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Light is everything
it's what brings us life
it's the sun
artificial light is because
we want to extend day into night
in a work of fiction we want to
create in the audience the illusion
that they're in a sort of reality
we are cheaters
we work a whole day
we manage to get three edited minutes
and then we pretend
that everything happened in those three minutes
while it took twelve hours to make them.
During the whole day, there is a problem
with the angle of light, the amount of shade
of color temperature
to make belive
that those twelve hours of work
happened in three minutes
or like a student asked me before
beginning a course
'I want you to teach me how to do light
so that lighting becomes invisible'
- a bit more fluent please
so they can follow you
- there goes the shoulder
- you can start when the smoke ends
the essential ability
to do lighting is
to be able to appreciate light
I believe that's fundamental
to know what's going on
why did this shaddow appear?
where does it come from?
what is the angle of light?
the recommendation for students
is to watch, in real life
where does light come from
whenever they're at the bus,
at the car,
when seeing the dawn, the dusk
then, to be able to observe
in artificial light
how it is
at a bus station
what colors are there
that's why there's a colorimeter.
A student should be able to
see light and then reproduce it
wether he wants to experiments afterwards
with color filters and the like
that's valid
but when a student can't stage what he sees
with his naked eye
for the digital medium
or film
then he's lost
because he can't handle the tecnique
when working with my students
what I do is
make them reproduce
something they're familiar with
from a movie, a painting or whatever
so they have to recreate the lighting
because then they attend
to it's illumination
and then have to know about lights
to know about his tools
their possibilities
like if he's unsing a diffused light
and then he wants to 'cut' it
he's lost because he can't
to make a cut
and create divisions
you need
direct light
...make it sharp...
we often start at black
specially when working in-studio
it brings great confidence
because we can control each light
as long as we have the right equipment
start at black means
we begin without any light
...take two densities here...
...that the gown
seems you are not
quite familiar with it yet.
- yeah, ok.
in any case I think
everyone on this job,
we are somewhat improvising
we are not like a scientist
like an astronomer,
that falls back to laws
cinematography
and cinema have no laws
every movie
asks for a different
a different aproach
when I'm offered a job
and do a feature
I feel once again
like first day of first grade
because it has to be reconsidered
well, sure you can
go about with
the standard lighting
and do like we see in soaps
in advertising
you can do that but,
I think
the living cinematographer
has to know to get involved
with the story to find
what images it requires
I think it's an utmost
consideration.
To me
someone who really knows about light
is the cuban, Nestor Almendros
he's a great example
in Cries and Whispers, Sven Nykvist
does a wonderful job
or Haneke's photographer
on the white ribbon [Christian Berger]
are photographers
that take care
about realism
but of course you can't undermine
the new generation
that's finding
a lot of experimental approaches
that are fascinating
like in "Hidalgo"
Emiliano [Villanueva]'s photography
is excelent
it's a very good job
he took great care
of his work
of course
cinematography
in of itself, doesn't really exist
cinematography is
something applied along
with the production effort,
with acting direction, etc.
and when all these elements
are at the 80% or 90% mark
maybe a movie will come out of it.
www.ljvisualarts.com