Why Lighting and Makeup Were Black Panther's Secret Weapons

March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments

In the week since Black Panther’s release, the movie has been lauded for every element imaginable: its surehanded direction; its cast of fully-fleshed characters that give new dimension to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; its cinematography by a trailblazing director of photography; its considered costume and production design; and above all, its vision of an Afrofuturist techno-utopia.

But none of those things could make up for a scene that was over- or under-exposed, or skin that didn’t look quite right in the light of the setting sun. And in a film that has been celebrated for its commitment to #blackexcellence, such a misstep would be disastrous. Thankfully, the film’s chief lighting technician and makeup department weren’t about to let that happen.

Over the past decade, post-production CGI technology has given editors seemingly unlimited power to tweak scenes that have already been shot. No such luck for lighting and makeup: if a scene is dark when it goes into post-production, or someone’s makeup isn’t perfectly suited to their skin tone, software can only do so much.
Even worse, because today’s cameras are so insanely accurate, even the tiniest makeup slip shows up on screen. “Some of this stuff you wouldn’t see with the naked eye can be spotted by the camera,” says Siân Richards, who was Chadwick Boseman’s personal makeup artist on the film.

Nowhere were these concerns more front-of-mind than in Warrior Falls, the elaborate Wakandan setting that was home to the movie’s epic crown-challenge fight sequences. While the location was inspired by South Africa’s Oribi Gorge, the massive set was built by hand on a backlot in Georgia over a four-month period. Just because the water and harsh winds were engineered didn’t make them any less challenging of an environment to shoot in, especially paired with the need for natural daylight—which is where gaffer Dan Cornwall, who was responsible for the lighting of the set, came in.

Since the weather on set was unpredictable, Cornwall and his team opted to make their own light throughout the ten days of shooting at the set. The actual “sun” was controlled with two 60-square-foot overhead bounce diffusers, and boosted through multiple methods, including two direct-facing 90,000-watt night lights and nine 18,000-watt lamps on moving aerial platforms. Every time the sun moved, the lighting crew had to jump into action and adjust their set.

Those diffusers didn’t just help “control” the sun—they helped right a longstanding wrong in film history. “For many years,” Cornwall says, “actors of color would be given individual light sources so that they would balance out a little better when standing next to an actor with a lighter skin tone.” But this route rarely garnered effective results; the actor of color would look artificially lit, breaking the credibility of the scene.

Instead, Cornwall says, darker skin tones respond well to large, soft light sources, like the kind of “wrap-around” light that is usually created with toned diffusers and a gentle stage lamp. But it’s not a one-bulb-fits-all solution: dark skin is also more forgiving of hard light sources that can wash out lighter skin tones. Needs vary by scene, and by individual skin tone. There’s no one answer—just a lot of time and effort put in by the lighting technicians.

Nor does the work stop there. Like the lighting crew’s machinations, Siân Richards had to continually adjust Boseman’s makeup with the sun’s rise and fall. “I had to fight water reflections, costume reflections, camera reflections,” she says. “It was a piece of work. Because of the Panther suit, Chadwick had a farmer’s tan so I had to do makeup from head to toe. I had to invent a new makeup just for that scene that worked well with his skin tone and was water resistant.”

Richards avoided powders, and instead contoured Boseman's face using darker and cream color contrasts and natural tones. Rather than go for a shimmer effect, which can make an actor look unnatural on camera, she put a thin, translucent gold layer underneath the toned makeup to highlight the skin. The combination of exacting makeup and soft lighting draws just enough attention to an actor to complement their facial expressions without creating a distracting or artificial light.

A spectacle like Black Panther has been a long time coming, but just as it sparked seemingly endless conversations around both its story and its significance, it may establish a new template for lighting and makeup practices for actors of all skin tones. “If you understand your history,” Richards says, “it helps you understand your color theory for black skin.” And the excellence continues.