Voices From The Set – An Interview With 30-Year Veteran Gaffer Rick Kalivoda

Hey everybody and welcome to Mixing Light. I'm Rich Roddman and I'm going to have a conversation with a gaffer. Those of you who don't know what a gaffer is, he's the person who basically controls all the light on set. So I'd like to introduce you to Rick Kalivoda, who's the owner of First Unit Production Services, owns a grip companies in Tampa Bay and Orlando throughout central Florida.

They've been in business since 1989 and had numerous feature films, TV shows and I don't know how many Super Bowl commercials. So, so Rick, we're talking to a bunch of people who

probably have never set foot on a set before. So can you answer one of the basic questions as is, what is a gaffer? Thanks for having me first really appreciate been looking forward to this. We've been talking about this For a little bit of time now. So I'm kind of excited. A gaffer? Well, it's pretty simple and in a way that we're just, we're responsible for the lighting on the set, the electricity, the safety about the electricity side.

But what's more important, I think for the DP standard and for what this podcast is about is the lighting, the type of lighting we do, the feel that we give to the lighting, you know, it's a little bit more than just setting up a light and turning it on and getting the right exposure from it.

You know, the position is extremely important to time of day, putting a mood or feeling, you know, I've talked to DPs and we'll be discussing what do you like, you know, for doing like a morning kind of commercial scene and you know, do you like it like a grape nuts commercial or like a Cornflakes commercial? One's a little bit more warm and fuzzier than the other one and there's a difference between the two and the looks, you know, so that's kind of what we do.

We help collaborate with the Director of photography to try to take some of that responsibility off his shoulders So he can concentrate on what he does with everybody else. Years ago, you and I were at a Publix's commercial together and we were shooting in the store and I don't remember if they had florescent lighting or sodium vapor lighting or that but the director or the DP made the decision that they wanted to go with that lighting in there.

Usually we shut off all the lights and create our own light. I saw you take out a tool and start measuring the natural light, not the natural light but the light coming from the ceiling and then you had your guys skin some 4x4s with the proper side of gel just to offset what was elements were missing from the lighting that was already provided.

Could you explain what tools were you using and what was that process?

Back then I was just using a basic light meter, it wasn't even a spectral light meter that we're using now with full spectrums that it shows us and gives us CRI and all the other measurements but the lights were mixed metal halite and I do remember that because we did a bunch of jobs with Publix that ranged from doing florescent in-store lighting to the mixed metal halite but they were green and they were daylight and actually they were a little bit cooler than regular daylight ranging

in the 6000 degree range. So we had to add green to all our lights just to balance with those. I think the conversation we had was how much green do you add to the lights? Do you match exactly what the florescence or the mixed metal halite is giving? What I always questioned and would have a conversation with the DP is can we cheat and not do as much green so we're leaving a little bit more red in the spectrum for the skin tones and not just completely pulling that out.

Now I think you remember a commercial that I didn't do but we had a conversation with. There was another gaffer and they were doing a, it was for an eyeglass, I don't even remember the name of it, it was for eyeglasses and he went in and this is kind of in the beginning of LED lighting and the lights he wanted to use were extremely green. The manufacturer actually sent out a minus green filter to put on the lights because they were so green but it was a power thing to him to use those lights.

fluorescent lights coming in, it was flourescent lights in the room, he's using green lights but he didn't correct for the daylight that was coming in the room. I remember I did a follow up phone call with you after that because I was talking with the gaffer beforehand that he should be using HMIs instead of these LEDs just for the color rendering of the set.

I remember I did a follow up with you and you were telling me what a nightmare you couldn't get the skin tones right and all of that because you had all these different greens and the choices that we make in that stuff is extremely important. People just don't take it for granted.

You had mentioned using the CRI now and there's also the SIS. The interesting thing I want to mention is that the SIS. It's SSI. It's action. Sorry, you're correct, SSI, my apologies. I always get that backwards. The SSI test is actually put together by the Academy which is the same people who do the color space of ACES and that's becoming a more standard test. Can you tell us the difference between the two?

The way I understand it and I'm not like a huge like technically a light technician or scientist but CRI is a color rendering index. We've used that for I used it for decades just to purchase fluorescence, looking at the quality of fluorescence back when we were using fluorescence and it kind of bled into the quality of LEDs. What was a CRI? of an LED and anything above a 90 we considered good.

When I looked into it, it is really a test over a certain band of colors like just nine different colors. The SSI takes in and I don't even know how many but it's many more colors so it can look at the gradients difference between the colors and it gives you a much truer indication of that color rendering of that particular light.

We have to understand this is like such been such a changing industry especially for the last five plus years when we started using LEDs and now we're almost using nothing but LEDs. The development of the LEDs has changed as fast as us having to use those LEDs. So five years ago it's not the same LEDs as the LEDs that we're using now or the science and the mixing those. I know Aperture just had a video out that you shared with me that we were looking at if it's okay to mention this.

That they were talking about SSI and how Aperture is using multiple different, I think it was seven different colors to render white light whether it's tungsten or daylight or anything in between. That's been in the industry for a really long time. ETC lusters have been using that forever. If you look down the barrel of a luster, a LECO, you'll see that there's mint, green, magenta, there's just not RGB, white, amber, those typical colors.

