♪ ♪
You know, I like to have a plan.
I like to have thought things through in my head beforehand.
I also love spontaneity.
I don't want to be tied down to something.
I mean, obviously on certain situations,
often you have to put a rig up.
You have to know basically what you're going to do.
But I do like on the day to feel
that I'm open to what happens on the set.
♪ Roger Deakins on Film Lighting - Intro Music ♪
I think it is good to understand
what different kinds of lights do.
It's really important to understand that 24 Light Dino
is going to give you a different effect
than a 5K would for an out without the lens on it.
It's good to know it because then when you're in a situation
and you want a certain kind of look
like when we were doing "Blade Runner"
and I wanted those hard moving shadows.
I've done it before years and previously.
I've done it with a sky pan.
It's basically a bare bulb.
But the sky pan is so light.
It's something you could rig on a cable and you could maneuver it up and down.
It's going to go over the whole set in an even light.
You know, you have to know this to have the opportunity to use it.
Yeah, night shooting always difficult.
I mean, it less difficult now, again, with digital technology in a way,
but when you only had, you know, 50 ASA or a 10 ASA film stock,
and you were doing a big night scene,
it was always kind of tricky
because it's kind of fake.
"- When this baby hits 88 miles per hour,
you're going to see some serious shit."
The thing is with lighting
you're not always
trying to completely represent reality.
That's not necessarily what you actually want to show them because
you want to create a certain mood.
"- You're out here.
All alone.
With a stranger."
That's especially, I think, applies to night shooting
and it's very hard to recreate exactly what night looks like.
The color spectrum is always pushed off to this green, blue,
but that's not really what's there.
That's what your eyes are interpreting.
So it's a very interesting issue, really,
what is real and what is the way you want to create for the audience?
Personally, one of my big conundrums
is mixing light.
"- We could keep this or we could get a drink.
- I'll take the drink."
When I was at film school, there was a rule
you must match all your color sources.
And that came from the days of Technicolor,
and you had a Technicolor technician on set.
"- I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!"
It's interesting you watch that first color films
and they all are in a kind of white light.
Everything had to match it.
You rarely saw even a warm oil lamp.
You would see a Western at night, you would have an oil lamp,
but it'd be still the same color as the sunlight of the scene previously.
But the interior was always lit like the exterior.
You know, there was a couple of scenes in "True Grit" where we
mix firelight with moonlight.
And I felt I had to, because I wanted to see more
than what the fire could justify.
" Take the girl. I'm all out."
It was so inspiring that there's a whole world out there to study
and then to experiment with you-- with yourself.
There's a whole palette that people hadn't been using, you know,
and they've been matching everything up.
There's such a broad color palette now.
"- Two beers."
♪ ♪
When I was at the art college
and I sort of discovered stills photography
I wasn't there as a stills photographer.
Thankfully, there was a dark room
and I spent most of my time taking photographs.
And when fashion photographers said,
if you can photograph a human face, you can photograph anything.
And it's true because
it's not only in a technical sense, like we're saying with a bare bulb,
do you put it under somebodies face?
"- I love birthday parties."
Above their face?
Do you put it behind them and then bounce the light into their face?
"- Well."
But it's not just technical
it's how do you bring out that character?
"- Well, let us see her, then."
How do you bring out the essence of who that person is?
"- Like a real girl."
And I think anything you'd like to light a big set.
It's basely just the same as light in a human face, but a lot bigger.
"- You look like a good joe."
Lighting a human face to express something to an audience
is the hardest thing to do.
You're not going to learn from me or anybody else.
And if it doesn't excite you,
if going around with a camera
and looking at light in the real world doesn't excite you then
I don't think there's much hope.
"- I always know you are special."
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