Lighting Perception

Perception
Lighting design may sound a little non-interesting. With the technical aspects coming in play, any sane person will give up understanding it. Here is a unique way of understanding the art of lighting design, understanding it from a directors viewpoint. Drawing parallels between lighting design and movie making just to make things simple and easy for you.

A New

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January - February 2012 Lighting India

Lighting Perception
umans are endowed with the beautiful gift of senses and light is one of the richest sensations that can be experienced by them. Filling the every moment of this life with set of a high emotions, incomparable beauty, & vision, it reveals & enhances the surroundings. To understand the unique quality of light to change moods and the attire the concept of lighting design comes in handy. Lighting design is all about understanding the correlation between physics of light and human perception and then translating it into the physical form that can be comprehended. Lighting design is a simple art that bestows light and character. Its application in architecture makes spaces alive. The dark and gloomy spaces can be made bright and happy using the right type of light and highlighting the right amount of things. However, it is not just about placing lights but playing with shadows, highlighting some features and playing with the spilled and the reflected light. Thus, you can animate a space. Here is a different perspective to understand the art of lighting better. Understanding it with the directors eyes. The movie making process is divided into three basic and very generic phases: Phase I: pre-production, Phase II: production, and Phase III: post- production. The pre-production broadly consists of generating the initial idea, writing a script, and casting, preparing the sets and deciding locations for the shoot. Production is mainly shooting the movie. While the post-production is the editing, recording songs and background score and finally screening it. Similarly, in the vast field of lighting design the linear order is to establish the work by procuring a similar for your space. Now to understand, what

is a concept? A concept is your base that can be fixed on your theme, material, idea etc. It is the common thread that binds all your designed elements, sometimes the unknown non-designed elements, & the space together. To make things easier to understand, here is a hypothetical example. Let your space be the gothic church, say Westminster Abbey in the city of London. Applying the rules, your step one is conceptualization; deriving your concept.

Step two is deriving the ambience, developing the mood and character. Assume it as divinity, where people can connect directly with Jesus and hence heaven. The next big question that comes is how you achieve it. Say, making the architecture look grand and exaggerated by playing with the scale and proportions. Ideating results into character development, which leads slowly to selecting your cast and crew, based on your style and approach. Do not forget it shall also depend on the type of space, its architecture, and its features and of course your concept. Start considering the main characteristics for your hypothetical church, which are the pointed arches, the ribbed vault, and the flying buttresses. Pick one (say the pointed arches) as the hero and one (say the

The facade view of the Westminster abbey church

Having derived your concept, you start your character development along with the script writing. In other words, start evolving your idea. Figure out first the heart and soul of the idea. Simultaneously start ideating the look and feel, the mood, and the character for the same. It is like, selecting clothes for an event.

Pointed arches act as the hero

Play of scale and proportions

Ribbed vault act as the villain

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Lighting Perception
Uneven spotlights are used to light up the facade. Their placement being so close, high intensity spots are created overexposing the details and making them look flat. While the upper part of the church gets reflected light which brings out the texture and the details.

Spot light highlighting the pointed arches and throwing sharp shadows upwards making the ribbed vault look bigger than it is

Up lighting throws light gently generating soft shadows making the space look calm and composed

Image Courtesy: Mariustipa

Wall washers/ down lighters throws light down generating spots of dark and light on floor. The ribbed vault receives only reflected light

ribbed vault) as the villain thus giving you your star cast. Now that you have your awesome star cast for your script,

you move on to the next phase, which is set preparation, which in our case is deciding the places and spots to put up lights. Having done that we come to the end of Phase-1. Summing it up, you now have a script, your star cast, your sets, mood and ambience to achieve for the scene and finally a concept to bind all of them together. Going over to Phase-II, which is production, a self-explanatory thing but the most complicated and elongated phase. It is essentially shooting the film where the director

thinks, yells, screams, shouts, gets annoyed, irritated and frustrated, just to get it right. Simplifying it, doing all the wildest things to get the shot right such that it looks authentic. Deciding the camera angles to get that perfect frame, incorporating the right props, costumes, make-up, and each and every detail to emphasize these subtle nuances. Instigate with the trial and error method just to get the perfect ambience. Experimenting with different light types; up lighting, down lighting, wall washing, spot

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January - February 2012

Lighting India

Lighting Perception
Lighting here emphasizes the columns and their details. It brings out the fluted shaft giving it a dynamic feel to it. In addition, the capital gets some amount of light to cast shadows in space. The rest of the space gets reflected light thus making most of it dark making the columns stand out. Image Courtesy: cgh1976

lighting, and wall grazing. Figure out the type of fixtures to be installed simultaneously deciphering the intensity of light and hence its distribution in space (photometric charts) the colour you want to emphasize (SPD: spectral power distribution and hence the CT: colour temperature). Thus, we come to the end of phase II. Now moving on to the last and the final part Phase III, i.e. postproduction. It is all about tweaking the final movie here and there just to get that

perfect motion picture. Elaborating, it is art of removing the unwanted and unnecessary information even when it looks and sounds good. It is about giving the special effects to create more drama and to bring out the vividness in the overall scene. Once we are done with the major chunk of lighting it is all bout doing minor corrections here and there in terms of colour corrections and controlling the intensities in order to get that perfect shadows such that the entire concept and the mood comes through. The hero and the villain should stand out thus portraying their characters and their

roles throughout the development process. Hence, the film is ready to be released like wise the space is ready to open for public to see. Concluding with a note of satisfaction that it is just a matter of perception that can change many notions. In this modern world where light plays a very important role, it is only a matter of perception that can make things easy and simple such that implementing its technical aspects becomes effortless. Lighting design though it looks complicated can become clear by just changing the perception. It is just a matter of viewpoint.

Hinal Muzumdar, Graduated from the School of Interior Design (SID) CEPT, Ahmedabad, studied at the University of Cincinnati (DAAP) for a semester. She did undergrad thesis on Ar tificial Light, 'A study of mood and atmosphere in bars and restaurants'. She is currently working at Idiom Design and Consultant, Bangalore.

Hinal Muzumdar

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