Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook 5th Edition by Harry C. Box, ISBN-13: 978-1138391727

Description

Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook 5th Edition by Harry C. Box, ISBN-13: 978-1138391727

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Routledge; 5th edition (April 21, 2020)
• Language: ‎ English
• 624 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 1138391727
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1138391727

A friendly, hands-on training manual and reference for lighting technicians in motion picture and television production, this handbook is the most comprehensive guide to set lighting available. It provides a unique combination of practical detail with a big-picture understanding of lighting, technology, safety, and professionalism, essential to anyone doing motion picture lighting.

The fifth edition delves into every aspect of lighting and features vastly expanded sections on controlling LED lights, color science, lighting control systems, wireless systems, Ethernet-based control systems, battery power, and modern set protocol for productions small and large. With a generous number of original images, the book illustrates the use of soft light, the effect of lighting angles, and how the gaffer and DP build an effective lighting plan around the blocking of the actors. This encyclopedic volume of technical knowhow is tempered with years of practical experience and a much-needed sense of humor.

This is the ideal text for professional lighting technicians across film and television including lighting directors, gaffers, DOPs, and rigging crews, as well as film and television production students studying lighting, camera techniques, film production, and cinematography.

Table of Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 Set basics: Your first barbecue

Job descriptions of the lighting crew

Director of photography

Gaffer

Best boy electric

Lighting technicians

Lighting control personnel

Rigging crew

The fixtures person (or department)

Generator operator

Grip department

The company

Production staff

The director’s team

Script supervisor

Camera department

Sound department

Locations

Transportation

Art department

The general public

Block, light, rehearse, tweak, shoot

CHAPTER 2 Preproduction planning: The package, expendables, personal tools

Preproduction planning

Scouting locations

Production meetings

Wireless spectrum management meeting

The load-in

Prepping lights and stands

The production van

Expendable supplies

Gels and diffusion

Electrical expendables

Tools and personal gear

Tool belt

Meters

Other hand tools

Personal gear

CHAPTER 3 Lighting objectives

Storytelling objectives

Mood

Naturalism

Composition

Time constraints

Photographic objectives

Light level

Foot-candles

F-stops and T-stops

Factors affecting light levels

Contrast, latitude, and the tonal value

Spot meters

Calibrated monitor

Signal monitoring

CHAPTER 4 Lighting strategies

Motivating and reactive lighting

Lighting faces

Rembrandt cheek patch lighting

Near- and far-side keys

Side light

Wrapping the key

Front light

Bottom light

High in front or high to the side

The lighting triangle

Fill

Eye light

Backlights, kickers, and hair lights

Lighting the acting positions

Back cross keys

Lighting the space and the background

Ambience

Backdrops

CHAPTER 5 Manipulating light: Tools, techniques, and the behavior of light

Falloff: your friend, the inverse square law

Cuts and patterns

Breakup patterns

Cucaloris

Branchaloris

Tape on an empty frame

Shading and selectively controlling brightness

Movement

Flicker effects: television screen, flame, and fire

Other moving light effects

Soft light

Softness of light

Linear light sources

Bounce light

Diffusion materials

Diffusion on the fixture

Fabric soft boxes

Controlling soft light

Flags and teasers

Grids, egg crates, and louvers

Lanterns

CHAPTER 6 Color

Color space

Kelvin color temperature scale

Shifting color up and down the color temperature scale

Using MIRED units to calculate color shifts

Correlated color temperature (CCT)