There is a whole cluster of LEDs that are in there to create a white light. ARRI does the same thing with the sky panels. Their color science has been top forever and they're doing the same thing when you pull the panel and look at the raw LEDs. You can see that there's a mixture of light that's going on. I think the luster from ETC has been around for at least 10 years. I know I've been using those. This is not new science that's been around.

I just want to mention that because people get caught up into what one manufacturer says they have and thinks their's the only one that does that and it's not. It's been around for a while.

Let's talk a little bit about the types of lights that we have. I remember when you and I got into the business pretty much around the same time. Exactly. We were using candles. Exactly. It started with good old daylight. I still remember the crews go out with the old Molt Richardson kits or if we were lucky we had a nice four light pack of the ARRI lights. They were all tungsten lighting. Then after which would give us that 3200 Kelvin indoor look.

From there went into HDMI and then from there into the fluorescent keno flows and then into the LED world. Can you talk about each of those lighting technologies? What does that give us on the image? What does that bring? Why would you choose one of those lights versus a different one of those lights? What are the advantages or disadvantages in lighting wise?

It's interesting that you're talking about that because all those different lights I look at like a painter with a palette full of brushes. They all do certain things. The current charts right now, I was just looking at some stuff when we were talking about doing this. I was looking at some information about the different CRI, SSI. I think it's TSI, a television index. They're all comparing it to a spectrum but that spectrum is compared to tungsten lighting which has kind of been interesting.

Every time I'm listening to a podcast or something on YouTube about this, those measurements get compared to tungsten lighting. We were talking about years ago I used to have, I was at NAB and I picked up this little spectroscope that's used for jewelers. You can actually hold it up to your eye and look, physically look at a light and it breaks up the spectrum of the light for you. Tungsten will have this very even gradient field. It's just a beautiful rainbow across it.

Then you hold that up to a fluorescent light and it's a very chopped up spectrum. The green may be spiked a little bit bigger than normal and it may have pieces missing. There's just no color there. That's what gets interesting because when there's no color there, you can't render that color. If it's missing from the spectrum of the light you're doing, you just can't see it.

To me, tungsten's kind of that holy grail of instruments but because of the power consumptions and the ease of the LED and being able to go from daylight to tungsten in one fixture and being able to control it on your phone, we've come to a different place.

HMI's fall in that same spectrum as tungsten because their color rendering field was always pretty good. It had a really nice even feel to it. It had a nice punch to it and it was daylight so it was able to give us sun. I still look at some of the lights today that we're going out with. It's got a big chip in it and you put a reflector on it. It just can't give you this real spiky sunlight look. You can cheat it by exposure but it's still not like a hard sunlight look.

You can put just like an M18 outside a window and hit something on the sink or whatever and it looks like sunlight. It's just not a diffuse sunlight coming through a cloud looking. That's kind of where that painter's palette comes in, the brushes that you have to use. I don't want to poo-poo on the LEDs because they're great and they're convenient and they're wonderful, but sometimes you want to have another one of these instruments in your palette to kind of ...

You need that punch to have coming through that. Right. Right. There's where the big HMIs come into play. Go ahead. I remember a couple of sets. We were shooting in a kitchen and you had two 18Ks or two 20Ks out coming through each of the window and we had mornings that looked like morning sunlight all day long. All day long. 10 hour day all shot on. Yeah. It's a great advantage that way.

Well, and that's why you light like that because you want to shoot throughout the day and have consistency and you don't rely on the sun at all. A lot of times we're covering the windows from outside or blocking the hard sun from coming in and it can be difficult because you got a light that's 20 feet away from the window shining into a light and you got to keep the raw light out and it gets tricky. That's where key grips come into place. I was one of my questions. How do you handle the sun?

If we have all this light that we're providing, we have to deal with the natural light, which is what we're used to looking at, dealing with that. I remember some being on a set where a DP started with a 20K and I remember counting. It went through 12 or 14 different elements in front of the light to get down onto ... We could have set it up with a joker or some other smaller light, but he wanted to have all this diffusion of on to step it all the way down.

You probably know who I'm talking about too. I think you're on that set.

You were talking earlier about your conversations with DPs. When does the conversation actually start about how you're going to sculpt this light, which will end up defining the scene? How does that, what does the conversation start and how does that process develop? Typically, we'll do a scout, show up the day before, a couple of days before the shoot. We meet and we go through every setup. Typically at the beginning of it, I'll show up a little bit early and now I do it in my phone.

I just grab my phone and pull out where the sun's going to be. I use Sunseeker and it tells me what time of day the sun is going to be there and where it's going to be at any time of day. During the scout, the DP will look at me and say, "Where's the sun going to be?" Or "When is the sun going to be in a particular place?" Because where we're standing, he would like the sun later in the afternoon. I said, "Well, two or three o'clock will be a good time." The schedule will be based upon that.

It's on the scout that we talk about that. I try to, with all my years of experience, try to get into their head a little bit about what do they like. I'll ask the questions. How do you approach backlight? Do you like a lot of backlight? Do you not like backlight? You try to be a little bit more of a chameleon to their likes and you can go off and start doing setups without much input from them because you just figure out.

Sometimes I'll just start doing a setup and if the DP isn't on board with what I'm doing, I don't take it personally. We have a conversation and we change it up and I have to clue into what his look is. Sometimes on a multi-day shoot, it may take me a couple of days to really clue in. He's not saying anything. I'm lighting and he's shooting. That's how it works out. Who determines which kind of instruments get put on the truck to be brought to the set? We both do.

