# Movie vs Theatrical Lighting



## Tyler (Mar 4, 2009)

00000000000000000000000000000


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## Esoteric (Mar 4, 2009)

Wow, I don't really know of any good sources other than my old lecture notes. I will tell you there are a HUGE variety of differences beginning with who is in charge of the lighting in each forum, continuing with how lights are set, and ending with their use with everything in between.

Mike


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## Footer (Mar 4, 2009)

A good resource is find pictures of movie sets from the set looking out. That can tell you a lot. Biggest thing is, as long as the lens does not see the light, you can put it there. There are plenty others, do some googling. I don't know of any legit resources however.


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## Grog12 (Mar 5, 2009)

1. Frenels are more versital than ERS's in Movie lighting.
2. Barndoors are used to hold color.
3. Gel slots are used to hold the screens that dim the lights

There's more but I can't think of them right now.


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## Van (Mar 5, 2009)

Use the search button. This subject has been hit a few times here. I think you can reliably quote a poster from CB in the bibliography of your paper. As stated there are HUGE differences in lighting for Theatre and lighting for Cinema. 
Fixtures names, fixtures sizes, Geling techniques, < very rarely do you use 1/4CTO in the theatre>. Power consumption / total loads, In theatrical setting you have 100's of lamps each running at 575 watts, In cinema you might 3 lights running at 5.75 K each. Cabling, and distibution, Theatre you can use a SOCA cable about 1 1/2" in diameter and power 8-16 fiztures. Cinema you run 5 wires of 2/0 to a panel and provide power for fixtures, motors, SPFX, and craft services.


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## techieman33 (Mar 5, 2009)

Van said:


> Cabling, and distibution, Theatre you can use a SOCA cable about 1 1/2" in diameter and power 8-16 fiztures. Cinema you run 5 wires of 2/0 to a panel and provide power for fixtures, motors, SPFX, and craft services.



That heavy cable is still going into a theater, you just don't see it in the conduit.


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## Van (Mar 5, 2009)

techieman33 said:


> That heavy cable is still going into a theater, you just don't see it in the conduit.


 
Exactly my point. In the Theatrical setting you are not usually responsible for providing all you own Big Distro, with the exception of traveling shows, and Concerts < but then I said Theatre didn't I ? > In the Cinema world you are typically Required to provide your own distro in addition to often having to provide your own power, i.e. a Gennie of some sort.


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## SteveB (Mar 5, 2009)

Tyler said:


> I have a paper to write and I wanted some info on the differences between theatrical lighting (for theater shows) and lighting for films. I need to include online sources. Please let me know if you know of any good information on the internet about the differences.
> 
> Thanks!



Just to touch on some differences

- As others have stated, movies tend to use a ton of temporary and portable power, as the electrical department may well be providing electricity to every user on the set - catering, makeup, construction and painters, all before the shooting crew arrives at the location. I vividly recall seeing the electrics staging location for Spiderman I, when it shot in NYC, at the Nat'l Guard armory in Brooklyn, a 360x 190ft interior space with 4/0 feeder cable stacks, all about 3-4ft high, filling the armory. That's a whole lot of feeder cable.

- Theaters, as stated prior, also uses a lot of power, it's just part of the building infrastructure, so is out of sight, out of mind. 

- Film is a lot of "as you go" lighting, I.E., the gaffer and the electricians, in consultation with the Director of Photography, discuss how a scene should be lit, the Gaff and the Elec's rig the gear, often limited to ground based stands and they light away. Rarely is anything on a dimmer, as dimming changes the color temperature of incandescent lamps. Lot's of fresnels, HMI's and open faced gear is used, soft lights, chinese lanterns, etc... Intensity changes are made with metal netting (scims) that reduces intensity without changing color temperature. After the scene is shot, all is struck and you move on to the next scene, with a different rig and equipment setup. 

- Theater is a lot of rig in advance from a plot prepared from a Lighting Designer, who has gone to rehearsals, consulted with the Scenic and Costume designers, as well as getting direction from the Director. The LD then prepares the plot, arranges rental of gear, gets all delivered to the theater (if renting) where it is rigged. Then a plotting session is run, levels are set on a console controlling dimmers and movers, scrollers, etc... rehearsals are run, etc... with a stage manager calling cues to a console operator. Works for legit theater, musicals, opera.

- Film and TV lighting is a slave to the needs of the cameras and is less about providing for a "concept" that has a total image composition. The requirements of the film and/or TV cameras, dictate certain lighting levels be maintained, as well as appropriate color temperature of the lighting sources, so the CAMERA can capture the image, and with choices made for camera usage (camera movement, lens choices, angle of shot, duration, etc..) and subsequent editing, allow for for a mood to be established on-screen. 

