In addition, watch your favorite films and replicate their styles until you discover your own. The more you practice with practicals, the faster you’ll become a skilled effective cinematographer.

LED stadiumlight

Stone invited Munro to come out to Australia to discuss the possibility of realising his dream project at the Ayers Rock Resort. It was an irresistible proposition. “We were penniless at the time; you know, four kids, big mortgage,” he says. “But Ray was true to his word and, three years later, he phoned me up again to say that he’d found sponsors who were keen to be involved.” The location was carefully chosen to ensure the greatest visual impact. “The most important thing was how it sat in the landscape,” he says. “The area of ground that we used is about 300 metres in diameter, which seems large, but isn’t when compared to the vastness of the surrounding landscape. I chose that particular spot because I wanted to give the impression that the lights went over a horizon, so when you’re standing there, it appears to be extending over a ridge and on to another plane.”

The monumental installation of 52,000 fibre optic stems took Munro and his team about six weeks to complete, by which time the anticipation had built to fever pitch. “There was something quite surreal about it,” he says, recalling the moment he first saw the desert lit up by his work, the culmination of 24 years of dreaming, hoping and planning. “It was an incredible feeling.” On 31 March 2016, before it was publicly accessible, Field of Light was unveiled to the local Pitjantjatjara elders, the indigenous owners of the land. They had been supportive of the venture throughout and gave it a name in their language: Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku, meaning “looking at lots of beautiful lights”.

Bruce Munro, Field of Light, Sensorio, Paso Robles, California, USA, 2019. Mild steel, acrylic stems, glass spheres, fibre optics, light source, 26,500 sq metres. Photo: Serena Munro.

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In 2021, as part of Chichester Cathedral’s Advent celebrations, Munro installed a carpet of 1,000 glowing orbs in the Paradise garden, a peaceful green space in the 600-year-old cloisters. Titled Field of Blooms, the installation riffed on the notion of sacred light shining in the darkness, a theme found in the opening verses of John’s Gospel and present in many Christmas services. Resonating with visitors to the cathedral, it created a mesmerising experience during the run-up to Christmas. The success of such works has led to Munro receiving countless invitations to install his fields of glowing orbs all over the world. “Field of Light has helped me fund a lot of other things,” he says, “but I do hold it back from going to every place that asks for it. You’ve got to be careful that you don’t overdo things.”

One director worth mentioning is Rodger Deakins. He’s a big advocate for practicals. As seen in Blade Runner 2049, most scenes are flooded with cityscapes, street neons, headlights, explosions, and vivid holograms. The colorful arrays are plentiful and immersive.

The first step starts with practical lights, also known as practicals. In this article, we’re going to cover what practical lighting is, why it’s used, where you’ve seen it, and how to do it yourself.

Bruce Munro. Field of Light, Uluru, Australia, 2016. Mild steel, acrylic stems, glass spheres, fibre optics, light source, 49,000 sq m. Photo: Serena Munro.

The light installation was not limited to Munro’s field. Indeed, it could be seen and appreciated from several vantage points in the nearby countryside and attracted many visitors. “One local lady had come to see the installation several times and asked if she could bring a friend; she wasn’t very steady on her feet, so they wanted to drive up to the edge of the field,” Munro says. “They visited the next night, and I went out to see them; her friend just grabbed my hand and burst into tears. I wondered what I had done to upset her, then she just said: ‘Thank you.’ I learned later that she was very ill with cancer. It felt good to have created something that made her so happy.”

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You’ve probably heard various terms to describe lighting in film. Practical, motivated, and ambient, to name a few. However, each plays an important role in building a believable world within the camera frame.

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First off, ask yourself a few simple questions. Is the light naturally positioned? Where is it directing attention and what is it trying to tell the viewer?

Learning these essentials puts you on the fast track to become a better cinematographer. Sharpening your attention to detail will change the way you see a scene.

However, there’s a great solution to this issue, they’re called Apputure Accent B7c bulbs. The E26/27 lamp socket screw connector makes it compatible with a wide variety of household lamp fixtures.

Important to note, the eyes usually go to the brightest part of the frame. You want practicals to support the story but not overwhelm the scene. Avoid competing or clashing light sources.

This gives the viewer insight into the nature of the main character. Visual details are embedded in this movie. It’s definitely worth a deeper look.