The DP pretty much does, but I help steer that decision a little bit based upon money. Sometimes money is a big thing. The budgets are... and we can't always have what we want or the DP can't always have what we want. I try to make a suggestion to achieve what he's hoping to get the best he can within the budget.

Over the past five years, we have both had shoots that have been on the LED volume wall. We're fortunate to have both in here in Tampa and Orlando large volume walls, which major commercials and music videos all have been shot on. Sometimes I've seen them actually just going with the light emulated from the wall itself and not really adding any supplemental light. How is that lighting different than what coming in with a particular light kit or LED lights?

Using the light from an LED wall as a lighting instrument kind of sucks. When you do a color reading of it, I've been on those wall where the CRI was at 65 and you don't want to shoot with anything under 90. I remember I was on a shoot and we had the camera sitting there on the camera cart and the camera cart is on, the monitor is on. It just happened to be looking at a pack of Starburst that was just a little pack of candy sitting on there. You know how Starburst is really yellow.

The AC pushed it out of our light and it went into the light wall and that Starburst package, I watched it go from yellow to brown, is how dramatic that was. My theory of thinking with all of those is those video walls are meant to view. They're not built and engineered as a lighting instrument. You have all these companies that talk about the effort that they take and the rendering white light through their lights by adding all these colors and to do that like we talked about.

A video wall doesn't do that. It's a television screen. There was no intention for using it as a light source when it was built. I always feel like you've got to come in with proper lighting when you do that. Some of those studios rent out for $30,000 a day if you're going to spend that much in just the location - have proper lighting. Otherwise you're going to end up with nothing that's going to be appealing when you're finished with it in post.

On the line, the colorist hands are tied because as you say, if the light is not there to begin with, it's really difficult to create it from nothing. Correct. Right.

We've had this conversation multiple times, but let's talk about images being people viewing final products and seeing things are too dark like the Game of Thrones episode from years ago. Our modern cameras are able to have 15, 18 stops of dynamic range. A lot of times now the projects are all being color graded for HDR delivery, for Netflix or other streaming services. Years ago, cameras were six, seven stops of dynamic range and that was a good, high quality camera.

Now that we're up at 15, 18, how is that changing how you were lighting a set or how you should be lighting a set? We're not using any light. What's interesting about it is you're using very, very little light. They're shooting these things at such a high ISO rating that you turn a lighter on, it makes a difference in the quality of light. There's two sides of that. I get really excited about that because with very little, you can literally paint a scene.

My wife was watching TV the other day and she goes, "I can't even watch a show anymore. I can't even see it." You and I were talking about, we were doing a little prep call about things that are driving me a little crazy. Now when I watch TV, it's just too dark. You can't see anything. I always wonder why is it? I think some of that is more in the way it's delivered instead of how it's shot.

I do think that on the set too, that they're just, I always feel like you can expose a little bit more and then you can always downgrade it or bring it down in post. That's always easier to do. I'm not saying light it like daylight. I'm saying light it and then you can control it a little bit more later. Absolutely. Particularly in the formats that we're dealing with, Log and Raw and all those things, we have so much more control after the fact now.

Like in the old film days, once you were exposed, that was it. You're locked into your exposure there. I was talking to one of the guys that works in our shop and he's aspiring to be a gaffer and stuff. We were just talking about different setups and using lights. I was telling him how on the sky panels and some of the LEDs, I will still put an ND6 on the light because when we're working in the last 5%, you dimmed it down and in your last 5%, you have no range to dim anymore.

It just goes from off to on. There's no in between and that can be too much. You can't grade that in between that little off and on when you're working in those high ISOs. I put an ND6 on them and it gives you a range that you can go. You can probably get up to 25% or 30% and down to the bottom and it gives you some range in that bottom end on the light. I've done that on many setups. I did a Disney 50th anniversary fireworks when they were advertising for the new fireworks show.

I built trees with three sky panels in each one and I had them to backlight Main Street. The lights were literally in the shot when we did it and they took them out in post but it gave this beautiful backlight to the audience in the street for all the guests in the street. I don't know if you ever watched fireworks, what it does to people when it's actually on It just gives this really soft glow and there's not much of a color change even by your eye that you can really see.

We've done this for years as we kind of cheat what the look of fireworks are on the little girl's face as she's over her dad's shoulder and how it looks and everything. We've been cheating that for as long as I've been working with Disney. We had this beautiful light but behind us you wanted to kind of bring the bottom out and not just have it so silhouetted with color.

I had another tree behind us going through actually two 12 by grids to soften up but I also had an ND6 on it because when I do those jobs I go on a real board and I'll spike up the faders and then slowly bring them down for each color. So I got like three or four different colors going and I can bang it up super hot and slowly grade it down.

So the light behind me I don't want to have to pay attention to going halfway and down so I just put all that gel on it, dim it all down and just go all the way up and slowly bring it down like everything else. Using NDs on lights sometimes guys are going to go what are you doing that for but it comes in really handy. Super handy. Yeah as you're saying that's staying out of that lower power side of the light.

Do you make choices on which instruments or fixtures you'll be using depending on the camera or the lens set that the DP goes with on set? Not really. Not really. So you wouldn't make any changes for anamorphic lenses as opposed to regular spherical lenses? As far as lighting goes no I just make sure I got to put them way out of the shot. No I mean it really doesn't. Lighting it should always be this way.