- Theater has a live audience that sees everything, so it's up to the designers to establish a "Concept" of the location, time, mood, etc... as (a) complete composite image(s) including changing of scenic and costume elements, sound effects, as well as lighting cues that changes what the audience thinks is the time and location and keys the audience attention to particular area's on the stage, all things a close-up on a camera does as directors choice, as example.

Hope this helps.

Steve B.


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## Footer (Mar 5, 2009)

Movies are a "just throw something at it" type of thing. To cover most shoots, most production houses carry grip trucks. These come by the ton, and the heavier the truck, the more crap you get. 

Truck Packages - DR&A, Inc. - (615) 256-6200


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## Esoteric (Mar 5, 2009)

Yeah, good responses so far, and no one has even talked about "lighting" outdoor shoots.

There is a reason why lighting for movies was a seperate course in college.

Different techniques, different tools. Another example no one has said is that spill is not even thought about on movie sets most of the time. Also when was the last time you saw an LD on a theater show walking around with a photometer?

There is enough differences to... Write a paper on!

Mike


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## Footer (Mar 5, 2009)

I was on the CNN Studio Tour downtown last weekend and I was suprised at how theatrical those studios lighting was. Strand 520 consoles, socapex, tons of ARRI fresnels, lots of Source 4's, Zipstrips, parcans, and all kinds of other stuff. Of course they still had soft boxes and stuff like that, but the theatre stuff was in there. 

The fact these guys cram 25-30 different looking studios in a room the size of my black box still blows my mind.


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## lieperjp (Mar 5, 2009)

Van said:


> This subject has been hit a few times here. I think you can reliably quote a poster from CB in the bibliography of your paper.



You actually can... for MLA the correct citation for this post right here would be:



L., Justin. Re: Movie vs. Theatrical Lighting. Controlbooth. 5 March 2009. Lighting. 5 March 2009. <http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/lighting/11563-movie-vs-theatrical-lighting.html>

Chicago Style would be a bit easier:

(footnote number) L, Re: Movie vs. Theatrical Lighting. Controlbooth.com.

You would need to find out the real name of poster in order to cite them correctly.

_Your English lesson today has been brought to you by the letter_ J  _and the number _ 6.


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## Landon2006 (Mar 6, 2009)

When I directed a short film a few year back, the lighting was entirely different from theater. As other have said here, there are major differences between a lighting package for theater and film. 

Here is a short comparison:
#1: Fixtures - In Theater, Mainly makes use of floods, or "cyc's" for background and general wash, uses lots of leko's for lighting the acting area. May also make use of PAR can's to some extent. Film sets on the other hand depend on what your trying to light. The MAIN fixtures used on film sets are ARRI Fresnels and HMI Mega lights. The HMI lights are used when the director or director of photography wants a "Daylight" wash. Fresnel's are used when you want the more traditional, "indoor lighting". 

Film also makes use of Florescent lighting, although not very often. You might see open face, or "work light" type fixtures on set as well, both almost always they are covered with a "Soft Box". 

#2: Intensity: In Theater, you need enough light so that the human eye can see what you want it to see. General, it takes much less lighting intensity than it does in film. With film, you have to compensate your lighting for the camera's iris, which may be to be adjusted depending on what frame rates your shooting at, what film stock you're shooting on and if the camera "pans" or not. 

You'll notice on a movie set, that while less lighting instruments are used, the ones that are used are usually stronger (1,000w +) than theater fixtures. 

For the tour we are doing of our theatrical show, we have over 150 lighting instruments. On the short film that I did, we had, I think around 15 or so. 

#3: Dimmers: As already is pointed out, dimmers are never used on a film set. Dimmers will cause lighting to change color temperature, which we don't need. If we need to dim a light, we use whats called a "Scrim". 

#4: Gels: Rarely does a film set use a "gel" on a light. We mainly use "Filters", which go over the lens of the camera. Even then, its usually only an ND filter, or polarized filter. "Colored Gels" are hardly ever used, as we do almost 100% of color in post. It's much easier to fix it if it was shot "plain" and then colored in post. 

In theater, this is not possible. 

#5: Power: Generally, Power requirements for films are a lot smaller than theater. At any given time, you only have maybe 5 lights going on one scene (depending on the scale of the scene your lighting). Most of the time, the fixtures can be plugged directly into a power strip, and then into the wall socket. 

