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THE CINE-TECHNICIAN
"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now
May-June, 1953
Overhead Lighting for Overall Set Illumination
by JOSEPH RUTTENBERG, A.S.C.
J
ULIUS CAESAR," which I recently completed photographing at Metro-GoldwynMayer studios, marks the first time in Hollywood history perhaps that a feature production has been filmed almost entirely with overhead light. This black-and-white production, featuring Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, Louis Calhern, Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr, is one of M.G.M.'s top-budget pictures for 1952. From the standpoint of set lighting, it establishes a technical milestone.
What made it possible to photograph ninety per cent of this production with overhead light alone, was the recently-developed Skylight, a " shadowless " set lighting unit developed jointly by M.G.M.'s executive director of photography John Arnold, A.S.C, and the Motion Picture Research Council, Inc.
From the numerous tests conducted with the Skylight at M.G.M. it was found that its reflected incandescent light more closely approximates the quality of the north light favoured by the portrait photographer.
" Julius Caesar, "with its many huge exterior
sets, was ideally suited to the type of lighting produced by Skylights augmented by other overhead units for directional light. In fact it might be said the production demanded it, inasmuch as almost all the action takes place on outdoor sets, all of which were constructed indoors on M.G.M.'s sound stages.
Daylight consists of strong directional light from the sun plus the soft light reflected from the sky. For the first time, perhaps, this same light quality, having such realism that few can distinguish it from real daylight in the photographed result, has been achieved on a motion picture set.
Whenever we shoot exterior sequences out-ofdoors, the photographic light is provided almost entirely by the sun, and our task is simply to control the light in an effective manner. But when we move indoors to shoot, we are then confronted with the problem of lighting, and we must work with units of artificial illumination.
Heretofore, any attempt to reproduce an effect of genuine daylight illumination indoors on the sound stage has not been altogether success