Lighting Setup from Elvis (2022)

Lighting Plan for a scene from a film - Overhead Plan, Lighting Fixtures, Gels, Camera and Set.

An attempt to recreate the lighting of a shot in the 2022 film Elvis by Baz Luhrmann.

Elvis is a 2022 musical drama biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner. Australian Cinematographer, Mandy Walker, shot the film on the Alexa with different custom made Panavision glass lenses named Panavision "Elvis" lenses. They had more aberration in order to replicate the visual feel of film in the Elvis era.

This is my attempt to recreate the following shot...

To replicate this backlight effect on Tom Hanks' character I suspect this was shot with a prime lens that has a long focal lens opened to f3.5 or lower for a shallow depth of field. With the equipment available to us I would shoot it on an 25mm lens at eye level of the subject. To enhance the shallow depth of field, I suspect they used a fog machine to emphasize the lighting and to add to the effect of the cigar in the subject’s hand.

To replicate the fabricated motivational lighting coming from the window and serving as backlight, I came up with the setup A. It would be a 1K Tungsten set up about 4ft above the eyeline of the subject with a diffusion filter setup in front of it. The cookie would disperse the light and the black flag would block the light from falling on the background and focusing it on the subject. It would serve as the backlight of the subject.

The second setup (B) is a 600 Tungsten light setup high and point down at the subject, almost as if it replicated ceiling lighting. I added a black flag on the left side to block light from the background and have it focused only on the subject. The half-scrim would cut the light only on the subject’s face and leave the rest as is.

Setup C uses a 300 Tungsten because it is only needed to reduce the contrast ratio a little on the right side of the subject. The light is placed lower than eye level to light the object and the bottom left of the frame. Diffusion is added to make it softer, and a black flag is added to keep the light only up to the edge of the seat.

OTHER SHOTS FROM THE SCENE

Establishing

Captain's POV