the first scene, that was exactly what I did. What was sad about that scene was just how many things we didn’t do that were evident from the screenplay. Just basic things like the character turning to look out the window. I think time is an important consideration here too. I think the time pressure made us panic and not read things carefully. I was also slightly disappointed by the decision to use the CTB gel in the classroom scene. It didn’t need it, in fact I think the lighting could have been used to create some more visual interest. I think the crew just wanted to use the gel because it was there and ended up including the windows in the shot to try to make the scene more interesting (which was specifically forbidden in the scene notes). Not only that, the inclusion of the window meant that we couldn’t be creative with the lighting, we couldn’t really bounce it off anything because that would have made the exposure impossible when there’s a big, bright window in the background. When it came time to do the cafe scene, I was roped in to direct, because the general sentiment was slating isn’t enough of a real job. We shot the whole thing in the one location, the worst possible mistake I could have made. We were too focussed on making the scene work from an acting perspective and getting coffee at the end of it that we missed the whole point of the exercise. I felt suitably awful.

Overall, I think this proved a really good point, don’t just read the script, read it carefully. We all should have read the script before we came to class. When we rushed, we panicked and when we panicked we rushed.

I think we’re a little bit spoiled when it comes to LED lights these days, especially lights that have both 5600K and 3200K bulbs that you can dial in exactly what you want. Conventional fixtures have such a beautiful quality to them and using them is such an art. We talked about colour temperature today and using gels and filter gels on lights and I think what was really lovely was not having to guess how to use them. Everything in the class is really practical and makes sense. Robin wants to make us think when we’re on set and making decisions, but still, he shows us the fastest and most efficient way of accomplishing things, which is really helpful because it cuts down our time doing the physical work and gives us more time to think about how to achieve the look we want.

One of the things I realised a few months ago was how contrast can also be created through colour, you’re not just limited to luminance to create contrast on a face or object or what have you.

On Wednesday’s class we took to the streets to shoot an exercise in Depth of Field. We crashed the camera all the way out and placed it a little way in front of our subject and stopped the camera all the way down to try get as much depth of field as possible and then went for a stroll, set the sticks up again and crashed all the way in and opened up all the way. The Sony cameras we’ve been using have irked me quite a bit this semester (mostly because the menus make me get the google out waaaay too much) but I was super impressed by how much telephoto that lens can provide, we had to go a long way to match the framing of our original shot when we crashed all the way in.

And finally, C-Stands. While the other groups were out we were back in the classroom making this amazing contraption:

And honestly, I never want to do a shoot without them. The way you can get your bounce or your neg-fill up in the air, where you want without aggravating crew members: A total win, which is how I feel about this week as a whole. Go team!

The Cardsharps painted by Michaelangelo Caravaggio sometime around 1594.

The first thing that struck me about this painting beyond just the fact that it is beautifully composed was the way in which the entire frame is lit. Unlike some of the other paintings which either had crushed shadows or very bright highlights, this whole frame is reasonably even in its lighting.

The Key light is realistic and photographic even, Caravaggio hasn’t played around with the shape of the light too much. It would appear that the painting has been painted from a real life setting. Obviously, the camera was not yet invented yet so the image cannot be a photo, however photographic it looks.

The key light is bouncing quite obviously off the wall behind the characters and this is also creating a nice even circular highlight on the wall behind them, likely providing the majority of the fill light everywhere in the frame. The fill light is also very golden and the walls seem to be off-white, further evidence that this wall pictured is the source of the fill. The characters shadows are very obviously coming down and right so we should assume that the very large key light (in comparison to the fill light, large key/fill ratio) is coming from the left side of the frame, off camera and ‘up-stage’ if you will. The key is very soft and diffused which, I feel makes a very pleasing image and has a really pleasing effect on the skin tones of the painted characters.

