"- I'm not really a cinematographer that does
well with fake lighting from other directions.
I feel it always looks sort of terrible
so I like to try to make the lamps do the homework.
My name is Claudia Miranda and I'm a cinematographer.
And today we're going to talk about candlelit scenes.
- The Oscar goes to Claudio Miranda "Life of Pi".
- This is the first Academy Award
and nomination for Claudio Miranda.
- There's exciting scenes for me that I love like
the candles and the things we did there was nuts.
Everyone thank you so much.
Well, I mean I've gone crazy on candles.
I mean on "Life of Pi" we had 120 000 candles
and we had 2 000 people lighting the candle so that was pretty extreme.
- The gods were my superheroes growing up.
Hanuman, the monkey god...
lifting an entire Mountain to save his friend Lakshman.
- You know, I had brought some lights just in case we didn't have enough candles.
And we were lighting some backgrounds.
And in the end, I just kept on switching them all off
and then we ended up purely on candles in the night's evening.
I was lighting even the actors with the candles.
If there was a movie light on I was pretty upset that it was on.
There's a little bit of wind it gives you this little pulse and flicker.
So if you just have a candle that's like static
and the candle is doing this it looks totally fake.
But if you have a candle that's reacting, you know,
it's pulsating, it's reacting, it feels real and connected.
Because I usually love that.
I mean you're going for a mood, right?
So, you gotta love what the candle is doing.
And we all get proud of it like in most directors I work with are like.
' Freaking candlestick work.'
I mean you light the backgrounds like you would
normally do, you know? I mean, you do that.
You know, put a fill card if you want...
I like letting things go dark.
I mean I'm not afraid of that at all.
Most people I work with are not afraid of that.
"- Every day you have to go down there.
And see what was lost.
Are we've done our job, Jack?
- I mean the first thing to consider when shooting candlelight scenes
is that you're going to need a camera that has
a pretty high ISO.
There's this one candle in "Oblivion" that's right in the middle.
There was no place to put a fake source to add anything more, you know?
It's like you're in a glass house.
- I don't think they're trying to kill me today.
Scavs.
- I remember really being worried about it because normally
I'm able to use triple wicks which is you may have a wick
that's with three wicks kind of built into one candle.
It gives you a bigger flame and it gives you a little more light.
But the productions that I remember had this candle.
And it was a very modern candle in this glass
and had this really tiny wick.
And I was going like, 'Man'.
And then he says like, 'Yeah, that's not so bad'.
And the table like it's gonna be really long
and they're sitting really far away from them.
And I'm in this glass structure so we can't even put a fake light
to make the candle so the candle has to really do the homework for the scene.
I mean, yes, we could paint it out digitally in reflections
but we didn't want to. I didn't want to go down there.
I wanted to really make this lamp
and I worked really hard to make this lamp the only source.
- Come on.
- You know, we had a camera. It was the F65 at the time which was 800 ISO.
And I remember really pushing that candle as much as it can do.
You know, I lowered all the projection down.
I darkened it as much as I can do
and gave as much light and I knew I was going to push it a little bit.
I didn't even think I opened up the shutter
and tried to give the last gulp of exposure.
And I would say you need all those tools.
I mean today with camera the ISO's are getting crazy
that you could just take an iPhone and bounce it off the wall and get enough light.
What I think is you have to be really aware
of all the technology that's around nowadays.
So you always got to keep an eye out for what is out there
because that can help you and I think that's critical.
- What happens now?
- The Tet will be online soon.
Victoria will report your rescue.
- I mean, the lens is very important consideration
when doing candlelit scenes.
You know, you need something that can go to at least a 1.4.
A zoom lens with a 2/8 would have killed me on that shot.
Things you do have to be careful with, you know,
on lens choices when dealing with dark candles.
Sometimes that funky lens you got that has a lot of, you know, aberrations on it
that were kind of great and easier in softer lighting
may be exasperated a lot more when you're
dealing with candle a very nice pinpoint of light.
So you have to take that into consideration.
I was working with Master Primes so those are totally clean
but if you're dealing with KOWAs or, you know,
some crazy lenses that just have...
You know, you pick the lens up and it kind of rattles in your head, you know?
You would say you might just want to do a little test on that.
You might watch what that lens does with candlelight
because it could blow out your whole image.
It could be could be flares that you may not be pleasant.
Then you are chasing your tail by adding fill
and adding other things to make that lamp less strong but keeping your scene bright.
So in "Benjamin Button" there's a scene where
Benjamin is with a Daisy underneath the table with all these clothes.
That camera had a very limited dynamic range and a very slow ISO.
Those lenses were Digi Primes and they weren't as open.
I was getting really kind of lost on how to do this scene
and I remember just kind of sticking a practical in the middle.
- I'm not as old as I look.
- I thought so.
You don't seem like an old person.
- I tried to make the candle do as much work as possible
and let it kind of blow out and not protecting it like...
Sometimes your nervous thing is trying to protect the highlights
and this a lot of things go from time to time.
So, I like that style of shooting.
- May I?
- Okay.
- I mean here's some things you can do.
You can actually get a triple wicks or a fat wicks
if you need to get more out of the candle. That's something that's pretty available.
If you do have to add a little bit more light, you can
add it from behind the candle with a little peanut globe.
I mean maybe have a guy in the dimmer that's trying to mimic you know the exact
kind of way it's flickering to give it more realistic.
Because the candle if there's a little bit of wind or there's a little bit of motion
it will naturally give you a little bit of flutter which I think is beautiful.
And you could try to emulate that.
But now it's much easier.
Now we have cameras with ISO's - the dual ISO's on cameras
that can go 4000 ISO.
So keep in concert that this is your source and you're being honest with that.