Gaffer Techniques

Applications

Since the gaffer is responsible for all lighting on the set, there are a number of techniques that can be used to best manage lights and electricity. The gaffer also has to be a sort of light magician and often needs to simulate light events. The gaffer is responsible for accomplishing both practical and artistic goals relating to electricity and lighting.

General Instructions

Many guerilla filmmakers have little experience with electricity outside of plugging a cord into a socket. If you’ve been given the position of electrician or gaffer on a small film, you’d best know some electrical calculations and lighting techniques. A gaffer has a great deal of responsibility and often must solve problems under intense time pressure. For this reason, having an understanding of basic principles can dramatically increase the effectiveness of a new gaffer.

Electrical calculations

Some people unfamiliar with electricity may fear the math involved with calculating the basic figures. This fear is unfounded since most of the important day-to-day calculations are very simple and can be done in your head.

One of the most important calculations you’ll make is the amperage load. Electrical cords, power strips, sockets, and electrical circuits are all rated by the number of amps of power that they can handle. For example, cheap extension cords are rated to handle 10 A. What does this mean? To figure out what size lights can be put on the extension cord, we need to know that amperage draw of each light.

There is a shorthand method of figuring out the number of amps used by a light. It is: Amps = Watts/100. Using this formula, a 100 W bulb will use approximately 1 A. That means that a single extension cord could handle 10 lights that use 100 W bulbs. Or the cord could power one light that has a 1000 W bulb. Since lights are generally the largest use of power on a set, this simple calculation can help you ensure that you don’t have any safety or fire risks by overloading your electrical equipment.

To determine the maximum amp capacity of electrical devices, look on the device itself. Almost every piece of electrical equipment (including extension cords) will state the maximum power draw that they can handle. Some common limits for consumer-grade electrical equipment include:

Many times you will be shooting inside an office or residence and using “house power” as opposed to power from a generator. Wherever there are power outlets, there are generally different circuits. Power comes from the street as a single power source and is divided into different circuits inside the house. House circuits each have a separate breaker (see figure 30-1).

The circuits of a house can be located in a seemingly haphazard manner, but generally they are created to minimize the amount of cable that needs to be run. For this reason, often the opposite wall sockets in a room are on different circuits. This layout is great advantage to a film crew as they may have access to 100 A of power in a single room.

Each circuit has a breaker with a maximum amp rating. Generally, modern residential homes install 20 A breakers for each circuit (see figure 30-2). Like the extension cord rating of 10 A, that means that the maximum amount of amperage that can be pulling through the breaker is 20 A. If you were to plug one 1000 W light into one socket and two 2000 W lights into another socket on the same circuit, you would reach the limit immediately.

FIGURE 30.1 House circuits each have a separate breaker.

FIGURE 30.2 Modern residential homes generally install 20 A breakers for each circuit.

It’s generally best to avoid coming even close to the limits of the breakers. An electrician seldom knows all the power drains plugged in line on the circuit. Maybe a refrigerator is plugged into the circuit in the next room.

TIP

If you’re using any but the simplest lighting scenario, you will probably overload the breaker at least once on a location. Therefore, it is important to always locate the breaker or the fuse box immediately upon arriving at the location. Make sure if the location has a fuse box that extra fuses are readily available.

General lighting

Keep in mind when lighting that film and video are lit in the opposite manner. Since how video and film handle over- and underexposure differently, scenes need to be lit to play to the strengths of the particular medium.

Follow these guidelines:

•  Negative film should shoot for shadows and let highlights take care of themselves. Blown out highlights on film is not generally visually distasteful and this effect is often used intentionally. Therefore, most film shoots focus on setting the camera and lighting to obtain the shadow details.

•  Video or reversal film should shoot for highlights and let shadows take care of themselves. Blown out areas on video tends to look horrid, therefore overexposure should be avoided. Most video cameras provide a feature called the “zebra pattern” that will show areas of overexposure in the eyepiece. It is much easier to turn up the brightness of video in post-production to lighten the underexposure than regain the detail lost in overexposed areas.

