Michael Firus
Jake Kenner
Jeremy Nguyen
Lydia Watt
Alexander Wilson
Our task for Assignment 4 consisted of shooting two scenes in which we experimented with light in both the day and the night time. The fabulous Michael Firus wrote a script about a diamond dealer, who went by the name of Tony. We follow Tony into the night where we uncover his elicit activities, later his room mate questions such life choices as we proceed into the morning. After going over the script we went out to a church parking lot to shoot the night scene, and then shot the final day time scene at Michael’s grandma’s house. The whole group took turns in operating the camera, and we all collaboratively lit up the scenes with some LED’s. Our knowledge of light was put to the test as we used the limited resources that we had, which gave us an incentive to be more creative about our lighting choices.
The night time shoot gave us plenty of opportunities to light up the scene in a variety of ways. We had three LED’s at our disposal, and a smoke machine. We would use a key light to imitate the moon. From the very diffused key light we were able to get some bounce from the pavement which gave the actors some fill. Another LED was lit in the background to create some depth and separation with the subjects.
In the day time, we mainly used one big LED in conjunction with the natural available light from the windows. Instead of a smoke machine, we opted for a spray on haze this time. Since there was no wind inside, the haze was much more consistent, thinner and not so obstructive. The big LED was bounced on the ceiling to create some fill in the scene, and the sunlight coming from the window was used as the key light. The second and final scene was a great opportunity to revisit some lighting techniques utilised on the first shoot, but also to try different lighting set-ups as well.