Kukaloris

You need texture in the image without an actual wall looking plastered or dilapidated — this is where you'd use a kukaloris, also known as a cookie. It's a metal plate or plywood construction with irregular holes, slits, or cut-out patterns that you hang in front of a light. The light shines through, casting a dense, broken shadow pattern onto the surface behind it. The result: instant depth, drama, and visual complexity — without having to prepare real textures or surfaces.

In practice, it works like this: You position your light — usually a Fresnel or Par — behind or next to the kukaloris and aim it at the background or directly at your subject. The closer the cookie is to the light, the sharper the shadow shapes appear. The further away, the softer and more diffused they become. By varying the distances to the light and the object, you can control the depth of field of the patterns — this is your creative tool. A classic cookie shows flat, natural light breaks, as if sunlight were falling through foliage or window frames. It never looks graphically artificial, but organic.

The materials are often simple: perforated steel sheets that you can buy, or plywood that you cut yourself. In an emergency, the grips crew will craft a cookie from a black aluminum frame and gaffer tape in patterns — as long as the light doesn't shine directly through, it works. Extras like gobos (Gobo here stands for similar perforated masks in the theater field) are cast more precisely, but for film productions, a robust, self-made version is often sufficient.

Typical use: Portrait lighting, where you structure facial shadows; background separation through complex light patterns behind a person; or dramatic night scenes where diffusely broken light needs to appear believable. In the edit, you often see this subtly — the viewer perceives the depth but doesn't question why the wall suddenly has texture. That's precisely the point: the cookie works invisibly but makes the difference between flat and spatial lighting.