The only time you really make use of "distro boxes" is when your using a large number of really powerful lights. 

There are of course many other differences, which one could write an entire book about. But those are some of the basics. 

In order to fully understand the difference, get a book on "lighting for theater" and a book on "Lighting for film or photography". You will then be able to compare techniques pretty well.

Here is a little article on the subject. Not very complete, but it may help you some. http://www.campbell-shaw.com/downloads/Video_Stage_Lighting.pdf


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## Grog12 (Mar 6, 2009)

Footer said:


> I was on the CNN Studio Tour downtown last weekend and I was suprised at how theatrical those studios lighting was. Strand 520 consoles, socapex, tons of ARRI fresnels, lots of Source 4's, Zipstrips, parcans, and all kinds of other stuff. Of course they still had soft boxes and stuff like that, but the theatre stuff was in there.
> 
> The fact these guys cram 25-30 different looking studios in a room the size of my black box still blows my mind.



One of the main differences between location shooting and studio shooting, especially in a studio that is constantly set up, is the fact that location shooting requires it to be portable easy to setup and tear down in a day.

It really doesn't surprie me that the CNN Studio is set up more like a theatre because they're using the same setup constantly.


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## SteveB (Mar 6, 2009)

Landon,

Be careful with definitive statements as this:

"#3: Dimmers: As already is pointed out, dimmers are never used on a film set."

A better phrasing might be:

"Dimmers are not usually used on location shots, due to the complication of set-up and strike, as well as less local power, and sometimes no need for that level of control (or no space for the gear). It's common though, to see consoles, dimming systems, socapex cabling, etc... on large indoor settings where the control is desired and there's a lot of gear on an overhead rig".

There was a whole thread from an electrician on Salt, a major budget film shooting at the defunct Grumman aircraft assembly plant on Long Island. They seemingly have multiple systems in use, as the post was about wanting to purchase a number of Expression consoles, and the use was for everyday control, not specifically special effects. Think as well the movies Chicago, The Producers, The Birdcage, among others, that have very specific concert lighting requirements and often time use a Theatrical Lighting Designer (Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer are very busy in the film business) for the theatrical scenes, which makes it a blend of disciplines.

SB


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## Van (Mar 6, 2009)

Steve, Glad you hit that one I'll hit the other. 

_#4: Gels: Rarely does a film set use a "gel" on a light. We mainly use "Filters", which go over the lens of the camera. Even then, its usually only an ND filter, or polarized filter. "Colored Gels" are hardly ever used, as we do almost 100% of color in post. It's much easier to fix it if it was shot "plain" and then colored in post._

This one isn't as bad, since you did limit your use of absolutes. I've seen gels used on any number of film sets. Everything from CTO/B to R54.
Post is a get place to tweak things but you're never going to do all you coloring in post, especially in some of you more Arty or Edgy films. 
I absolutely hate absolutes.


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## Landon2006 (Mar 6, 2009)

Steve B:
I was mainly going to my experiance of film sets, aka: location shooting. The only time it seems practical to have dimmers is in a situation like a news rooms, etc. Somewhere where the lighting stays the same from month to month, and were lighting is out of reach. 

Even films shooting in a "Studio" setting, or sound-stage, will rarely use dimmers. As had been said, Dimmers cause color temp fluctuations, and then the camera's white balance has to be set for every fluctuation. Its so much easier to just throw a "scrim" over your lighting. 

I'm not saying film sets don't use them, I'm just saying that its not practical to use them on a film set. 

Van:
While there are a few "gels" used for color correction, may main term was "color gels"... such as a dark blue or dark green or red. Again, I'm not saying films don't use color gels at all, its just not common on film sets, especially for a drama or comedy. 

As to the "musical films"... yeah, I'm sure they would use dimmers and gels, but they also of course use a more "theatrical" setup than most films do. So the use of dimmers is understandable.


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## Grog12 (Mar 6, 2009)

To expound a little on what Van said......

#4 just isn't true. Most DP's I've worked with use a lot of gel in addition to filters on the camera lens. But they aren't using things like R80...they're using color correction. The use is dropping a little with advent of HMI lights on set but it hasn't been completly removed from the industry.


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## Landon2006 (Mar 6, 2009)

Grog12 said:


> To expound a little on what Van said......
> 
> #4 just isn't true. Most DP's I've worked with use a lot of gel in addition to filters on the camera lens. But they aren't using things like R80...they're using color correction. The use is dropping a little with advent of HMI lights on set but it hasn't been completly removed from the industry.



I should have made it clearer, but when referring to gels, I meant color gels. Color CORRECTION gels are another story.