There was a moment where I think we sidetracked where Sony you know I remember there's a company and I'm gonna remain they're gonna remain nameless. I walked into their booth and I was complaining on how their lights were a little bit magenta and the excuse the salesman used to me was well there we matched them to the Sony chip and my response is like what's wrong with just white light? Why do we have a light that works better with one camera than another?

We never had this before you had film you had tungsten you had daylight you had all the colors in between there that you could make but it was white light you know and you made your choices so trying to make choices based on a lens or a camera I feel like it should just be white light and let the lens or the camera do what they do on their own based upon that white light because who comes first the white light or the camera or the camera or the white light you know.

Precisely what light is you know what are we sculpting with here to see you know originally with all right one of the one of the best commercials that you and I worked on together visually in my opinion was one we did for Nike years ago with a certain running back football player I won't tell you know we won't give up too much of that away but you took out what I tend to be is like one of my favorite lights are the nine lights right which are the every time those lights get used it's just such

a beautiful rendering like every one of every shot that gets used on the always looks absolutely just amazing and cinematic and even if that's not the intended goal it just ends up being there and that and that

was a very crazy day but I think your solution would be setting up those nine lights really

tungsten you know it's just tungsten.

Yeah and what's cool about that is you know as a gaffer and just technically on the set you know they're a little power hungry but you run a cord to the light and you plug it in you don't have a ballast a header or cord got to strike the light and all that stuff you just plug the light in and go so the equipment you're carrying is a lot less it's a lot easier to run a hundred amp cable to a light then run a hundred amp cable to a ballast and then you got to put two headers on the light and you

know and then typically you got to put your gel on it too kind of soften up the nine light make a one but yeah it's tungsten we go back to tungsten you know friend I have a friend of mine that's a chef and I always ask him how do you make this taste so good he says butter tungsten is tungsten is our butter you know you just can't get away from that.

Yeah no I mean there is something to say you said about the classics for sure yeah no it's a beautiful light and you know like we talked about earlier it just has texture to it and you know I get a little frustrated with the new dps and people the younger generation it's coming out they really don't understand texture and the subtle differences in the quality of light it's to them and it's illuminating source and it gets a little frustrating when it gets looked at like that you know.

But it actually leads perfectly into my next question because I was going to say I tend to notice with younger dps these days they tend to keep going to the new more modern LED Aperture type environments because that's kind of what they've you know when they were in school that's what the school had because there's a price difference between an Aperture light and the high-end Arri lights and they don't seem to whoever utilize these really higher-end lights and less and less times they're I

seem to see them on set it's like you have access to these great lights why are you not using it so is that just something the dps just need more exposure to or how is that something that should be addressed moving forward.

That's a great question it's a million dollar question you know all these lights are all good tools you know and some of these companies have done really good at marketing the light but is it the best tool for the job not necessarily you know even though it can do all of these things there's other lights that do better you know some of the newer LEDs it's maybe a 12k and you put a dome on the front of it and a big umbrella and you put a big diffusion on it you've got nothing coming out

of that light to create a soft light.

Fortunately cameras are a lot more sensitive and it creates it but then you get into I get into these conversations about you know you now you have no depth of field you can't create depth of field you're just stuck in the back end you know of the lens wide open because you just don't have enough light to you know just to do an interview with you know and you know the importance of keeping the eye to the nose and you know what two stops of light you know means going from you know a

two to a four is a big deal you know so and doesn't mean you can't keep your background out of focus on any of that but you don't have that choice.

Well you said you know going from your eyes to nose we're talking about depth of field so explain to how what the lens setting is to create depth of field and how that really makes a difference on visually what we're seeing on set. Well the more light you have the more the closed the aperture the lens gets smaller which creates a larger depth of field so if you're shooting a plate of food on a tabletop and you want.

Now just now just as a let me just say so depth of field is the how much space is actually in focus. Correct.

So from the difference from the lens to a certain point is whether you have a you know smaller narrow range of depth of field or a wider range where you see like a lot of times in modern television the person in the shot is in focus and the person on the other side of the table is out of focus where you notice in you know television from the 60s or films from the 60s both people might be in focus at the same time and have a conversation without the focus having to drift back and forth.

The difference is the depth of field of how much is being seen. How is that controlled by your lighting? If you want more depth of field you have to create more lighting. The lighting has to be brighter. The ISO can drop too so that or raise you're going to shoot at a more sensitive ISO so instead of like a 400 you're going to go at 800 and now you can go to 1600 and you can open the lens I'm sorry you would close the lens more to create a larger depth of field you know.

So I mean I've been on sets with even television shows and on some movies and stuff and you know they really want this really limited depth of field where it's three quarters of an inch or an inch you know so back to what I was saying you can't get the nose any eyes in focus at the same time because your depth of field is so shallow you know and when you're working in our modern world today with the lighting that we're doing kind of getting back on our subject that you know the

lighting isn't always providing us with enough light for us to close down the camera to give us a depth of field or to even give us the choice to do that. You know where I always feel like you want a choice you don't want to get pigeonholed on set because if the DP says I'd like to open a stop and you don't provide for that you're screwed you know you can't do anything because light lighting is logarithmic if you

have a stop of a two and you're using 1k light and you want to go to a stop of a two eight you have to add a second you have to double that light so now you have two K's now if you want to go from a two to a four now you have to have four 1k lights so it's logarithmic as it goes down and it gets really interesting when you're doing high speed so if you're doing high speed photography and you want to do the same thing you may have two 10k working on a set or a 10k and the DP wants to go up

two stops you got to add four 10k's to get up there so you have to have that conversation in the beginning when you're doing your lighting plot about what range do we have to be prepared to go through because you can always light more and take it down but you can't light and take it up because all of a sudden you don't have the instruments available to do it maybe.

