Words: Rob Franklin
Pictures: Steve Horne
In days past we were led to believe that cinematography was a dark art that brought captivating images to the screen by the use of smoke, mirrors, and a little bit of magic. In the early days of my freelance career, I certainly did carry a large polycarbonate mirror to augment my lighting set ups. It weighed in a hefty 5kg screwed as it was too thick plywood and whilst its cumbersome presence meant it was often left in the car it did have some outstanding moments.
At one London location, we had just finished setting up some pieces to camera when the director returned from getting a sandwich for us all. “Quick” she exclaimed“let’s shoot now and have lunch later” enquiring as to why she explained that the sunlight splashing across the wall made the room look fantastic. “We can have lunch first, it will still be there” I explained pointing out that one of our lights, the mirror and some scattered warm gels were doing all the work.
Fast forward a few years and I’m signing into Pinewood Studios for a GTC Workshop on the CRLS Lightbridge System. Lightbridge is the culmination of a chance meeting at an airport between Austrian DoP Christian Berger and an old school friend Christian Bartenbach. Discussing their lives it turned out the friend worked for an industrial lighting company that designed architectural reflectors. It’s not surprising that more money is spent on architectural and automotive reflector research than for motion picture lighting. It was here the idea of a reflective mirror system was born.
After a brief introduction and overview of how the system works from Jono, a DP and Jason, a Gaffer, partners in the Film Lighting company Reflectric, It was time to dig a little deeper.
The physics once distilled are quite simple. Light is invisible, we only see shape and structure by what is hit by the light and more importantly how those surfaces reflect.
The reflectors in the Cine Reflecting Light System or CRLS when positioned create a virtual position for the light that is further away than the actual light. This Virtual distance is dependent on the beam angle of the reflector, a tighter beam angle appears to be from further away.
This has two immediate benefits. Firstly, the light appears to be lighting the scene from further away and depending on positioning higher than the reflector placement.
Secondly and more importantly the output of the lamp is only diminished by the actual distance via the mirror to the subject. Think of that fundamental of lighting “The inverse square law”, where doubling the distance reduces the perceived intensity on the subject to one quarter. Essentially meaning a smaller lighting fixture can create the impression of a much bigger lamp.
The knock-on of this is less rigging time, smaller power requirements, and compact placements. Obviating the need for generators, cherry pickers, and huge rigs. That would definitely help the Albert credibility on any production.
Each reflector has a specific beam angle and reflectivity. Quite lightweight they come in soft bags with a range of mounting grips. Close up they appear as sheets of finely speckled soft sheen aluminum easily marked, we are reminded, by greasy fingers. Simple they are not these are precision engineered to a fine tolerance and pair well with any light type but particularly modern LED’s.
Can a 1.2kw LED really replace a 20k punched through a silk? What followed from Jono and Jason were further examples of how the reflectors could be used, large sets, small sets, interviews.
Demonstrating how getting an approximate position for the reflector first before mounting it to a stand was the quickest way of working.
Large reflectors can have smaller reflectors mounted in front to change the quality of the light and gels can be draped across the lamp or reflector creating some spectacular effects.
There is definitely a natural and painterly look from the light. Soft yet with a punch.
There are of course some downsides. The reflectors placement is critical and once established need to be locked down. Exterior placement on tall stands would be particularly vulnerable to wind movement. They mark easily but Jono and Jason assured us even when marked they still perform well but they definitely don’t like dents. A dent interrupts the reflection and so is seen as a blemish in the reflected light.
The workshop was most “illuminating” but a bigger space with more time to get to grips with some practical set ups would have been good.
The application of Lightbridge CRLS system is limited only by imagination as the workshop demonstrated and is a fantastic tool to have in the armoury. It may take more workshops like this to convince some to think and work differently but I can definitely see applications within my own sphere of work, it seems that smoke and some very technical mirrors will be making a prompt return.