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## Grog12 (Mar 6, 2009)

True...especially in this day and age when more and more color correction is being used in theatre. There are a few designers and design proffessors out there who live on nothing but color correction. Which is a shame in my opinion, you can't cut one or the other out of theatre.


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## Esoteric (Mar 6, 2009)

I use a lot of color correction. I use a lot of N/C. BUT I also use a lot of saturate colors.

Mike


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## meatpopsicle (Mar 6, 2009)

Well, hmmm.

As a frequent gaffer, and the current programmer for a very large movie about to shoot here in ny, the replys here are, happily, pretty accurate. However....

the rig I'm programming on has 768 dimmers, 96 are 12k, and 192 dmx controlled relays (called duece boards - 48 channels). Each rack gets its own 4/0 run with double pump neutral. We've used about 150 100' runs of soca and 100 100' runs of 100amp bates. I'm driving an Expression 3x 1200. I almost went with an ION but the gaffer wasn't impressed with the feedback from three other shows that were using it. The fact that it took the shop guy 10 minutes to do a 3 light chase and he couldn't load it onto a sub sealed its fate. As the programmer/board op. its my job to make all the "maps" (plots) of the sets and lights for the gaffer and crew and to put together all the paperwork to support the rig - channel sheets, dimmer schedules ect. ect. I'm using WYSIWG r23. Most people in the industry use VW, one uses vw with show designer and a lot use the mod. 1A pencil. All my paperwork is in Excel since I've only had a week to plot and its faster to come up with schedules when all u have is dimmers and circuits and no lights.

We are in a stage that is 190 x 100 and will have 2 sets on it. There is no daylight units (hmi) since we're inside. We do have 6 20k fresnels for one set which we are running at 220v by pairing differently phased 12k dimmers. And we're using a lot of tungsten pars from mole richardson (like daylight pars only with tungsten lamps). The coolest light I've seen on this set is a 20kw beam projector that we tested. Think of a sunbeam coming 120' through real (fake windows), the unit is rigged on a boomed man lift ("condor") and has an operator in the bucket at all times to focus. 

The goal of movie lightng (generalizing) is to make a fake world look as real as possible. We use a lot of soft lighting (read bounce sources) the bigger the source to the subject the softer the shadow. As one poster put it if the camera doesn't see it you can put something there...however usually somebody else has put something there - like set dressers (the scenics who put dressing on a set (props the actor won't touch as opposed to "props" - stuff the actor will touch). We've just spent 3 weeks pre rigging the stage with 8 electricians a day (riggers, called grips, were also 8 a day). 

this set will shoot for a week or so. Then we go on location for a couple of weeks while the set next to it is finished. then we come back and shoot the other half of the stage for a week or so. Then we go away and shoot on location (a 3 block stretch of chinatown) for 1 week, then we go to an armory where another 3 sets are built and there is a similar, albiet larger rig, this with movers, atomics, and, hopefully under 1200 dimmers. I'll run the movers on an IPC or Full Boar - what ever See Factor can get me.

and lastly, the tonnage of a "grip truck" is an 80's invocation. Currently most units have a 40' tractor trailer for grip, one for electric, one for rigging grip and one for rigging electric. This doesn't count the straight trucks bringing gear for each specific location. Most trucks mount at least one 1200amp movie generator. Electric trucks frequently run a "twin pack" of two. Most exterior shots at this level will have at least 4 "machines" running. These are just for the two departments that relate to theatre electrics. Of course props has their own truck, wardrobe their own (usually 50') tractor and the ever popular "honey wagon" - dressing rooms and a mens and womens room. Hey, you have a bathroom at your office...and so do we.



Total shooting days - 120


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## SteveB (Mar 7, 2009)

meatpopsicle said:


> The coolest light I've seen on this set is a 20kw beam projector that we tested. Think of a sunbeam coming 120' through real (fake windows), the unit is rigged on a boomed man lift ("condor") and has an operator in the bucket at all times to focus.
> 
> 120



If this is the Long Island location, then I'm coming to see this thing. I'm off Tues & Wed. and may join my wife for lunch one of those days and will come looking.

Steve B.


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## meatpopsicle (Mar 7, 2009)

Sadly, this is not Salt, which is shooting at the Grumman plant in Bethpage. I wish...since I live in Bethpage. My show is Sorcerer's Apprentice, shooting at Steiner. And we only tested it... I think the DP went with 10k tung. pars. Sorry to disappoint. KBritt has Salt.


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## awhaley (Mar 15, 2009)

You've got some great responses about the gear... Now I'm going to throw in a bit about the design side too...