Right yeah it's just not there. The difference adjusting a lens at the two stop you might have a depth of field that is yeah basically six inches you know so you have just a person's face and by dropping it down to a four you might be able to have a four or five foot range where so they're moving around they'll still be in focus and you don't have to have your first AC constantly chasing focus and possibly having a lot of soft shots in there.

Again all choices creative choices made you know by lighting right the available lighting is there so I tend to notice that everybody does want to have that short feel there was remember being on set where they were using Voigtlander lenses which was a 0.95 stop right you know and we calculated that the depth of field was two and a half inches and we're trying to figure out exactly you know ... but you could not talk the DP out of not being open all fully open

all the time and you know it was just a it was a artistic piece to say the least you know that's that's all it could be it's all it's all soft you know. In a poor AC has eating tumbs the whole day trying to keep focus. Poor guy. It's nothing you could do. So if somebody

was interested in learning about how to become a gaffer or sculpting with light or something like that how would they go about that? Well school's always the best choice and then I don't know after that where to go because to hone in on a craft I I you and I have had this

conversation in the past too. It seems lately we're lacking mentors where you get out of school and you work for a DP that's done his job he's got his journeyman's card for lack of a better reason way of putting it and you know you're working with a group of guys that have been on set for a while been on set for a while you know kids are getting out of school and they're going right to work and they were losing that lack of mentorship and what that means into creating a craft you know

a kid doesn't graduate from school and start doing finished carpentry right away you know.

if they were starting off as a PA on set you know they're recently graduated or a PA would they want to become into the grip electrician department and then learn from there or should they go into like the camera department and learn lenses and lighting and stuff like that

what's. I always say that you should go where your heart follows you you know if you're on the set you're watching the grips more than anybody else you know start helping them out or do what you can to get to know them let them know you're interested I mean we always encourage everybody to come by our shops you know and poke in and we encourage even technicians to come into our shops and we you can pull lights off the shelf and look at them and work them try to figure out how to do

all of the wireless technology that's out there nowadays because it's all over the map what you can do wirelessly you know which is which has been just another game changer you know in the way we do things especially on set there is no more getting on a radio and asking somebody to drop a double in that light I'm just sitting there by the camera or I'll put my little light board next to on the dolly next to the dp and he just loves playing with those faders figuring out where

he wants it but you know it's it's about following your heart if you're watching the ac's get to know them go talk to them let them know you're interested you know that's the best way to do it and then maybe if you can ask them to get you on a job and even if it's for free if they'll let you on the job for free just to you know run sandbags around for them do whatever you can you get your foot in the door and it'll

work is there any kind of communication you know when being on set that you wish would get passed at that obviously the script notes they go to into the post-process the editors and stuff like that are there anything that you or any information you think is necessary from what you do on set as a gaffer that should be passed along through the post-production process oh no uh through the well no because i think that's more the dp's job right so my conversation would be with him

or my conversation would be with what his intentions are to maybe help during the shoot you know where what are you what are the intentions where is this going to go when he had and i will go in the dit's tent all the time you know i've been there with you when we talk about this stuff all the time and you're telling me well the dp really wanted to do this when i'm questioning something you know he's always he's you know so we have those conversations

but it's really about the dp passes that onto the post and you know he does his luts and passes that on and that's where that goes but do uh dps talk about the fill and key ratios

like a traditional like they traditionally did with film or is that no longer a necessary conversation so it's it's interesting that's a great question um so do the dps you know ask about fill and key um key and fill not as much anymore you know we don't we don't really worry about that with film um we we cared because all the the different types of film that you had had reacted differently to the light had different had different range ranges to them

dynamic ranges to them and you had to know your stock to know what that range was not to put too much fill in and or to you needed more fill depending on the range of the film and yes the dps and i would have that they wanted a a two to one ratio or they wanted a three to one ratio you know even on a backlight they wanted to stop over then they're key so there was a formula you were giving given to do a lighting setup you know um nowadays you know since we got to the

digital realm we're just looking at it you know so there is no conversation about the key and the fill we're just like can we bring in a little bit more fill or can we add a bounce card here and you know that's kind of where that goes now you know with the way we talk about it you know we i think just the whole idea of from under lighting putting a card from under and helping to lift up some of the shadows even with some some even with some makeup issues or you may

even have some blemish problems in the face that you're trying to get around even if it's um a sports a sports celebrity right they are who they are you know so you're trying to make them to look the best that you can and you don't want to flat light them but you can come up from under with a light and help fill in some of those shadows that helps pull in some of the wrinkles and you know how is how to shoot and i am not going to name the person the the star but he was talking about

the rolls in the back of his head because we were looking at it was a reverse shot back of his head and he didn't like the way the rolls in the back of his neck stood up and wanted to know what i could do to light like that and he kept talking about fashion lighting and i'm like okay so it was just a ring of light around it making it super flat and you couldn't see anything but you know those are some of the things that we do to help those those issues yeah even help

make the people feel comfortable you know what we

haven't talked about is like makeup and they're how important they are with a set you know because a good makeup artist is worth their weight and gold i think they're so underappreciated you know what they do um and and every once in a while i mean i'll go whisper in their ear you know i try not to make a point of something on a set or if i see something or if it's just a shiny nose or or whatever it is that they may need a touch up or there may be like an issue you know like can we

do something about it and we look at the monitor and see and they're like oh that's how they are you know we and so we don't know if you can fix it but you know they are really worth their weight gold because when they get on the set you don't have to say anything it's it's it's a treat you know and i've seen some bad makeup.