Christmas 2014 saw the installation of Munro’s Star of Bethlehem, a digital animation projected from above on to William Pye’s celebrated Living Water font. “Jacquiline invited me to create a work for the cathedral that celebrated the biblical Magi, the three wise men who followed the star to visit the infant Jesus,” he says. “I was very aware of how the star is often portrayed and I wanted to try to keep away from the commercialisation of Christmas and do something that was more in keeping with the liturgy.” At the time, he had been working on light and language pieces that used the dots and dashes of morse code to create graphic images. Realising that he could encode passages of text in this way, he created a literal and visual abstraction of the New Testament account of the Magi from Matthew 2:1-2, which appeared as scrolling pulses of light in the form of a star. The animation echoed the font’s flowing water, radiating from its centre, and pouring out over its edges. “The lovely thing was that some of the volunteer guides in the cathedral were ex-marines and were able to read the text as it moved across the font,” he says.

In short, to create a sense of realism. A scene is more realistic when a light source has a reason to be there. The main goal is to draw the viewer in without realizing it. In turn, they see themselves as the character participating in the story.

Please note, cheaper practicals can have a very strong color cast. In addition, they can be higher intensity from a fixed output. In turn, overexposing areas of the shot.

In the opening scene of Drive, practicals can be seen almost everywhere. First, you see a table lamp highlighting a complex driving plan. Next, you see the scorpion jacket glowing from the floor lamp.

On a side note, try to avoid lighting anything in your scene that looks artificial. This can spark unwanted questioning of the story.

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They are dimmable, RGB, and battery-powered. All of which can be adjusted from behind the camera monitor. Nowadays, it’s something every filmmaker should have in their kit.

To understand practical lighting further, take some time to review a few of your favorite films. Freeze frame scenes and pick out the practicals.

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Jacquiline Creswell, the driving force behind Salisbury Cathedral ’s pioneering visual arts programme between 2009 and 2021, saw Munro’s Field of Light at the Eden Project and was immediately keen to bring his work to the 13th-century place of worship. Creswell is a great believer in visual art’s capacity to transcend the limitations of language and its potential to connect with people from different communities, faiths and backgrounds. “I’m not a religious person, but I do believe in goodness and good spirit,” says Munro, who has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1999, after finding solace in the Metta Bhavana, a prayer that he discovered while grieving the death of his father. “Salisbury Cathedral is an incredible place and Jacquiline is an amazing curator,” he enthuses, remembering how delighted he was when she invited him to create something there. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship that saw him realise several ambitious light works at the cathedral between 2010 and 2020.

Here’s an example from the Social Network’s club scene. Notice the practical lit from the bottom side of the table between the two characters. Its color strobes are naturally appropriate for the environment.

Other lighting terms that go hand in hand include motivated and ambient. It’s helpful to understand the differences before diving in.

This exercise helps you identify the natural path of light. In addition, collecting references can help guide your creative decisions until you establish a look of your own. Here are a few quick examples.

Finally, when motivating light, always remember to match the color temperature and quality of the light, whether it’s hard or soft.

Use practicals as key lights, to spark visual interest, and to provide depth and separation. Right away, your scenes will be more believable and dynamic.

The response from those who experienced the work was overwhelmingly positive. “I got the feeling that it was giving people a sense of something much more than what was there, a sense of connection and wonder,” Munro says. “I had so many ideas that I gave up my lighting career to focus on the art and I’ve never looked back.” An invitation to show Field of Light at the Eden Project in Cornwall in 2008 led to an exhibition at Bath’s Holburne Museum in 2011, which in turn led to a residency at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and invitations to exhibit internationally.

Bruce Munro. Field of Light, Uluru, Australia, 2016. Mild steel, acrylic stems, glass spheres, fibre optics, light source, 49,000 sq metres. Photo: Serena Munro.

“I felt a sense of joy and relief that I’d stuck to my guns,” says Munro, thinking back to the moment he flicked the switch and saw Field of Light burst into colour for the first time. “I was able to do it because I’d extended the mortgage on our house.” In fact, he had managed to rack up £50,000 of debt from the installation due to miscalculating his labour costs. “Threading fibre optic cable is very time-consuming. My wife wanted to know who was funding the project and she wasn’t best pleased when I told her. But I’d spent 10 years with this idea buzzing away in my brain. Thankfully, she’s forgiven me now and Field of Light has since proved its worth.”

