A friendly, hands-on training manual and reference for lighting technicians in motion picture and television production, this handbook is the most comprehensive guide to set lighting available. It provides a unique combination of practical detail with a big-picture understanding of lighting, technology, safety, and professionalism, essential to anyone doing motion picture lighting.
The fifth edition delves into every aspect of lighting and features vastly expanded sections on controlling LED lights, color science, lighting control systems, wireless systems, Ethernet-based control systems, battery power, and modern set protocol for productions small and large. With a generous number of original images, the book illustrates the use of soft light, the effect of lighting angles, and how the gaffer and DP build an effective lighting plan around the blocking of the actors. This encyclopedic volume of technical knowhow is tempered with years of practical experience and a much-needed sense of humor.
This is the ideal text for professional lighting technicians across film and television including lighting directors, gaffers, DOPs, and rigging crews, as well as film and television production students studying lighting, camera techniques, film production, and cinematography.
It includes a revamped companion website with supplementary resources, forms, checklists, and images.
Author(s): Harry C. Box
Edition: 5
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: xxiv+600
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1 Set basics: Your first barbecue
Job descriptions of the lighting crew
Director of photography
Gaffer
Best boy electric
Lighting technicians
Lighting control personnel
Rigging crew
The fixtures person (or department)
Generator operator
Grip department
The company
Production staff
The director's team
Script supervisor
Camera department
Sound department
Locations
Transportation
Art department
The general public
Block, light, rehearse, tweak, shoot
CHAPTER 2 Preproduction planning: The package, expendables, personal tools
Preproduction planning
Scouting locations
Production meetings
Wireless spectrum management meeting
The load-in
Prepping lights and stands
The production van
Expendable supplies
Gels and diffusion
Electrical expendables
Tools and personal gear
Tool belt
Meters
Other hand tools
Personal gear
CHAPTER 3 Lighting objectives
Storytelling objectives
Mood
Naturalism
Composition
Time constraints
Photographic objectives
Light level
Foot-candles
F-stops and T-stops
Factors affecting light levels
Contrast, latitude, and the tonal value
Spot meters
Calibrated monitor
Signal monitoring
CHAPTER 4 Lighting strategies
Motivating and reactive lighting
Lighting faces
Rembrandt cheek patch lighting
Near- and far-side keys
Side light
Wrapping the key
Front light
Bottom light
High in front or high to the side
The lighting triangle
Fill
Eye light
Backlights, kickers, and hair lights
Lighting the acting positions
Back cross keys
Lighting the space and the background
Ambience
Backdrops
CHAPTER 5 Manipulating light: Tools, techniques, and the behavior of light
Falloff: your friend, the inverse square law
Cuts and patterns
Breakup patterns
Cucaloris
Branchaloris
Tape on an empty frame
Shading and selectively controlling brightness
Movement
Flicker effects: television screen, flame, and fire
Other moving light effects
Soft light
Softness of light
Linear light sources
Bounce light
Diffusion materials
Diffusion on the fixture
Fabric soft boxes
Controlling soft light
Flags and teasers
Grids, egg crates, and louvers
Lanterns
CHAPTER 6 Color
Color space
Kelvin color temperature scale
Shifting color up and down the color temperature scale
Using MIRED units to calculate color shifts
Correlated color temperature (CCT)
Green/magenta axis
Measuring color
Colored light
LED full-color
Theatrical gels
CHAPTER 7 LED lights
Capabilities of LEDs
Color options
Phosphor white, daylight, or tungsten
Remote phosphor
Bi-color
The reasons behind tunable-white and full-spectrum lights
Full spectrum
LED color control methods
Lighting effects
Dimming LEDs
Dimming curves
Bottom of the dimmer range
The seven things every lighting technician should know about LEDs
Control
Soft light fixtures
Rigging versatility with lightweight softlights
Small "face" lights
Larger full-featured heads
Green/blue screens, backings, and translights
ARRI SkyPanel®
Establishing base settings
Settings menus
Light operation
LED tubes
Single- and bi-color tubes