Keep in mind that at the time of this writing, film has a much greater exposure range than video. Film has nine f/stops range from black to white while video generally only has 4–5 f/stops. Meanwhile the human eye has about 13 f/stops, so use a light meter to supplement your visual judgment.

Lighting layers

While generally the decision of the DP, the gaffer always looks for ways to suggest using light to best present the scene. Often this requires pre-planning on the part of the gaffer so that suggestions, if taken, are possible to rig within the given shoot time. One of the most dramatic uses of light can be creating layers of light within a scene. By using variations of light and dark, the scene can almost pop into 3D reality for the audience.

Light layers are created by alternating light and dark. Therefore, in a medium shot, the foreground objects might be lit in a particular way. Then the ambient level is lower in the space between the foreground and the actors. The actors are then lit with the greatest amount of light in the frame. Another layer of darker ambience follows. Finally a few background objects are highlighted. When I’ve seen it used well, this technique can produce absolutely stunning effects in the final footage.

Sometimes you don’t even have to use much light to create the layers. Particularly on background objects, you might place white tape on edges of the objects to make them pop. The slim white tapeline can catch even a small amount of light and provide an interesting effect. Also, negative fill can be achieved with flags or duvetyn to deemphasize certain parts of the background and emphasize others.

Simulating passing traffic

For numerous reasons, it is often preferable to simulate traffic than film in actual traffic conditions. I can’t even begin to count the number of shots ruined by idiots that feel they have to honk whenever they see a film crew. Simulating passing traffic is a problem generally left to the gaffer to solve.

Here are a few effective methods:

•  Daylight shoots, use a reflector Have a person use a reflector to simulate the light streaking through the car. The person will turn the reflector quickly enough to make it appear as if a car passes by the set car. A gold reflector seems to produce the most attractive light reflections.

•  Night shoots, use a flag over a headlight Park an idling car with shining headlights so that it faces the filmed action. Using a flag (such as one you constructed in Chapter 38), have a person cover the headlight and occasionally uncover and recover the headlight. This method actually looks surprisingly good in the final footage.

•  Dolly installed with lights You can place lights on a dolly and push it past a stationary actor to simulate cars passing. In my experience, the big trouble with this method is the noise. In reality, it is fairly difficult to quietly push the lights around, especially when the types of scenes shot with simulated passing traffic are generally conversation heavy.

•  Drag signs on rollers by the car This method is famously used in one of Tim Burton’s early films, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Watch the scene closely and you’ll notice that one time the camera actually captures the little cart with rollers that is being pulled past the camera.

Rigging flying or rocketing items

One method of rigging a teleporting item or a rocket blast-off is to create the scene upside down. This technique is especially effective with small models. For a rocket, turn the camera upside down. You can build a custom camera mount to accomplish this or strap the hi-hat from Chapter 10 to a board for suspension between two ladders. Perhaps the simplest method of securing the small rocket is with fishing line that can be severed off camera. Start rolling and cut the fishing line. The rocket will launch into the air and you’ll not need to do any post-production wire removal.

I’ve included this technique in the gaffer’s section since it would have saved me a nightmarish time on a shoot if I’d have know of it back then. The most difficult part of wirework is not the rigging, but lighting around the wires, so they don’t catch the light or create visible shadows. Whenever wirework is needed, it seems like the gaffer is always left holding the bag. Therefore, try to consider and suggest alternatives to the wire and save yourself numerous headaches.

Suggestions

Here are a few suggestions for working the electrical department:

•  Purchase gaffer’s tape While duct tape is a substitute, it isn’t a very good one. Gaffer’s tape is made to have a very strong adhesive and yet it leaves little residue. If you don’t have a film supply store in your town, order gaffer’s tape over the Internet. The most popular type of tape is Permacel P665.

•  Sun Guns provide cheap, portable lighting Sylvania created a small, hand-held light for use with 8 mm cameras. These lights, popular in the 1960s and 1970s, were purchased by the thousands. They provide 5600 K daylight-balanced light. I can’t recommend them highly enough and they are available used at pawnshops and through eBay for the price of a music CD. If your lighting kit is small, be sure to purchase a few of these. They come in handy.