2024-08-20_ARRI Rental enables key lighting course at HFF Munich_teaser-picture

ARRI Rental enables key lighting course at HFF Munich

HFF Munich film school’s revised location lighting course provides a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for students, with support from ARRI Rental.

Sep. 16, 2024

Cinematographer and HFF Professor Christian Rein recently redesigned the film school’s “On-Location Lighting” course, aligning it with modern on-set practices so that it prepares the students for their future careers in the best possible way. Together with gaffer Kai Giegerich and his team, Christian Rein provided the 11 participants with a hands-on introduction to “on-location” lighting design for a week during the summer of 2024. Their goal was to test as many different approaches to lighting as they could, assessing what can be achieved with diverse setups and lamp types. As the technology partner, ARRI Rental provided a large range of traditional lighting products and cutting-edge fixtures.

The location for the course was an architect-designed house in the Ismaning suburb of Munich, which the students illuminated from the outside under varying lighting conditions. They were instructed to keep the effort, efficiency, and speed of their work in mind when exploring the architecture, room geometry, weather, and natural light.
 

"This course is an important experience designed to prepare the students for their professional careers," said Professor Rein. "ARRI Rental is an indispensable partner. The combination of traditional means of lighting and state-of-the-art technology was key to the event's success.”
 

The future DPs could choose from a huge range of lighting fixtures and play around with them for a week. They used traditional models including Dinos, 18 kW ARRI Fresnels, 12 kW PARs, and the ARRI M90, alongside newer products like the ARRI SkyPanel X23 and modular BrikLok. The students were also able to test different light sources, burner types, accessory lenses, colored foils, and covering materials. An ARRI ALEXA 35 camera was used to film the tests, along with a full set of Moviecam prime lenses, so that the lighting moods could be recorded in 4.6K Open Gate. The results were then viewed on the HFF cinema screen, allowing students to draw conclusions for their future work.
 

The students confirmed the event's success. "ARRI Rental provided us with a large pool of equipment so we could try out whatever we could imagine," said Luis Spielmann. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity." His fellow student Bence Katai explained that commercial productions don't give you the time to do such extensive testing. But now, thanks to the course, he already knows which setup he needs for which result: "That's going to be a big help on the way to becoming a skilled and successful DP."