Full-color tubes
Pixel tubes
Ribbon and tiles
Ribbon
Power and control
Soldering
Other LED form factors
Orbiter
Automated fixtures
Camera-mounted and small LEDs
Ring lights
Portable wall wash
Punchy LEDs
Architectural
CHAPTER 8 Established lighting instruments
Tungsten
HMI and other metal halide arc lamps
Fresnels
Flood/spot control
Tilt angle
Fresnel beam
Fresnel accessories
20k and 24k tungsten lights
PAR lights
PAR lamps
PAR cans
PAR arrays
Axially mounted PAR fixtures
Ellipsoidal reflector spotlights
Dedolights
Beam projectors
Area lights and backing lights
Space lights
Backing lights
Cyc strips
Open-face lights
Tungsten
HMI "open-face" lights
Tungsten soft lights
CHAPTER 9 Operating HMI lights
HMI lamps
ARRIMAX
Double-ended lamps
Other notes about HMI lamps
Normal HMI operation
Striking
DMX512-controlled ballasts
UV protection and the safety loop circuit
Color temperature
Operating conditions
Troubleshooting
Power
Cueing for HMIs
CHAPTER 10 Stands and rigging
Stands
Baby stands
Junior stands
Offsets, side arms, extensions, and right angles
Using stands
Crank-up and motorized stands
Grip stands
Booms
Rigging hardware
Nail-on plates
Set wall mounts
Clamps
Grids and greenbeds
Other rigging hardware
CHAPTER 11 Set protocol
Set protocol
Staging area
Lighting the set
Walkie-talkies
Safeties
Protecting sets and locations
Teamwork
Warnings
Stingers and cabling
Cables crossing the set
Cables crossing work areas
Stingers
Preventing kick-outs
Repatching
2k plugging policy
Labeling stingers and power cords
Coiling stingers and cable
Circuit balance and capacity
Overheating and short circuits
Smoke, fire, and other bad smells
Sprinkler systems
Elevated work
Ladders
Parallels
Working at height
Aerial lifts (Condors and scissor lifts)
Color correction on location
Correcting commercial/industrial fluorescents
Heat protection and gels
Gelling windows
Practical bulbs
PH bulbs and photoflood bulbs
MR-16
Mushroom floods
Dimming practical lamps
Wiring fixtures and outlet boxes
The wrap
Coiling feeder cable
Inventory
Replacing lamps
Matching the lamp to the fixture
Mercury
Replacing tungsten and HMI lamps
CHAPTER 12 Lighting control networks
DMX512
DMX512 addressing
The patch
Fixture numbers
The cheat sheet, fixtures, and universes
DMX values and device personality
General Device Type Format (GDTF)
Multiple DMX512 universes
Remote Device Management (RDM)
Building wired DMX512 systems
Deviations from the standard
Data termination
Capacity
DMX cable
Optical isolators and splitters
DMX512 testing
Loss of signal
Ethernet, Art-Net, sACN, and RDMnet
DMX over Ethernet
Other Ethernet protocols
RDMnet
Advantages of Ethernet
Lighting control apps
Wi-Fi
Wireless DMX
To be or not to be wireless
Wireless DMX transmitters and receivers
Satellite™ and Constellation
Bluetooth
Mesh
Wireless system management
DMX controllers and lighting consoles
Small controllers
Consoles
Console operations
Pixel mapping
CHAPTER 13 Electricity
The fundamentals of electricity and electrical formulas
Volts (electromotive force)
Amperes (current)
Watts (power)
The power formula
Resistance
Ohm's law
Parallel and series circuits
How NOT to use electrical formulas
AC vs. DC
Power systems
240/120 single-phase, three-wire plus ground system
208/120 three-phase, four-wire plus ground system
Single-phase derived from delta-connected, three-phase system
480/277 V three-phase system
Electrical safety systems
Control devices and polarity
Overcurrent protection
The current-carrying capacity of cable
Types of feeder cable
Equipment grounding
System ground
Generators
Ground rods
Bonding power sources
CHAPTER 14 Power distribution equipment
Components of a simple portable distribution system
208 V vs. 240 V systems
Overcurrent protection and cable ampacity
Protecting cable at its ampacity
Step-down box
The 400 percent rule
Feeder runs
Camlock connectors
Reversed ground system
Parallel cable
Test jacks
Camlock spiders
Distribution centers
Multi-pin connectors and receptacle boxes
Stage pin (Bates) connectors
Edison
NEMA L6-20 and L6-30
PowerCON and TRUE1
Socapex
Adapters
Adapters for big lights
DMX-controlled distribution and power with data
CHAPTER 15 Dimming equipment
Color temperature
Dimming types and applications
Household dimmers
Variac dimmers
Lunchbox dimmers and silent on-set dimmers
Dimmers tailored for LEDs and small incandescent lamps
Stand-alone dimmers
Dimmer packs
Dimmer racks
Wireless DMX on-set dimmers
Dimmer packs and racks
Dimmer rooms
Electronic dimmer designs