Green/magenta axis

Measuring color

Colored light

LED full-color

Theatrical gels

CHAPTER 7 LED lights

Capabilities of LEDs

Color options

Phosphor white, daylight, or tungsten

Remote phosphor

Bi-color

The reasons behind tunable-white and full-spectrum lights

Full spectrum

LED color control methods

Lighting effects

Dimming LEDs

Dimming curves

Bottom of the dimmer range

The seven things every lighting technician should know about LEDs

Control

Soft light fixtures

Rigging versatility with lightweight softlights

Small “face” lights

Larger full-featured heads

Green/blue screens, backings, and translights

ARRI SkyPanel®

Establishing base settings

Settings menus

Light operation

LED tubes

Single- and bi-color tubes

Full-color tubes

Pixel tubes

Ribbon and tiles

Ribbon

Power and control

Soldering

Other LED form factors

Orbiter

Automated fixtures

Camera-mounted and small LEDs

Ring lights

Portable wall wash

Punchy LEDs

Architectural

CHAPTER 8 Established lighting instruments

Tungsten

HMI and other metal halide arc lamps

Fresnels

Flood/spot control

Tilt angle

Fresnel beam

Fresnel accessories

20k and 24k tungsten lights

PAR lights

PAR lamps

PAR cans

PAR arrays

Axially mounted PAR fixtures

Ellipsoidal reflector spotlights

Dedolights

Beam projectors

Area lights and backing lights

Space lights

Backing lights

Cyc strips

Open-face lights

Tungsten

HMI “open-face” lights

Tungsten soft lights

CHAPTER 9 Operating HMI lights

HMI lamps

ARRIMAX

Double-ended lamps

Other notes about HMI lamps

Normal HMI operation

Striking

DMX512-controlled ballasts

UV protection and the safety loop circuit

Color temperature

Operating conditions

Troubleshooting

Power

Cueing for HMIs

CHAPTER 10 Stands and rigging

Stands

Baby stands

Junior stands

Offsets, side arms, extensions, and right angles

Using stands

Crank-up and motorized stands

Grip stands

Booms

Rigging hardware

Nail-on plates

Set wall mounts

Clamps

Grids and greenbeds

Other rigging hardware

CHAPTER 11 Set protocol

Set protocol

Staging area

Lighting the set

Walkie-talkies

Safeties

Protecting sets and locations

Teamwork

Warnings

Stingers and cabling

Cables crossing the set

Cables crossing work areas

Stingers

Preventing kick-outs

Repatching

2k plugging policy

Labeling stingers and power cords

Coiling stingers and cable

Circuit balance and capacity

Overheating and short circuits

Smoke, fire, and other bad smells

Sprinkler systems

Elevated work

Ladders

Parallels

Working at height

Aerial lifts (Condors and scissor lifts)

Color correction on location

Correcting commercial/industrial fluorescents

Heat protection and gels

Gelling windows

Practical bulbs

PH bulbs and photoflood bulbs

MR-16

Mushroom floods

Dimming practical lamps

Wiring fixtures and outlet boxes

The wrap

Coiling feeder cable

Inventory

Replacing lamps

Matching the lamp to the fixture

Mercury

Replacing tungsten and HMI lamps

CHAPTER 12 Lighting control networks

DMX512

DMX512 addressing

The patch

Fixture numbers

The cheat sheet, fixtures, and universes

DMX values and device personality

General Device Type Format (GDTF)

Multiple DMX512 universes

Remote Device Management (RDM)

Building wired DMX512 systems

Deviations from the standard

Data termination

Capacity

DMX cable

Optical isolators and splitters

DMX512 testing

Loss of signal

Ethernet, Art-Net, sACN, and RDMnet

DMX over Ethernet

Other Ethernet protocols

RDMnet

Advantages of Ethernet

Lighting control apps

Wi-Fi

Wireless DMX

To be or not to be wireless

Wireless DMX transmitters and receivers

Satellite™ and Constellation

Bluetooth

Mesh

Wireless system management

DMX controllers and lighting consoles

Small controllers

Consoles

Console operations

Pixel mapping

CHAPTER 13 Electricity

The fundamentals of electricity and electrical formulas

Volts (electromotive force)

Amperes (current)

Watts (power)