Light Field

Additionally, using string lights as practicals in the background is an effective tool. With a narrow depth of field, create a stunning bokeh effect. This is a cheap and easy way to elevate production value.

The most exciting invitation that Munro has ever received was to realise his dream of installing Field of Light at Uluru. “I did an interview with ABC in Alice Springs about my exhibition at the Holburne Museum and they discovered it was inspired by my trip to Uluru,” he says. “The journalist asked if I would like to do Field of Light in Uluru, and I said it would be a dream come true. Two days later, I got a phone call from this lovely man, Ray Stone, who worked for Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia, an indigenous organisation connected with the Uluru people that manage tourism and resort facilities in the Northern Territory.” Stone had been looking for an added visitor attraction at Uluru and was excited by what he perceived as the spiritual aspect of Munro’s work, explaining that it was the spirituality of Uluru that made it the ideal location for his Field of Light.

A budget-friendly way to highlight a wall-mounted fixture or a cabinet underbelly is to gaffer tape a phone with its flashlight on.

The first work he exhibited at Salisbury was Water Towers (2010), an installation of 69 towers made from large transparent bottles filled with water and illuminated by optic fibres, which changed colour in response to music emanating from within them. Placed in the cathedral’s cloister, they appeared like enormous batteries of liquid light. “That was a dream project; they were like three-dimensional stained-glass windows that sang,” says Munro, who conceived the work for Longwood Gardens, as a tribute to Lyall Watson, a maverick thinker working at the margins of conventional science who believed that the Earth has a natural, inaudible pulse, resonating at a rate of 69 beats every 24 hours. He also authored Gifts of Unknown Things (1976), which Munro read as a young man. It features a girl with chromesthesia, a type of synesthesia that causes sounds to be perceived as colours. In the cathedral, Water Towers took on a spiritual dimension, resonating with the sacred architecture.

Stephen Farthing on The Miracle Paintings Farthing explains how his Miracle paintings, now on show at Salisbury Cathedral, came from a conversation he had with a Coptic priest in Cairo

While living in Australia, Munro worked as a bricklayer, aerobics instructor and illustrator before starting a lighting company, Neo Neon. His vision for Uluru was to create a vast field of light stems that, like dormant seeds in a dry desert, would quietly wait for darkness to fall before emerging from the ground with a radiant and variegated display. “Deserts have many incongruities. They are infertile, barren places until it rains and then they bloom like a veritable Eden,” he wrote in his sketchbook at the time. It was to be a theatrical spectacle, a kind of nocturnal dance of light that evoked a blossoming desert. “It took a while, but I’d had such a powerful experience in Australia that I just had to make sure it happened,” he says.

In the end, practical lights are used to create motivated light. Taking this step can upgrade the scene to a polished cinematic look.

Simply put, a practical is a light source appearing anywhere in the frame of your shot. It can be a key light for your subject while also being a part of your set. For example:

“The big change for me was that it went out to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania in 2012. They gave me an incredible exhibition, which included lots of different works. That was like winning the lottery, not monetary-wise, but in terms of opening new opportunities to make and show work at different venues across America and Europe.”

Another example with frequent uses of practicals is A Star is Born. Stage lighting appears clearly in the frame in many scenes. Another practical used includes camera flashes from the paparazzi.

Bruce Munro. Water Towers, Salisbury Cathedral, 2010. Copyright © 2023 Bruce Munro. All rights reserved. Photo: Ash Mills.

In the art-house film Neon Demon, you can see how practicals are used to create depth in the casting Scene. Tube LED lights were used in many ways in the frame throughout the film.

The spectacular, large-scale light works of Bruce Munro (b1959, London) elicit a wide range of reactions, from wonder and surprise, to joy, curiosity and sometimes even tears. His immersive, site-specific installations have lit up locations including the Central Australian Desert, Californian vineyards, art museums, cathedrals and country houses. Inspired by moments of shared human experience, his practice is an enquiry into the sensory possibilities of light and the emotional impact it can have on viewers.

