A black screen fades into a high-angled pool of light shining down…casting deep shadows into the eyes. The camera pulls back to reveal the foreboding silhouette of Marlon Brando. Contrasting beyond the darkened ominous interior, the camera cuts to a bright, sunny wedding scene enveloped in glorious kodachrome tones. That’s how master cinematographer Gordon Willis illuminated Paramount’s iconic opening sequences to The Godfather.
I have always been fascinated with controlling the falling of light and shadow onto faces. Mastering the art and craft of lighting faces is about learning how to control every aspect of the light, or lack of light, in order to artistically impact the visual mood and emotions of a scene. The glorious history of lighting started with mere reflectors redirecting the sun. It progressed to rudimentary military searchlights used in the early studio system. Later came sodium vapor lamps, which lamp operators controlled with boat gaff sticks. Hence boat gaff sticks gave rise to the term gaffer, now ascribed to the chief lighting electrician on a film set. Today gaffers have a wide range of sophisticated lights to help control, shape and stylize exactly how cinematographers choose light to fall onto faces.
With the advancement of both digital sensors and film stock sensitivity, cinematographers are now able to work at lower light levels than ever before. This has opened the door for use of softer light sources, which are in fact far more forgiving in lighting faces than hard light sources. Because cinematographers of the past honed their craft in an era of hard source lights, they naturally gleaned a greater knowledge in understanding the shape of a face, cheekbone structure, jaw line strength, eye socket depth, hair length and so forth. As a result, I draw a lot of personal inspiration into my own craft from the master cinematographers of the hard source lighting generation.