The power formula

Resistance

Ohm’s law

Parallel and series circuits

How NOT to use electrical formulas

AC vs. DC

Power systems

240/120 single-phase, three-wire plus ground system

208/120 three-phase, four-wire plus ground system

Single-phase derived from delta-connected, three-phase system

480/277 V three-phase system

Electrical safety systems

Control devices and polarity

Overcurrent protection

The current-carrying capacity of cable

Types of feeder cable

Equipment grounding

System ground

Generators

Ground rods

Bonding power sources

CHAPTER 14 Power distribution equipment

Components of a simple portable distribution system

208 V vs. 240 V systems

Overcurrent protection and cable ampacity

Protecting cable at its ampacity

Step-down box

The 400 percent rule

Feeder runs

Camlock connectors

Reversed ground system

Parallel cable

Test jacks

Camlock spiders

Distribution centers

Multi-pin connectors and receptacle boxes

Stage pin (Bates) connectors

Edison

NEMA L6–20 and L6–30

PowerCON and TRUE1

Socapex

Adapters

Adapters for big lights

DMX-controlled distribution and power with data

CHAPTER 15 Dimming equipment

Color temperature

Dimming types and applications

Household dimmers

Variac dimmers

Lunchbox dimmers and silent on-set dimmers

Dimmers tailored for LEDs and small incandescent lamps

Stand-alone dimmers

Dimmer packs

Dimmer racks

Wireless DMX on-set dimmers

Dimmer packs and racks

Dimmer rooms

Electronic dimmer designs

Forward-phase control dimmers—SCR

Reverse-phase control dimmers

Sinewave dimmers

Strand CD80 dimmer packs

Installation and setup

Troubleshooting

ETC sensor dimmer system

CHAPTER 16 Electrical rigging

The role of the rigging gaffer

Rigging paperwork

Layers of an electrical system

Hard-power layer

Dimmer-circuit layer

Control layer

Cable and generator loading

Sizing neutral conductors

Sizing equipment grounding conductors

Sizing grounding electrode and bonding conductors

Rigging cable

Protect your back

Traffic areas

Fire lanes

Identifying cable, labeling circuits

Lacing feeders

Ventilating and separating runs

Waterfalls

Placement of distribution boxes

The Gak package

Root out bad contacts

Testing the system before use

Testing for short circuits

Testing neutral and ground continuity and resistance

Making the feeder connections

Testing voltage

Lugs and buss bars

Knots for rigging

Loop knots

Binding hitches

Other useful hitches

Bends

Strength of rope

Rigging lights

Rigging aerial lifts

Cabling

Condor duty

CHAPTER 17 Working with electrical power

Voltage drop and line loss

Causes of voltage drop

Allowable voltage drop

Mitigating voltage drop

Simple line loss calculations

Single-phase voltage drop calculations

Finding the voltage drop

Finding cable gauge

Finding the maximum current

Finding the maximum length

Three-phase voltage drop calculations

Single-phase loads

Three-phase loads

Cable resistance

Power factor

Power factor correction

Non-linear loads and harmonics

Switch mode power supplies

Harmonics

Additive neutral current

Skin effect and proximity effect

Strategies for coping with large non-linear loads

Measuring electricity

AC Circuit Load Tester

Circuit testers

Testing continuity and testing for shorts

Voltage meters

Measuring amperage

Wattmeter or power meter

Power quality meter

Measuring frequency (Hz rate)

Circuit breaker finder

Meter categories

Electrical shocks and muscle freeze

CHAPTER 18 Power sources

Rechargeable batteries

Battery types and mounts

Voltage

Current

Battery capacity, run time, and charging

Charge time

Combining batteries with plates and power stations

Options for powering lights with batteries

Shipping and flying with batteries

Battery chemistry and care

Inverters

Large battery packs

Using available outlets

Getting organized

240 V receptacles

Putt-putts (small portable generators)

Retrofits and alternative configurations

Parallel generators and step-down transformers

Running the generator

Troubleshooting small generators

How does a generator work?

240-to-120 V transformer

Full-size generators

Electrical configurations

Control panel

Generator placement

Selecting a generator

480 V transformer

Power (kVA)

How transformers work

Using a 480 V system

Line drops from utility power

Tie-ins

Approach protection

CHAPTER 19 Special circumstances and practices

Shooting on moving vehicles

Poor man’s process and other techniques

Lighting in and around water

Working with electricity around water and damp environments

GFCI protection

GFCI devices

Testing equipment

Protecting equipment

Lighting rain

Underwater lighting

Electricity in water

Modern underwater fixtures

The underwater lighting arsenal

Features of underwater fixtures

Surface support

Lighting for matte photography

Pure screen color and density

Lighting the foreground

CHAPTER 20 Specialty lighting equipment

SoftSun

Lighting balloons

Lightning effects

Lightning Strikes!

Control units

Power requirements

Running Lightning Strikes! on generators

Thundervoltz battery packs

Automated lights

Selecting moving lights

Working with moving lights

Remote pan and tilt for conventional lights

Media servers and video projectors for lighting effects

Xenon lights

Follow spots

Preparing the follow spot

Operating the follow spot

Black lights

Black light fixtures

Photographing with black light

CHAPTER 21 LED color science and technology

Systems for evaluating color rendering

What’s wrong with CRI?

Extended CRI, CRI 15

TLCI-2012 and TLMF-2013

Spectral Similarity Index (SSI)

What to watch for

Why different cameras see the same colors differently

Gamut

Selecting the color space of a light

Matching colors, ANSI E1.54

LED technology

LED power supply, controller, driver, and dimming

LED useful life

APPENDIX A Photometric calculations and tables

APPENDIX B Lamp tables

APPENDIX C Flicker-free frame rates

APPENDIX D Electrical tables

APPENDIX E IP and NEMA equipment ratings

APPENDIX F Equipment suppliers and manufacturers

APPENDIX G Gels and diffusions

APPENDIX H LED lights

Glossary

Index

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