The human eye is very good at calibrating itself. In a few seconds it adjusts to a wide variety of intensities and color temperatures. When you're outside in daylight, a very bright blue light looks white to you... you step inside and within moments a much dimmer warm amber light can look white... and both lights allow you to read text with the same ease.

The camera is a mechanical instrument designed to capture light. It has controls that can be adjusted by the operator to adjust how much light it lets in, but only within a narrow range (at least when related to the human eye.) The DP doesn't want to use the iris on the camera to adjust the light input, because this ALSO adjusts the depth of field (how much of the scene, depth wise, is in focus or blurred). And then you have to consider the actual film. There are hundreds of film stocks available, each with their own sensitivity to light, and furthermore, with their own sensitivity to different colors of light. 

The DP has to consider the lighting when selecting film stock, and the film stock when setting up the lighting. You have to keep the intensity and color within the parameters that the film stock can capture on this particular camera. For a lot of 'films' these days, we're actually talking about shooting on video... but even here the ccd chips have sensitivities to certain wavelengths... and these can be adjusted somewhat, but must always be considered. All of these technical considerations relate to the theatrical designer's responsibility to provide adequate visibility...

Next comes the artistry... There have been some good posts that mentioned that a lot of the color is added to film in post... this is true but not absolutely. If you're not 'sure' about what you need it to look like, you might choose to light the scene conservatively and add in the 'artistic touch' in post. But a good DP knows that the more of the scene he gets right 'in camera' the better. 

Good film lighting (and theatre lighting for that matter) is about contrast. I often have a black and white monitor next to a calibrated color one when I'm shooting on location. The lighting needs to look good on BOTH monitors to actually be good. In live theatre, sometimes color and depth can be relied on to help the audience focus on a foreground object but not a background one. These are tricks you use in film too, but in film, a difference of intensity should almost ALWAYS exist between the subject and the background. 

A big function of film lighting is softening the effect of natural lighting that is too harsh. If you're shooting outside on a sunny day you may turn on a LOT of light and use reflectors and diffusers in various places to put light on the 'shadow' side of the face and to soften the sunlight onto the bright side so that the camera, with it's narrow 'contrast ratio' (ratio between the brightest thing it can capture and the darkest) can record the whole image without parts bleaching out to white and parts fading off to black.

Typically fewer(but often FAR brighter) light sources are used in film than theatre because the camera gets in close and complicated or multiple shadows get very distracting. The sun casts one shadow of you as you walk down the street. In a theatre, a system of 12 lights may represent this sunlight into various areas of the stage, and the audience never really minds the fact that as you walk from one light to the next you have two shadows for an instant... the film audience will notice this very quickly so if you need a whole street to appear like it's lit from one source, you have to light the whole street with one gigantic source. (or several gigantic sources far enough away that they aproximate one source, in rare and expensive circumstances.)

Composition isn't really the job of lighting in film like it is in theatre... the cameraman should be making sure that an interesting picture with good focus exists at all times. (attention focus, not lens focus.) Lighting DOES have to sell location and mood though and this can be difficult. Getting the scene bright enough that the camera captures a clean image and making it look like a dark and dirty night club can be tough objectives to reconcile. You have to point a light at every surface that the camera can see at any given moment, and you will use the metal screens to adjust the intensity relationship between these various objects. 

Good film making uses a LOT of color... but generally less saturated colors than the theatre and often not as the primary light source to reveal the talent. This isn't a rule either... lots of film shoots use color (and not just color correction) on the talent too in some scenes. When doing theatre lighting... the lighting designer gets to decide (within limits) what will serve as 'white' for this production. Bastard Amber may be white, 1/2 CT Blue may be white, and I've seen pale greens that when used in context for the right play, I believed as 'white' for that show. In the movie theatre, the audience knows what white is and knows if you're deviating from it... so all color is considered in reference to true 'white' (whatever that really is.... get familiar with the color temperature scale) whereas in theatre I reference all color to whatever I've defined as 'white' for this prodution. (for example... if L201 is white for the show...R52 is a warm color. If R03 is white for the show, R52 is a cool color...) The overall artistic 'color cast(the difference between the look of 'The Matrix' and the look of 'The Transporter')' and the look of ' of the film is set by the film choice and the post processing... the lighting defines how color changes in reference to this overall look.


I hope some of this helps! Shout if you want clarification, more details, or just to argue about any of this!

Art


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## Van (Mar 16, 2009)

Thanks to everyones input. I think thishas been a very worthwhile thread.


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