You've mentioned a couple times you've mentioned referencing the monitor while making decisions which monitor do you go to because not all monitors are calibrated like for example the first ac has his monitor cranked super crazy just so he can just look at focus and that's all he's concerned about and what it colors look like it doesn't matter right um and then a lot of monitors there there haven't been calibrated since they were first purchased um it's like so where do

you go to make those decisions most of the time the only one i can get to is because everything moves so fast is the first ac's monitor i'll be over his shoulder and every once in a while i'll ask him to pull the detail out and he'll give me the look and i'll hang a can under understand and i'll put a quarter in it to make up for being a pain in the ass but you know i mean i'll literally will do that but um yeah or i'll go by i won't go by the client's monitor i try to stay

away from the client unless i'm just i'll walk by every once in a while just see if everybody's happy and you know make sure their drinks are being served and all that kind of stuff but um i'll go i try to get to the dit's monitor you know as as much as i can if i can continually we'll walk away from set and go in there and check that monitor and what's going on or i'll something will have been shot and he's downloading it and like can we take a look at that right away

you know just just wanted to check something and so yeah that's what i do you know it's it's all of them it's hard because they are all different monitors and what it got in my what am i looking at and you and i have gone through that too on set about okay Rich what am i looking at which one yeah well i mean i think it's um important for a lot of people who've never been on set to recognize that the change that the digital really is made you know back when you were

shooting on film the dp and the gaffer pretty much knew what this was going to look like when that film was exposed properly or when it was you know processed and ready to see you know in dailies ou know for the next day nowadays it's everybody just send a signal to the monitor and everybody can see it and everybody has their input and it's definitely changed how production happens but you know again i don't think people realize how critical the viewing monitors on set

actually are because major decisions are being driven by those oh 100% yeah I mean they used to be driven by those by those little single chip crt cameras that were on film cameras and they were making you know critical decisions based on that and would just drive you crazy like please look through the eyepiece just take a moment they're like oh yeah that way you know so yeah those yeah those those camera taps were was torturous you know to look at but you're right

it's it's so many decisions are are made based on that and and even what the signal that is being fed to the client monitors which aren't usually studio grade monitors like you get in a dit booth or you get even by you know the director's monitor you know they're they're they're a better quality of monitor and how many times are they bringing the clients over to the director's monitor or even the the client the client themselves like to the dit booth and getting in the dark and looking at

it what it really looks like when you get in a dark environment you know never they they try to keep the clients away from the DIT as much as possible yeah i don't blame them so i don't blame... for you you too it definitely makes it my life much easier when they're not around having to explain stuff

when you're on set and you're looking at a reference monitor to see the lighting that's there do you use the histograms or waveform monitors that are on set or do you go by your light meters what is it what's your your go-to trust tool the monitor just the monitor nowadays it's the monitor you know it's like you're getting a real-time look at a piece of developed film you know so it's just it really to look at the histogram where it's at you know is is interesting sometimes to look

at that because you want to see sometimes if you're looking at it is it really crushed that much and where to but very rarely if the monitor is set up

properly and that's the other side of this coin too right i think is more important is the monitor setup which we haven't talked about on set you know who's setting that monitor up and is it set up properly that you're looking at you know just with the brightnesses in the right place and you know that the monitor is not crushed too much or is a chroma cranked or you know that you set that monitor that's the probably the biggest most important thing that you're doing and even when

you're bouncing back between monitors did the AC set both those monitors up you know and and the good acs are really good about that so it doesn't even become a question much anymore until it's just blatantly wrong to you but pretty much yeah i just look at the monitors because you can see everything you know like so interesting i wanted to kind of touch on a thing with um the new cameras and how exciting it's been to work with those you know we talked earlier about you could just do

these very subtle changes but you're looking at the monitor and a DP will be looking at the talent he'll be looking at the background i'm really looking at the lighting so not just what's on the talent but what's happening in the background there could be a chair in a room that's in the corner i may take a little led panel put it on the floor behind the chair and put this very gentle glow onto the out of the wall behind the chair it just helps separate that chair from the

wall i'm not lighting the wall or doing anything and - i've been caught so many times putting that light back there and the DP is like what are you doing and i'm like i just was gonna just bring this up a little bit and and he was like on and i said trust me it's just going to be this very gentle glow just take a quick look if you don't like it i'll pull it out and i'll put it and he goes oh no i do like that but it's just it creates depth you know and helps you do that and

so that's some of those things that you know i also do i'm always looking to try enhance what they're maybe not thinking of because they got a lot of things on their mind and a lot of times i'm working with a DP director where they're not only DP and they're directing too so that puts all the lighting in your ballpark for them because their mind is is into the performance and you know everything else cause in not costume but wardrobe and what's going on so all the other elements the

art department everything that goes into the image itself yeah right right so that's what i pride myself on is that i've just been able to you know be a crucial part of that set and have input and not just, "where do you want the couch, lady?" you know kind of attitude to be involved right on lower

