02/08/2026
Vini Curtis’s Take on the lighting of Wasteman, met with widespread critical acclaim and award nominations.
The success of Wasteman has been great to watch, especially with how low the budget was.
When I came on, Lorenzo and Cal had already put a lot of thought into the style and prison tropes they wanted to avoid. We wanted something real and gritty.
Set across a couple of cells over multiple story days, Lorenzo and I wanted the audience to feel the passage of time, with moods built through time of day, weather and practicals placed around the set.
We shot 3 weeks at London Film Studios in full-size cell replicas, ceilings and four solid walls so camera could move freely, meaning practically lit throughout: either no practicals and just security lights bleeding in, or 1, 2 or all on for a pocket of light in the corner. Each combo gave a different feel.
Lorenzo wanted something mobile to give life in the eyes that could follow the handheld. Rosco DMG Lighting Dashes, Astera Asteras, Aputure MC Pros, nothing felt right in the eye. So I made a couple of small silver foamcore boxes: one with a Dash bounced off the back with diffusion at the front, another slightly larger with 2 Helios tubes. They became known as the Heli and Diddy boxes, over comms.
Outside we needed to move fast between lighting states. Mirrors gave us a hard slash of sun, with Aputure, Lê Nguyễn Hoàng Nam and Fiilex RGBW units covering soft cloud, heavy overcast and all the night looks, sodium lamps and security lights on or off.
Two Lightstar balloons overhead recreated the prison skylights, with a Dyno 1200 through a frame faking a window at the end of the walkway.
For the final dusk scene, which we couldn’t shoot at dusk on location, we talked through the plan during and after the recce, realising the bulkheads on the wing walls would need to compensate too. Above a caged floor beneath the skylight was a hatch to rig net and diffusion on ropes, pulled across to bring the light down, with Lorenzo compensating on colour temp. In prelight we landed on tungsten bulbs with 1/2 CTO and Cyan 30, with extra CTO ready for the scene.
Proud of this one.