After studying art at Bristol Polytechnic in the late 1970s, Munro pursued a successful career in commercial lighting before returning to art at the turn of the millennium. This colourful trajectory is the subject of a new monograph, Light Field: The Art of Bruce Munro by Fiona Gruber, which tells the story of how the artist came to create his largest and best-known work, Field of Light (2016), a permanent installation at Uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia’s Northern Territory. “I was dreaming about doing Field of Light for years,” Munro says of the sweeping, solar-powered carpet of 52,000 glowing and shimmering stemmed spheres that stretch across the desert floor and slowly shift colour, from ochre to deep violet, to blue and soft white. Ambitious in scale and vision, it was a labour of love that took 24 years to come to fruition.

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Field of Light has been exhibited in many places around the world. Besides Uluru, the only other permanent iteration of the installation is at Sensorio, Paso Robles, California, which opened in 2019. Initially, Munro installed 58,000 stems at the 156-hectare ranch, increasing this to 100,000 in 2022, making it the largest of his light installations to date. But while it has become a popular tourist attraction at these destinations, Field of Light is much more than an Instagrammable spectacle. As Gruber notes in her book, this and similar works engage with the tradition of the sublime in art, tapping into the sense of awe that comes from contemplating the grandeur of nature. “I’m not just making pretty things in fields,” says Munro, who is interested in harnessing the sense of connectedness that is felt when staring at a star-filled sky, or watching sunlight dancing on the ocean’s surface. “I want my installations to have an effect on people, to connect with the landscape, to bring people together and inspire a sense of wonder.”

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In the 2010 movie Buried Ryan Reynolds was lit for the entire scene with a just lighter and a phone. It shows how you can create a sense of tension and claustrophobia using effective practical lighting.

Bruce Munro, SOS Longwood Gardens, 2022. Gabion baskets, heavy duty sacks, speakers, sound track, 108 x 48 metres. Copyright © 2022 Bruce Munro. All rights reserved. Courtesy Longwood Gardens Carol Gross.

Stanley Kubrick is well known for using practical lighting in film. In this Eye’s Wide Shut Trailer, notice that the majority of scenes are covered with them.

“I was very sad when we left Australia in 1992. I felt that I’d left something very important behind,” Munro says of the decision to return to the UK to care for his ailing parents. It would be 12 years before he found himself in a position to create the first open-air iteration of Field of Light. In the intervening years, he ran a tile business and worked for Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud’s design studio, McCloud Lighting. In 1996, he established his own bespoke lighting company, working for a range of prestigious clients, among them London theatres, museums, hotels and department stores such as Harrods and Harvey Nichols. “While I was doing that, I was constantly telling anybody who would listen about this large-scale light project that I had to do at all costs. I’m sure many people thought I was a bit cracked – I was obsessed!”

More than seven football fields in size, Field of Light was conceived by Munro during a visit to Uluru in 1992 with his fiancee, now wife, Serena. He had travelled to Sydney in 1984, originally for six months but staying for eight years. “When I first arrived there, I had this extraordinary feeling that I’d come home,” he says. “Even though that was my first visit, it was almost like I’d somehow lived there before. It felt natural and I immediately loved it.” Like many, he was drawn to Uluru to witness one of the world’s largest rock formations, but found a place of great cultural and spiritual significance, especially for Indigenous Australians. His visit to the sacred site moved him profoundly and he describes experiencing a palpable sense of joy and serenity there. “I felt so alive at Uluru, energy seemed to be coming out of the ground, or in the air; it was extraordinary, and I began to think about how I could make a piece of art to express what I was experiencing. Luckily, I was mucking around with lights at the time. It was just serendipity.”

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In 2003, he and his family moved to a 16th-century farmhouse in Kilmington, rural Wiltshire. With almost five hectares (12 acres) of land, he was finally able to experiment with prototypes for the large outdoor installation. It was during the 2004 Christmas season that Munro successfully installed Field of Light in the meadow behind his farmhouse. The illuminated orbs, glowing on slender stems, 10,000 of which had been used for a Harvey Nichols window display, were increased to 15,000 and arranged in 30 concentric circles, each containing 500 stems. A programmable LED projector at the centre of each circle provided the light source for the stems, which were connected with more than 64km (40 miles) of fibre optic cable. Munro had experimented with colour-changing light stems earlier in the year, wrapping them around the base of trees in the Pirelli garden at London’s V&A as part of Brilliant, an exhibition about the intersection of art, design and light. Now, he was able to increase the scale of his vision.