@filmlights -⚡Film Lighting⚡

Fake Fireworks! With a breakdown by DoP Jasper J. Spanning @jasperjspanning “Here’s a fireworks setup we did for Sons (Vogter). We tested real fireworks and it proved too difficult to control, but we still wanted the light to move as the fireworks traveled across the sky. Ended up with rig of 2 x Skypanel 360s, 2x vortexes and astera tubes in a crate. We could only have one lift so we tried to space the lights out as much as possible. Controlled via a Luminair midi fader.” Sons / Vogter 2024 Director: Gustav Möller  Producer: Lina Flint @linaflint   Gaffer: Noah Lynnerup @noahlyn   Programmer: Kasper Mønster @kasper_monsterlight   Produced by Nordisk Film Production

Who’s seen it? Oppenheimer (2023) Directed by Christopher Nolan Cinematographer - Hoyte Van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC Gaffer - Adam Chambers, ICLS ⚡️ @yankeepapa13 Key Grip - Kyle Carden Lighting crew - @ramshakles @noahshain @mierke @harryliteguy @jennytrinhh

Men in Black (1997) Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld Cinematographer - Donald Peterman, ASC (Flashdance) Production Designer - Bo Welch (Edward Scissorhands) Chief Lighting Technician - ⚡@jeffmurrell (Avengers: Endgame) Asistant CLT - Steve Reinhardt Key Grip - Calvin Sterry (Starman) Gaffer: New York - Russell Engels Key Grip: New York - Dennis Gamiello Cinematographer Donald Peterman was nominated for an Oscar for both Flashdance (1983) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). BTS photo by Andrew Schwartz #filmlighting #lightingsetup #learnlighting #cinematography #gaffer #keygrip #meninblack #willsmith #bouncelight

The Pitt (2025-2026) The first in a series of lighting breakdowns that we will feature from the hit series The Pitt. Cinematographer @johanna_coelho breaks down this lighting setup for us below. Swipe through to see detailed lighting diagrams and clips! “This scene of The Pitt Episode 115 (directed by John Wells) was shot in Pittsburgh on the rooftop of the Allegheny General Hospital. “This challenging night exterior scene was lit and rigged by C.L.T. @tommorrison_489 , rigging gaffer @mulvie292 and Key Grip Keith Seymour with their amazing team. “We used a JIB arm to do the shots from off the roof, and a Menace arm to hang our face light in the right place.”

Take a screenshot of then lighting diagram at the end. We are experimenting with a new way to do lighting breakdowns with Reels. Let me know what you think! Cinematographer: @emilsspungis Gaffer: @surikaats 1st AC: @ricards.zarinss PM: @anna.jakovleva The girl in the car @katevonkate BTS and Edit: @outsiderland @nanlux_official Evoke 600C FL-22E Fresnel Nanlux Evoke 150C FE30 Parallel Beam Reflector Lightbridge CRLS 50cm Diff2 Carpetlights Carpetino Rosco Cinefoil Matthews 4x4 Floppy x2 8ft Wag Flsg Hollyland SE Pro headsets RED Komodo X @dzofilm Arles lenses

Sinners gaffer @brianbartolini shared another lighting breakdown with us from the film! Sinners won 4 Oscars including @addp for Best Cinematography 🏆 Here’s the breakdown from Brian: “Sinners takes place in Mississippi around 1932. At that time, only affluent places in the South had electricity. In the film you can actually see they had to tap into the grid to get power to the Juke Joint at one point. So for motivating light sources, there was really only the practical string lights and kerosene lamps on camera interior Juke Joint, and Moonlight and some fire exterior Juke Joint. That was our light motivation. “For this video you see here we are obviously motivating from moon light in which case we try to be as single source as possible, because there’s only one moon of course. “Here we have stacked up a Hybrid HMI/Tungsten spherical balloon on a 120’ Aerial Lift with a 20’x20’ Softbox on a 12K Telehandler. “That softbox had 4- LiteGear Auroris X inside, double diffused with Magic Clothe diffusion. “Our moonlight motivated color temperature was 4700k and set at that””

Lamp op life @thedenissskrobins

🎉Congratulations, Autumn! @addp Sinners took home 4 Oscars last night, including Best Cinematography! 🏆 Here’s our 7th lighting breakdown from the film, courtesy of gaffer @brianbartolini ✨- with a few more to come this week! “Autumn operating the camera, we have a 500w incandescent light bulb inside a 22” Jem Ball, double diffused with unbleached muslin to match our 2300K white light balance throughout the interior of the Juke Joint. “Underneath the camera lens we have an Astera Helios tube at a very low level for eyelight each time he turns towards camera. MBJ and all vampires wore special red etc. contact lenses in their eyes when they played the part of vampire.”