Forward-phase control dimmers—SCR
Reverse-phase control dimmers
Sinewave dimmers
Strand CD80 dimmer packs
Installation and setup
Troubleshooting
ETC sensor dimmer system
CHAPTER 16 Electrical rigging
The role of the rigging gaffer
Rigging paperwork
Layers of an electrical system
Hard-power layer
Dimmer-circuit layer
Control layer
Cable and generator loading
Sizing neutral conductors
Sizing equipment grounding conductors
Sizing grounding electrode and bonding conductors
Rigging cable
Protect your back
Traffic areas
Fire lanes
Identifying cable, labeling circuits
Lacing feeders
Ventilating and separating runs
Waterfalls
Placement of distribution boxes
The Gak package
Root out bad contacts
Testing the system before use
Testing for short circuits
Testing neutral and ground continuity and resistance
Making the feeder connections
Testing voltage
Lugs and buss bars
Knots for rigging
Loop knots
Binding hitches
Other useful hitches
Bends
Strength of rope
Rigging lights
Rigging aerial lifts
Cabling
Condor duty
CHAPTER 17 Working with electrical power
Voltage drop and line loss
Causes of voltage drop
Allowable voltage drop
Mitigating voltage drop
Simple line loss calculations
Single-phase voltage drop calculations
Finding the voltage drop
Finding cable gauge
Finding the maximum current
Finding the maximum length
Three-phase voltage drop calculations
Single-phase loads
Three-phase loads
Cable resistance
Power factor
Power factor correction
Non-linear loads and harmonics
Switch mode power supplies
Harmonics
Additive neutral current
Skin effect and proximity effect
Strategies for coping with large non-linear loads
Measuring electricity
AC Circuit Load Tester
Circuit testers
Testing continuity and testing for shorts
Voltage meters
Measuring amperage
Wattmeter or power meter
Power quality meter
Measuring frequency (Hz rate)
Circuit breaker finder
Meter categories
Electrical shocks and muscle freeze
CHAPTER 18 Power sources
Rechargeable batteries
Battery types and mounts
Voltage
Current
Battery capacity, run time, and charging
Charge time
Combining batteries with plates and power stations
Options for powering lights with batteries
Shipping and flying with batteries
Battery chemistry and care
Inverters
Large battery packs
Using available outlets
Getting organized
240 V receptacles
Putt-putts (small portable generators)
Retrofits and alternative configurations
Parallel generators and step-down transformers
Running the generator
Troubleshooting small generators
How does a generator work?
240-to-120 V transformer
Full-size generators
Electrical configurations
Control panel
Generator placement
Selecting a generator
480 V transformer
Power (kVA)
How transformers work
Using a 480 V system
Line drops from utility power
Tie-ins
Approach protection
CHAPTER 19 Special circumstances and practices
Shooting on moving vehicles
Poor man's process and other techniques
Lighting in and around water
Working with electricity around water and damp environments
GFCI protection
GFCI devices
Testing equipment
Protecting equipment
Lighting rain
Underwater lighting
Electricity in water
Modern underwater fixtures
The underwater lighting arsenal
Features of underwater fixtures
Surface support
Lighting for matte photography
Pure screen color and density
Lighting the foreground
CHAPTER 20 Specialty lighting equipment
SoftSun
Lighting balloons
Lightning effects
Lightning Strikes!
Control units
Power requirements
Running Lightning Strikes! on generators
Thundervoltz battery packs
Automated lights
Selecting moving lights
Working with moving lights
Remote pan and tilt for conventional lights
Media servers and video projectors for lighting effects
Xenon lights
Follow spots
Preparing the follow spot
Operating the follow spot
Black lights
Black light fixtures
Photographing with black light
CHAPTER 21 LED color science and technology
Systems for evaluating color rendering
What's wrong with CRI?
Extended CRI, CRI 15
TLCI-2012 and TLMF-2013
Spectral Similarity Index (SSI)
What to watch for
Why different cameras see the same colors differently
Gamut
Selecting the color space of a light
Matching colors, ANSI E1.54
LED technology
LED power supply, controller, driver, and dimming
LED useful life
APPENDIX A Photometric calculations and tables
APPENDIX B Lamp tables
APPENDIX C Flicker-free frame rates
APPENDIX D Electrical tables
APPENDIX E IP and NEMA equipment ratings
APPENDIX F Equipment suppliers and manufacturers
APPENDIX G Gels and diffusions
APPENDIX H LED lights
Glossary
Index
