American Cinematographer - February 2021 - 10

Shot Craft By Jay Holben
Adventures in LEDs - Part 2: Case Studies

Last month, we covered some advanced technology pertaining
to LED fixtures and color. This month, we'll look at how some
filmmakers are using LEDs creatively.

John Schwartzman, ASC Prioritizes
Consistency
" The directors I normally work with prefer
film, " says John Schwartzman, ASC. " It's only
been in the last three years that I've done
more digital than film, and that enabled me to
become familiar with LEDs. For Last Christmas, directed by Paul Feig, we shot in London
at Christmas. The city was quite beautiful
and bright, but the only way we could get
permission to shoot in the streets was to do it
without any condors or big cables. I ended up
embracing LEDs, and I even handheld a small
LED myself as a key for Emilia Clarke. They're
really quite wonderful.
" The problems with LEDs for cinematographers are related to dealing with the
10 / FEBRUARY 2021

consumer/industrial variety used in storefronts and whatnot - that's a 'Wild West' in
terms of quality, and flicker can be a big issue
when you have to shoot them, " he continues.
" You can adjust the shutter angle to stop
flicker from one store and then suddenly pick
up flicker from another. We also really struggled with fairy lights. Incandescent tungsten
is banned in the U.K., so we could only get
the LED variety, and it took a lot of testing to
find the one or two that wouldn't continuously
flicker on us. In the days of fluoros, sodium
and mercury-vapor lights, we knew the windows and shutter angles, but in the world of
LEDs there is no standard. "
Schwartzman tried to manage disparity
among manufacturers of professional LED

fixtures by creating " zones " of brands. " I really
like what [ASC associate] Frieder [Hochheim
of Kino Flo] has done with his fixtures, " he
says. " They're specifically color-balanced to
the camera's sensor, so you can go into the
fixture's menu and set it for the Arri Alexa and
get amazing color fidelity. The Kino Celeb 850
is a beautiful soft source that is lovely as a
key; it wraps really nicely. If I don't have the
room, I go for the FreeStyle 31. I would generally use Kinos close to the talent for keys and
fills, and I'd use Arri SkyPanels - especially
the 360, which has significantly more punch
than any Kino - for backgrounds, backdrops,
pushing light through windows, and so forth.
Overall, I want the same family of lights on the
talent, but it's okay if I have something slightly
different in the background. If it's a wide, full
shot, then I can get away with a wider mix of
fixtures, but when the shots get to the collarbone and up, then I want more consistency.
" It's amazing how little power LEDs require.
For The Little Things, we were shooting a lot
of nights, and I had an Arri SkyPanel 360 on a

Photo by Claude e Barius, SMPSP, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Corp.

Groundbreaking at the time, the 2016 feature Independence Day: Resurgence was lit almost entirely with LEDs.

American Cinematographer - February 2021

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