All images from Inspired 3D Lighting and Compositing by David Parrish, series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford. Reprinted with permission.

This is the fourth in a number of adaptations from the new Inspired series published by Premier Press. Comprised of four titles and edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford, these books are designed to provide animators and curious moviegoers with tips and tricks from Hollywood veterans. The following is excerpted from Lighting and Compositing.

A Brief Introduction
If you know about computer graphics special effects, then you know the name Dennis Muren. During his years with Industrial Light + Magic, he has played an integral role in some of the most influential and ground-breaking special effects films ever created. Dennis has worked on special-effects films from the very dawn of the digital age. His efforts have not only been recognized with outstanding box office support, but also recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, with eight Oscars for Best Achievement in Visual Effects. The award-winning films (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Inner Space, The Empire Strikes Back, The Abyss, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Return of the Jedi, and Jurassic Park) represent a wide range of achievements in effects work. Dennis was the 2nd cameraman on the original Star Wars movie, became a director of photography after that, and then found his niche as a visual effects supervisor in 1981. He's been providing us with amazing visuals ever since, and he was kind enough to share with me some of his secrets to success in the world of computer graphics.

Dennis Muren

In working with Dennis, I soon realized that he has a way of appealing to the child inside of us, who can look at the screen with the wonder and awe of seeing something for the very first time. Along with that ability, he is also able to appeal to an ever-increasing visual sophistication that the digital age has instilled in his audience. His creative energy and genuine excitement for the craft he has chosen continue to this day to be a driving force at Industrial Light + Magic.

David Parrish: One of the most valuable things that I know I learned from you was how to choose what to focus on when working on a shot. Could you tell me a little bit about how you look at a shot and determine what’s important?

Dennis Muren: The first thing you need to do is to not think that the shot you’re working on is going to be in isolation. It’s one of 2,000 shots for a movie. A shot is there to tell a story, and the question is, what’s the story that needs to be told for that two seconds or five seconds or ten seconds? That’s all there is to it, and it’s really that simple. There are a lot of elements in any one shot. There is a character, or maybe two or three, a background, some action, and some dialogue. But what’s important about the shot? It’s necessary to be able to distance yourself mentally from the shot and see it as though you’ve never seen it before. And I just do that. I can turn on this little switch, as though I’m seeing something for the first time, but I know what the intent of the shot is. If I don’t see it, then I have to figure out what the problem is. It may be that the camera is in the wrong position, it needs to focus on a different part of the scene, or the shot is just too complicated. The lighting plays a big role, since it can be lit in such a way that it can pull your eye to where you want to tell the story. Filmmakers do this all the time, but the audience doesn’t realize it. People don’t talk about it, but that’s really what we’re doing when we set up a shot. When a DP is lighting a scene, he’s lighting it so that the audience knows where to look. Also, something I’ve always used, because our cuts here are so short, is a little formula. The audience should be able to see what the shot is within a half a second. Too many things on the screen can easily confuse the audience, so if we can follow that formula, then we’re way ahead. That comes with the composition, lens choice, where the character’s facing, how he’s posed and the lighting.

DP: What advice would you give a lighting artist on how to make a shot look right in these different scenarios: bright sunlight, underwater and a lightning storm?