Film Lighting Quotes

Every single discussion I have with a first AD, or producers, is time of day. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've fought for early-morning calls. The light is 90 percent of our job; we as humans respond to light and where it is at different times of day and not only in positive ways.

Ashok Mehta was the man who brought contrast and lighting back to mainstream Hindi film cinematography.

We live in far too permissive a society. Never before has pornography been this rampant. And those films are so badly lit!

If you look at classic Hollywood films, they tend to shoot close-ups on quite long lenses and the background it out of focus. You know, it's just a mush.

Most movies are too brightly lit. I think that may come from a lot of directors having watched too much TV.

That's why I like fast film. It gives you more freedom to light more naturally.

When you do movies on low budgets, you don't want to have a location that requires a very big light right outside the window when you're 10 stories up. You have to find a location where you have a terrace outside, or you can light from a second floor, or you can light through the windows for daylight.

I find that on most films it's very difficult to have a backlit movie in an exterior.

In this movie they took them up in space. They're floating around and doing zero gravity stuff. Well, they had to do it all on wires. All the wires had to be painted black against this black background. If you didn't light it properly you could see the wires. Drove them crazy!

In Hollywood, the cameraman lights the star. In Europe, he lights the set.

One of the problems I have with a lot of movies these days is that everything is too well lit. In the world of digital creations there is a tendency to show too much.

Any time you do opposing camera angles, there's gonna be some compromise in the lighting.

It's a morality film, and it poses the question 'What would you do?' I took it very seriously, just as the director did in terms of atmosphere and lighting, and I was just trying to help that vision along.

Usually, you have two people in a scene, and in the history of cinema the hero is most likely going to be the white guy. And the other guy is his friend who is carrying the bag or whatever, and you're not going to light for that guy.