Peter Warren is a video lighting cameraman who started his career in the early eighties behind a news camera for City TV in Toronto, moving on to specialize in magazine-style location segments for news, documentary and lifestyle programs. His recent assignments have included sequences for Great Canadian Parks for the Discovery Channel, History Lands for the Learning Channel, behind-the-scenes segments for the Movie Channel, lifestyle and travel stories for the CBC and magazine segments for network news. He sees himself as more of an EFP or ENG shooter than a DP, though he finds that his work is taking him in that direction, particularly as more of what was once the province of film is now being shot on video. He also tours Canada each year teaching Videography in the National Sound and Vision Workshops run by the Canadian Cable Television Association.

Peter has never found a place for hard light in his style of shooting: "To me hard light belongs in the studio because in the real world where I shoot, most light is really soft. If we look in the living room or the office there's very little hard light. That's the thing that I love about the Rifa Lite; it's such a beautiful soft source and it looks so natural." His five Rifa Lites form the backbone of his lighting equipment.

"I've always used a big, soft source such as a Rifa Lite as my key light, but the trouble with a big, soft light is that the light spills everywhere. The Soft Egg Crates® allow me just to put the light where I want it." Says Warren. "I'm a huge fan of the (Soft) Egg Crates®. I use them pretty much every time I set up a Rifa Lite, just for the control they allow."

Warren is very passionate about the important role of lighting in the creation of quality pictures: "In television our big challenge is to create the illusion of depth and lighting is the most effective way of creating that third dimension. I look at lighting in planes, the foreground, the subject and the background. When I'm thinking about lighting, I'm not thinking about just throwing up a light and illuminating a whole scene. I'm thinking about lighting each of those planes separately so that I can control how I want the image to look: and that's where the light control comes in. What I find really useful with the (Soft) Egg Crates® is the ability just to pan the light onto the background. If we're within six feet of the background I can actually pan the light and decide just how much light I want to spill onto it."

Warren is sure that his background in news gathering, where quick set-ups are imperative, has equipped him well for the work he is doing today. "I go to work pretty fast. I think that's one of the reasons why I'm used so often," he claims. "I always go for the best job I can possibly do, and when I have to compromise, it's always with time. I ask the producer or reporter how much time there is to do a shot and how big an element it is in the story so that I can figure out how much time the shot is worth."

"If we only have twenty or thirty minutes then I have to work with the available light and I'm going to adjust my lights for that; maybe I'll close or block the windows or just shoot away from them. If I have an hour then I can start thinking about possibly using the windows or the daylight, but if I have an hour and a half or two hours then I can think about turning off the lights and going the whole distance. I've found this amazing stuff in the paint-store; it's basically opaque garbage-bag material that comes in rolls of 10'x 25' and I often use it to block the daylight. I don't have HMI's in my kit and when I have 4,000 footcandles of daylight coming in, my little tungsten lights aren't going to do anything for that, especially once I gel them. If I have a grip on the shoot the first thing I get them to do is cover over the windows not in the shot and then I deal with the rest with tungsten."

"When you have a large room that it's going to take a lot of time to light, it's often better to go with the available light. I can deal with 40 footcandles of fluorescent, that's not a problem. I find that I can match most fluorescents with a combination of half-blue and quarter-green corrections, which only knocks the light down about three quarters of a stop, so I use a 750watt Rifa Lite with an (Soft) Egg Crate® as a keylight and use the available light for fill. The other thing I do with available light is that I flag it. If I have a highly reflective wall in shot (for some reason they always seem to put lights close to walls) I just get someone to get up and either flag them or turn the bulb until it goes off."

Warren believes that his fluorescent correction combination is a useful starting-point for available-light shooting in commercial and retail locations. "In my lighting workshops we spend a whole session on matching light. The interesting thing is that despite the fact that the workshops are held in a variety of venues under different lighting conditions, with very few exceptions we can get a match with the half-blue quarter-green combination."

"In the workshops we discuss what are the most important elements in lighting and I have to say that it’s the control. I maintain that anyone can set-up a light, but it's the artist who can manipulate the light to create the desired effect, and that's what the (Soft) Egg Crates® allow me to do."