budget projects you tend to see a lot more sharper shadows uh in the set a lot of times it's due to just smaller spaces or stuff like that how would you try to correct some of those images to get a little more a little more cinematic look to them well you can't use lights directly you have to bounce them use them through a bigger diffusion its shadows are all about the softer the light the softer the shadow and the larger the illuminated surface the softer the

light will be so if you just put a light up and you don't put any diffusion even a four by four in front of it you're going to get this hard sharp shadow from it you know and there's no there's no way around it so it's more about presenting the light properly than it is just turning out a light doing it so sometimes you know is it intentional and if it's not intentional does a person really know what they're doing you know with a low budget project like that you know to get around some of

the low budget they don't have the grip supplies you know they have a light but they don't have all of the elements to do softening in front of it but to me that's not always an excuse right because you can use a bed sheet for a bounce you know and use that to bounce into a create you can shoot through a bed sheet you know to make a softer light if you don't have that kind of stuff you know you can hang it up on a clothes line with clothespins for Christ's sake and do that

so it's not always about that I think it's about being creative with your lighting and not getting just caught up into the minutia of what you see on set and what's going on it's like adding that nd i you know people will look at me like i'm crazy because i put an nd on a on a on a led light you know but you know i want that lower end i'm never going to use this thing at 100 you know give me the range out of that thing so no but that's what you were saying it's it's you

know using those you don't have to have you know four by fours or um you know sheets of opal or you know different diffusions you know 12 by 12 diffusions about you there are creative ways to do that well even to get softer light you can take like in low budget circumstances um i've given a couple classes for like film students you know coming out not having a budget to do and you know i'll start off in a dark classroom and we'll just have all the blinds on the on the

windows closed and you know all everything all closed up and there's no light in the room and i'll go ahead and just open the one blind that's like would be closer to camera and i was saying there's your key light and i'll walk in with a bounce card there's your fill you know then you open up the back window and there's your back light so being in a room and watching the time of day and where you're at is is really crucial for working in a low budget environment you can

take those clip-up lights that used to get with the with the chrome rims on them and they got little springs on them and you can just take on a piece of plywood put six or nine of those up and put light bulbs in and you've got a nice big nine light you know take a piece of cardboard paint out white and you got a bounce card you know so there's so many ways to create tools with no money to go in you know to a working environment with and then if you have a little bit of money and

you can get more it's sometimes it's more about getting one or two instruments that you really can do and you can fill it up with homemade stuff and getting a handful of grip equipment that you can use to manipulate all your stuff you could do a lot with that kind of china balls china balls are insanely cool you know a lot of things we shot were just with china balls and you would just right give you just this beautiful glow this is this nice warmth of a light you know

that uh it's hard to mimic otherwise right i built these these gags that have three light bulbs in them and i could put them on a flicker flicker gag so three cords coming out it was on a china ball rig and there would be three light bulbs in a china ball and i could put them in a flicker box and give this really beautiful fire light to them you know where i did a beer commercial and then we had a whole crowd of people standing in front of a fireplace and you know

fireplace light doesn't give put off any light so i literally took these china balls and i had them in the room below the shot hidden behind a coffee table or a group of people that i had them on the ground and had them all on the same flicker box and was able to create this beautiful glow within the room that looked like it came from the fireplace you know and it was it was it was a beautiful fireplace but it was three bulbs in a china ball you know you work all the time i've

built these cores i've just taken ribbon and wrapped it around a piece of plastic tubing and they were bicolor put them in a china ball and i still use those you know when we do walk & talks and i can have somebody on a boom pole carry a china ball and i can carry i can wirelessly do the intensity and the color of them as they're walking through like we'll do you know a family running through the park and you know they're going through a couple of different lighting environments so it

goes from cool to warm to cool again and you can make those changes but it's a china pole and some ribbon light you know it's a pretty simple gag

talk about why uh you guys are always swapping out the practical lights in a room environment because usually they're too bright is what is what they are um so we'll put like maybe 40 watt and they're too warm too so regular light bulbs and so we go into this whole new world of like leds and where they're at um so typically we're changing practical bulbs out in a set to get more control over them i like to use probably the go-to is a 40 watt reveal which

has kind of got a blue tinge to it um and they don't go so warm if you start dimming them down just a little bit to get them into the range in the past it could be like fluorescence you're changing out just to get rid of the fluorescence and creating a better environment you know even today i think that's something we haven't talked about if you don't kind of segue into something you know you go into these environments and there's still fluorescent lights that are being used in

commercial environments you know most of them are leds and trying to do the reading of those lights and are they proper can we put better leds in um one quick fix that i do if i walk into an environment that i need to change fluorescence out and let's just say it's less than 10 in the ceiling i'll walk in there with a whole bunch of uh titan tubes and i i have the titan tubes already rigged with zip ties and magnets i open the fluorescent light put the just with magnets put

them up in the fluorescent light close it don't have to take anything out don't have to do anything and then i have total control i have color intensity over the whole thing you know which works out really well and even if you're in a room and you go to close-ups and you're not seeing the ceiling and the dps like can can i turn those three back out in the corner just done they're gone you know and it's really easy to give you control over that stuff so now we

have now we have leds that we put in those um we change we change them out put leds regular led practicals have been and i think aperture makes a set there's a couple of manufacturers that make led light bulbs that you can put in the lamps and over your app have control of i i built my own did the same thing wrapped a tube with color um with bi-color ribbon and created what is a hundred watt equivalent so now i have a full range that i can go and it's daylight tungsten it's