Another Day of Sun  is the opening musical number to Damien Chazel’s La La Land, which as a film itself has some of the most beautiful non-naturalistic lighting moments in modern cinema (in my opinion). Many critics and students know the scene for the fact that the crew shut down a freeway ramp in Los Angeles for three days to record the scene. Most notably one of the things that I find amazing about the scene is the way the scene is lit, almost exclusively with available light. With the exception of the close up shots that get very close to the actors in the cars. These shots could have been filled by some on camera light or a very diffused bounce light from a grip just out of shot, one of the extraordinary things is just how many crew members and moving parts the scene took to complete.

The cinematography is incredible, the way the camera ducks and weaves through traffic and cars in a complex, choreographed way that is reminiscent of the old 30s and 40s Hollywood musicals. To achieve the scene, Chazel moves the camera from a technocrane to a steadicam and back onto yet another technocrane to finish the scene in a one-take. One of the most important considerations of this scene is the way in which Chazel originally conceived the scene in the morning but due to the way in which the clouds and fog were causing the morning to be glory and overcast, the scene’s photography had to be postponed until noon. This was due to the unique relationship Chazel wanted to create between lighting and story. The song is called Another Day of Sun and could therefore not have been shot on an overcast morning.

Chazel’s original intention was to have the glaringly hard, sunlight used as the primary key light in the scene and use the predominantly white freeway ramp to create a fill from underneath the actors. Overall the noon lighting creates a hard, sunny glare that helps to emphasise the way in which Chazel feels about Los Angeles and helps to add another layer of depth to his love letter to the city of stars.

This week, we started in much the same way as last week except, we were able to control the lighting in building thirteen with the use of bounce cards. One of the things we instantly noticed as a group was that we were vastly more indecisive about our lighting setup because we had so many more choices.

Robin could “no longer avoid” pulling out some real lights. We used a number of different fixtures and one of the things I learned was how the focussing process works when you’re with a crew. We also had a demonstration of three point lighting, which of course is one of those things that you don’t really ever use in real life but it was still an interesting demonstration.

In our theory class on Wednesday, we discussed focal length in relation to light and the way it affects the image. It was interesting to watch Robin’s videos on different lighting setups and in some cases, setups that didn’t involve artificial light but were extremely well lit and well controlled. Again, there seems to be this common theme of controlling light vs. just putting up a whole lot of lights.

It’s amazing just how much more conscious of lighting I am in my daily life but also when watching films and video. This class has also got me thinking a lot about my own previous works and how I would light them differently just from the sorts of discussions that the class generates during our theory lessons on Wednesdays.

We also learned some really helpful terminology around lighting and camera this past week. We seem to fill the white board very quickly. I’m really glad we discussed the different ways to describe aperture, especially between whole stops and the different ways to describe depth of field. One of the things this class is teaching me in practise is to slow down during the early process of cinematography. To take the time to calculate what’s going to happen before you press record and make sure you actually get the shot you want before you get to post.

Building thirteen is not a very well placed building for lighting interiors. Considering there is no direct sunlight in the room, the light seems to change profound in the two hours we have class inside the room.

Our first exercise, controlling available light by positioning only the camera and the subject, interestingly, is probably the most relevant exercise to our practise that I could think of. In most cases, students aren’t running around with lights.

On just about every shoot I’ve ever been a part of, the positioning of the subject and camera are more about setting and story than anything else, (the director wants this character on a chair in the corner looking at this wall, etc.) lighting has become somewhat of an afterthought in the process. However, the more I think about lighting in the context of this class, I’m discovering in just talking about the lighting in the second class of the week, lighting can inform so much of how an audience experiences a story, not just make it look pretty.

One of the things that I really love is Robin’s focus on camera. It’s not just about understanding lighting outside the box. It’s not enough to just put some lights up and look at it and make judgements about how it looks.

In my job, I spend a lot of time lighting stages for live events and really, my introduction to lighting was in theatre and theatrical lighting. The relationship between the way lights appear in the world and how they appear in camera is fascinating. I have always understood that perhaps, because the camera lacks dynamic range, the images would be more contrasty, there is something to be said about the fact that you can’t stop down your eyes. If lighting encompasses the control you have in the camera, then of course there are numbers of factors at play.

I love that in the first week of this class we’ve had more practical teaching than I think I may have had in the first two years of my degree, and for that, I am immensely grateful.