Cinematographer James Whitaker, ASC @jameswhitaker_dop shared this great breakdown with us explaining how they shot and lit this (damn impressive) scene from Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025! We knew we wanted the room to be lit by the 40’x50’ LED screen and the focal source would be the triangle of light in the center of the screen. We used Blender to try various lighting concepts I.e. from small point sources to large soft sources in various shapes. We worked with VFX for months to create the content for the LED wall. Importantly we needed Gore’s concept for quantum coding with a Giant Triangle in the center. This would serve as our main source of light. We also needed many different Vfx elements for the wall. At the end of the day we chose to go with small intelligent lights like the ones you use for music show. Their controllability, both is light shape and color temperature, was extremely valuable to us. We had two rigged on a scissor lift. Gaffer: Oliver Wilter @oliverwilter Rigging Gaffer: Don Hoffman @hoffmanndon Lighting Desk Operator: Trevor Mhlanga Key Grip: Roderick Dean-Smith @roderickdeansmith Ronin Tech: Willem Law @lawwillem Also, our amazing VFX Supervisor for all of your help: Neil Impey zuluimp (To be continued in pinned comments)

One more lighting breakdown from Sinners (2025)! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini below! 🔥🔥🔥 For the interior Juke Joint on stage in New Orleans our “white light” color temperature we matched to was 2300K because that was the color temperature of the hanging incandescent practical string lights that Production Designer Hannah Beachler hung throughout the set to be seen on camera. All key light in the Juke Joint was motivated by those hanging practicals or the can light practicals on the ground on the set stage where they would perform. We shot 65mm Kodak 5219 film at an ASA of 320 so we needed a lot of lumens. Therefore Autumn and I decided to go old school if you will, and use tungsten/incandescent lights on this set instead of the LED film lights (we did use LED lights too, mostly for night exteriors) that are most common on set these days. For overall ambiance light and to bring up the fill we bounced Arri T12’s (12K Fresnel) and T5’s (5K fresnels) and T2’s (2K) into UNBLEACHED Muslin that Key Grip Miguel Benavides attached to the ceiling of the Juke Joint set. We also added 1/2 CTO to those ceiling bounce lights to get closer in color temperature to our 2300K Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. For more localized Key Light on actors, we used 19” (500 Watt Tungsten Globes), 22” (500 watt Tungsten globes) and 30” (1000 watt Tungsten globes) Jem Balls, almost all of them hung from above on a menace arm or from the second floor catwalk, to match the high angle light that they were augmenting/mimicking from the Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. All of these Jem Balls were DOUBLE DIFFUSED with UNBLEACHED MUSLIN to again, match the 2300K color temperature of the Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. We would either dim them up or down on Variac Dimmers to get Autumn’s desired shooting stop or just add BOBBINET if dimming the Jem Balls too low would start to warm the color temperature up too much.

Another lighting setup from Sinners (2025)! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Below is a detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini 🔥 “We have a 30” Jem Ball overhead at their stop mark for key. And a Lite Gear Spectrum 8 through 4x8’ Magic Cloth left of frame in the gambling room set up for Jayme, as she turns and looks toward Miles to say her lines. Jayme is stunning and easy to light and that Magic Cloth catches her wardrobe and skin tone brilliantly as she turns towards Sammie to speak.” (The BTS is from a rehearsal. )

Sinners (2025) - 16 Oscar nominations including Best Cinematography! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Below is a detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini 🔥 For the Exterior Night shots at the end of this Surreal Montage Scene, we used a 40’x 40’ Soft Box hung from a 250 tonne, 200’ Boom Construction Crane. It had 36 (6 rows of 6 lights each) CreamSource Vortex 8’s in the box. Through FULL GRID Diffusion. Through different camera tests in Prep, we decided that our moonlight looked best at 4700K color temperature, so that’s what I had the Vortex 8’s set to for moonlight, on stage and on location too. We also had a 12K TELEHANDLER with a 20’ x 20’ SoftBox on it for more localized key lighting. It had 4- “Litegear Auroris X” (10’x 10’ each) in it. Through DOUBLE Magic Clothe diffusion. Also set at 4700K color temp. for our moonlight motivation. We also had 5- 120’ Condor Booms across the River with 2- 18K Pars each in them with ½ CTO to match the 4700K moonlight color temperature. To light the trees and deep background for more depth. We also had 40- CreamSource Vortex 8’s on the ground spread out everywhere you looked to light the trees/foliage for added depth. 4700K color temp. And as you can see in this video at the very end we used a 4k HMI Balloon for moonlight/fill light and a separate 16K TUBE balloon with Tungsten globes and HMI globes in it to match the 4700K moonlight color temp., all for fill moonlight. We tried to keep the Night Exterior moonlight source a single source (as is in real life) as much as possible to feel natural and not distract from the story at all. As is with all of the lighting in this film. If you didn’t notice the lighting at all and was just immersed in the story alone, then we did our job.