why you adjust the lights

[samchand]

hi,

I'm a film student and I'm having some difficulty on something. Can someone please tell me why you adjust the lights when you go from a wide shot to a close up or medium shot.

I know obviously that you should change the lights when you see them in the frame or you go 180 degrees or you cast your own shadows. But apart from that I don't understand why you should change the lights when you go from wide shot to close up. I've seen many dp's do it and it's quite confusing to me.


Can someone please help me out.

Thanks

 

[Lazlo]

It is very common in shooting to begin with wide shots, and move in for closer shots. And in this process it is common to making subtle (or sometimes more extreme) lighting changes. Now, rule #1 is always to light spaces, not people. That is to say that when lighting, logical sources should always take paramount importance, otherwise you'll typically end up with a very unnatural look. In a wideshot, it might be useful to think of it as a license to "paint" in larger, bolder strokes of light (to steal an analogy from Vittorio Storaro). To put it simply, by changing the lighting for people in closeups, it allows the cinematographer to paint with finer strokes of light. You can add more subtlety to the image than you might in a wideshot. Now the question is why not just light it right in the wide shot and then not make changes later. Usually, at least for me, it comes down to a logistical thing, as in I can't position lights in such a way that gives the subtlety, but also stays out of frame and doesn't look unnatural in the wide. Oftentimes more fill light will be added for closeups to add softness to the source (which makes faces look nice and fills in shadows that would otherwise be unnoticed in the wideshot. Hope this answers your question.