CRLS – Cine Reflect Lighting System

The beauty of natural light has always been something impressiv and exciting to me. From the beginning of my career as a director of photography, it was always my goal to protect and achiev this particular quality in my work. Not a simple thing with conventional lighting. I always wanted the actor lights up, a face or a landscape, not a lamp.

The beauty of natural light consists of objects and surfaces that reflect light – they define the atmospheres – not the source. Light itself is invisible, you can only see it if there stands something in his way. Place a luxmeter in the outer space and it will show you around 100.000 Lux – because your lightmeter is hit by the light. In the deepest darkness we know.

Reflected light is nothing new for the film industry there are always a lot of reflective surfaces, be it a white wall, a green tree or a sandy ground and since ever we are using reflectors to brighten up shadows and so on.

But when I discovered the lighting technology of Christian Bartenbach, which he developed in his light laboratory to redirect light for example into large buildings or under the earth I realized how the film industry could benefit from this knowledge. Inspired from that I started playing with specially built light solutions for the films I was working on.

Slowly leaving the beaten path of standard lighting solutions I realized how many people in different professions also find great solutions to master challanging light tasks.

Back to the good old rule of “observe the nature” I tried to recognize the path of a single light beam to find out the “behavior” of the light in general. So I understood after a while that it is much better to flow with the light instead of forcing it with my stubborn intentions. Suddenly I reached very organic and rich images with a high transparacy which supports our perception to feel spatiality. No smearing, soft but with punch. Directing the light very precise where I want to have it. Under complet control. This was the birth of the Cine Reflect Lighting System.

At that time, I had no idea how many ups and downs and years it would take before we could serve the smallest set as well as a large studio. Together with my Gaffer Jakob Ballinger we are proud to present a very precise lighting system “fit for the set”. The CRLS – Cine Reflect Lighting System.

Now we have finally a system in our hands that is worth sharing with my colleagues.

Christian Berger

For further information, distribution and rental, please contact the Lightbridge (www.thelightbridge.com)