American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 46
◗
Times of Strife
Right: King is
arrested in Selma.
Below: Young
checks the
toplight for the
mug-shot scene.
opposite: It also reflects light.
Cinematographers often just directlight a black actor, because they're
scared there will be a lack of exposure.
My approach is never to direct-light; it's
always been to bounce light, so that it
gives the skin an opportunity to reflect
the environment. So for me, it's about
finding ways to bounce light or create
more subtle strokes of light. Once that
bounced light reaches your light meter,
it's technically 'underexposed,' but really
what we're doing is decreasing the light
46
February 2015
so we can increase the richness of the
skin tone.
How do you deal with skin tones
that are miles apart, like in the scenes
with Martin Luther King and Coretta
Scott King [Carmen Ejogo]?
Young: After all these years, a lot
of it is instinctual - just trying to find
the happy balance. But I also have my
go-to color palette. We know that
amber reflected off skin tones enhances
them. That's part of the reason I'm big
on using practicals as my main lighting
American Cinematographer
source: [They provide] the perfect
amount of richness. This amber wash
always gives me a place to start.
Another go-to is cyan. If I'm
lighting a day interior, I tend to lean the
color balance toward daylight, meaning
that if I'm shooting tungsten film, I
won't correct it. I think that sort of overexposure in the blue layer of the film
adds another level to the skin tones.
With digital, I rarely shoot at pure 3,200
or 3,600 Kelvin. I prefer 4,500 Kelvin,
because it gives me a fair amount of blue
but doesn't knock away all of the
warmth in the frame.
In Selma, when we created our
initial LUT with Tom Poole at
Company 3, we found that cyan helped.
[Costume designer] Ruth Carter came
in and had quite a bit of cyan, aqua and
blue in the frame; she and [production
designer] Mark Friedberg, who have
done this a million times before me,
were well aware that when you're dealing with these sorts of skin tones, you're
dealing with lighting value and you've
got to enhance it with something in the
frame that takes people's eyes away from
what can be perceived as underexposure
or a lack of density. We found that cyan
is a very key color, because it allows us to
American Cinematographer - February 2015
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2015
Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 1
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 2
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 4
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 5
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 6
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 7
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 8
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 9
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 10
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 11
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 12
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 13
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 14
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 14a
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 14b
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 15
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 16
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 17
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 18
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 19
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 20
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 21
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 22
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 23
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 24
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 25
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 26
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 27
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 28
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 29
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 30
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 31
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 32
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 33
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 34
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 35
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 36
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 37
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 38
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 39
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 40
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 41
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 42
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 43
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 44
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 45
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 46
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 47
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 48
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 49
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 50
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 51
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 52
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 53
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 54
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 55
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 56
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 57
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 58
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 59
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 60
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 61
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 62
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 63
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 64
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 65
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 66
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 67
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American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 69
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 70
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 71
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 72
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 73
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 74
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American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 78
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 79
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American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 84
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American Cinematographer - February 2015 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - February 2015 - Cover4
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