bi-color and so now i can pick the color and the intensity that i want for the environment sometimes the the ones from the manufacturers the kits with the six eight bulbs and um they're just not bright enough you know it's usually what we come in with. Just going back to you

saying about uh the lights a lot of modern lights being controlled by on wi-fi off of an app um i remember we were on set one time we were shooting on a football field and you had on the other side of the there had um you know back lights lighting and they wanted to make changes and normally before the wi-fi apps you'd have grips standing there on radios waiting to you know having to just sit there the entire shoot just in case you needed to make a you know turn it

a couple degrees and now it's just dial it up on your uh on your uh your ipad and uh instantaneously changes it uh in a good environment you got a quarter mile you know i'm on the other side of the lake at universal you know turning lights on and off that accent that whole background of city walk and all that kind of stuff i'm controlling it from the camera on the other side of the lake you know it's amazing you know wireless dmx has just changed you know they have

wireless dmx and then you have your app on your phone so if you're doing bluetooth or wi-fi your signal is not as great as doing wireless dmx which is really a radio signal that's being broadcasted you know a little bit more robust um and and in kind of segwaying into how we control those you know again i was talking to this young guy in the shop and we were talking about the different types of boards that you can use um i use dmx at

boards a lot they have like these 12 channel and 24 channel boards sometimes i'll use two 24 channel boards instead of renting one big 24 channel console i'll use two boards and it's kind of cool because i can set them up to do different things control different parts of the set and i can stay organized that way um but what's nice about those boards it's a little faders are a little small but you get real time changes in the lights when you do them sometimes if you're

on an app or your pad with luminaire or even blackout and you're relying on a wi-fi signal there can be some latencies that happen so you'll make a change and then five or ten seconds later that change finally happens or it could be three i'll be making changes during a scene if i see something is too bright i will just very

gradually and very slightly bring it down to just make it real instead of the dp going oh you know and having to stop and deal with it you know i try to catch it before we get it what's and that's what's really nice about being in a in a dmx environment you can change it real time or rely on it changing real time as opposed to being in a wi-fi environment and is dmx um specific to any particular brand or is it more universal no dmx is just it's a it's a radio protocol that's used in theater and

and bands everybody uses dmx it's digital i don't even know what it stands for um um it's either music or mixing for the m but it yeah it's it's standard throughout all the industries and we've kind of come to there used to be two dmx well i think there's still two dmx uh frequencies in the dmx environment however one one is just used for broadway so they they have their own proprietary dmx and you do get into situations like in the parks if i'm in disney

there's a lot of crap going on frequency wise within those parks sometimes it doesn't work you know and again you got to be prepared for that you know so um i'm always carrying around usually when we're running in a park i got a wooden box my lighting board i've got like some lighting and the board and um i'll carry a couple like three four hundred feet of dmx so that i can just run it out to my lights from right from the board immediately to span a gap because something not responding right i

go to another part of yeah i go to another part of the park and everything's perfect you know so yeah so but you have to be able to react yeah well again it's being prepared you know which is part of being a professional and it's interesting to see yeah this is you as you know we've we've talked about how cameras have changed over the past few years and now you know the the the grip and lighting world is changing and you know and as editors and colorists

you know our software and the tools we use are all changing it's just how much the industry is constantly upgrading and how fast the pace that is you know it's hard to keep up with even the technicians to keep up with the dmx you know and every light works differently now they have their own um they have their own receivers in them you know you don't even have to put a receiver on a light they usually come with a receiver in the light and you have all these

different brands that have their own proprietary website or their own proprietary control over an instrument and what it makes it difficult to mix brands you know because you can't get out because everybody wants to use the app you use dmx everybody lives in the same world so you can you can bring all that together and i have talked to people that says no i don't like using that because then i can't use the app and i'm like use dmx yeah and because access is so much more

yeah so before i let you go um i'd like you to comment about this meme that i've been floating around the internet for several years i'm going to put up on the screen now so uh would you agree with uh this statement oh yes probably 100 across the board um yeah we went back to you know makeup supplementing the lighting oh yeah of course they do you know they're awesome can't say enough good about them now producing puts food into the lighting i think they put food onto the set so that

the grips can eat and not eat the teacher right yes fed grips a happy grip so yep and without without lights there is no film so we did i'm just gonna tell a real quick story i was trying to advertise first unit this is years and years and years ago and there was an advertising team that was local to tampa and there's these these two guys were awesome they were just very creative and they kept uh they needed a place to shoot stills at so they would come into you know our studio and

i just did a trade-off for some advertising so they came up with this ad and it was a black space with a dialogue bubble that said hey mikey what you eating and it said light lighting makes all the difference you know because it was just this black space with a dialogue bubble and i don't think what was it what was it cornflakes what was mikey eating at the time but it was like hey mikey what you you couldn't live cereal yeah you couldn't see anything and underneath it said

lighting makes all the difference and i thought well these guys are just freaking genius at what they do excellent excellent well thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation and i look forward to the next time we get to be on set together yeah yeah thanks Rich thanks for having me oh and thank you so much for the Mixing Light community for watching this and if you have questions please respond in the the box below and i'll be i'll do my best to uh to reply or if

you have a question for Rick i'll have ask him and see if i can have him reply all right thank you for watching have a great day