exposure consideration for shooting people with DARK SKIN

[pfriesen]

I'm moving out with a few fellow cinematographers here in Miami to shoot some tests of various film stocks (some of Kodak's new Vision2 stocks as well as short ends of Fuji) on Super16 with, Arri SR2 Camera and a small tungesten and 2x1200W HMI units. CONTINENTAL Labs requested from us to do some specific stuff for them and we get in return some film stock and Post Work (development, color timing).
For the following scene I would ask all of you for your thoughts, considerations, experiences:

I'm going to shoot a black woman (very black) in a white marble (almost pure white with slight grey texture) bath room with glass doors. It is supposed to be a daytime scene and I'm not so sure yet what the action of the "black beauty" in the whole thing will be but I'm sure we will come up with something.

- Anyways, what expiriences do u guys have with shooting black people?
- What lighting ratios u think would be appropriate between the brightest parts on the white marble and the black skin?
- How would you compensate your incident/spot meter reading for black skin (for what skin tones; on what film stock)?
- Has anyone of u experimented with how black skin tones change with different color temperatured light (differently gelled) lights?
- Can u recommend any filters (e.g. BlackProMist - would most likely be not so good with all that white marble i guess) which would help me in this situation?
-etc.

A lot of questions I know.
Thanks for all your thoughts, ideas, sharing of knowledge!
If anyone wants to know or see later how all our tests turn out write me an email. We are gonna shoot that stuff June 27th to 29th and Post Work should be done at latest a week after that.


Philipp

 

[Kevin_Zanit]

Well I don't really handle dark skin tones hugely differently than lighter ones.

What I like to do is have makeup add moisturizer on the darker skin, this builds up reflectance in the skin. Then, I take a large piece of white show card and shoot a skrimed down unit into the card. It is the same principle as an eye light. The card does not add to the exposure, it is just a white object for the skin to reflect.

This method is good for very dark skin tones. For lighter black skin, I sometimes use a slightly warmer light, and don't do much else.

Black skin has tons of variations, thus there is not one solution that works better than another.

I find a lot of black skin has a large amount of blue in it, thus I sometimes add a warmer light to counter act this.


Kevin Zanit

P.S. The skin reflectance trick is not my idea, it was Conie Hall's . . . not trying to take credit for his brilliant idea.

 

[laurent.a]

Hi !

You have to be very carefull about black skins with such a white set ! I worked on a film as an assistant in africa, in a very white set. The dop got fired after 3 days (time enough for the production to see the daylies !)

You should over light the skins a little (half or a full stop, make trials with your comedians) as the around set is properly posed.

Black skin can be about 10 % reflectance as white skin is about 30 %

You must you a soft contrast negative, but if you try different ones, you will find this out by yourself.

Using black promist is a good idea, i think, but an other point to consider is the color balance, as black kins have a tendancy to go on green/magenta dominante. I think you should avoid going on green as it makes people look a little bit "cadaveric", wich might be awful. So don't be afraid to go on "warm colors" a little, better than cold ones. That means you have to be very carefull with HMI color temperature, if so. Measure the green/magenta (CC) value with a colormeter for each source, and correct withe +/- green if necessary. Masure the TC by the comedian position, as you meter the light, for each source in turn and correct if necessary, as measuring the sources "off the set" is not enougn, as you get reflectances from the set !

Mind the shades in the outside or daylight lighten places, as the are of higner color temperature than highlights, that means going to blue or even a little green.

Make up trials should be made, as someone just pointed out this before.

 

[scubba]

I know I am a bit late for this one but better late than never

I had a job where I had to handle black skin and caucasian skin people in one shot for a musicvideo. and the way I read my meter is that I tend to use the black skin 1 to 1 1/2 stop under. as the black skin reflects a lot less light than caucasian the spot meter reading will give you a too little f stops which will bring up the balck skin tone to average gray which you dont want. bring it down 1 to 1 1/2 stops and you can compare this exposure with a gray card holding next to them.
let the skin fall 1 sopt under key, have some highlights fall exactly on key and let the background blow out up to 2-3 stops over key when you want it to hold detail.
as for the marble background is it again up to you to decide whether you want it to hold full detail or not. this is no big issue with the latitide of vision2 stock but I would try to seperate it clearly without adding too much fill on the black face. here again the replies before apply. dark skin tones tend to drift towards a greenish cast, you wanna be careful with HMIs not ot drift more towards the cyan side. I'd like to recommend some kicker and highlights in the backlight to get better separation with HMI. this will add a nice glow to it especially when used with filtration.