I thought it was really interesting to hear everyone’s presentation on thursday. I think it’s intriguing how each of us have our own ideas and I’m excited to see our final products.

Anyway, since I received some feedback after my presentation, I decided to take note and to see how I can progress from here.

Firstly, I think Paul was the one who mentioned about doing a series of comparison. So basically it’s one shot with the proper lighting and one without. This was something that I’ve always planned to do. However, I was inspired to maybe do a short film explaining how different lightings can affect the scene. So instead of filming just a normal portrait, maybe I could film the entire process of me fiddling and experimenting with the lights.

Another feedback I received was the use of natural lighting. While doing my research, I came across an article about the use of natural lighting in the movie “The Revenant.” The movie was interestingly almost shot entirely with natural lighting.

The Revenant.

I think I’ve had the misconception so far that natural lighting isn’t enough, however I could use whatever lighting there is for me to help with my production. This is especially useful if my production is on a tight budget. Knowing how to make full use of natural lighting could save me on some cost.

I mean, sunlight is free, might as well use it!

For this semester, I’m interested in the technical aspect of how lighting in a film can affect the quality of the production.

Basically I want to understand how lights affect the subject or even my perception of the subject. By watching films so far I know how important lights are and I’ve also found out that lights placed in certain positions can help object pop up more, or even appear more 3-dimensional in the shot. That will be something that I’ll try to achieve.

There are two ways I’m approaching this

First is to do a series of shots to investigate the question of how lighting can affect the shot.

Using the reverse-engineering process to deconstruct a scene and then try to copy that in my shots. This process will allow me to understand how the lighting director planned the lights in that particular shot to see what he was trying to achieve and also for me to see how I can use these underlying principles to create my own shots.

I want to just use simple scenes eg, portrait to compare natural lighting and artificial lighting. Just to see the difference that can be made with and without artificial lights in any production.

Second way is collaboration with other filmmakers. I managed to get in contact with group of students in our media studies that are thinking of working on a film. Basically they will be the ones production, they do all directing, casting, script. What I’ll do is just to provide lighting.

This allows me to experiment with whatever I’ve found out in my previous investigation and I think this also allows me to focus purely on the lighting aspect and how I can communicate with the director in terms of the shots they want.

What I want from this semester and the projects that I’m undertaking is to increase my knowledge in terms of this area, and be confident in using lights, I want to use them in my own personal projects as well, just to make upgrade my filmmaking skills, giving my videos a more professional feel.

During the past few weeks, we had the chance to play around with the dolly, set up multi-cameras and monitors as well as an audio setup.

In one of the class, Paul showed us a scene from Mad Men and we had a go at replicating a particular scene. In groups we set up 3 different cameras with the monitors. This set up allowed me to be able to see the different direction angles at once, and I was able to clearly how the directions affected the way the scene appears on screen.

Something that I’ve always heard about in filming is crossing the line. I think for the first time I was able to see what it meant during filming. The sense of continuity is something that I feel is something not noticed in films, yet when the line is crossed it’s pretty obvious. Another thing I realised was how the slight angles could change the feel in the scene. For example an over the shoulder shots for two people in a conversation. Positioning the camera to match the heights of both people is actually very important. Having the wrong angles could leave viewers confused and could potentially spoil the experience in watching that particular scene.

This exercise made me thing about the preparation that is needed before any filmmaking. I wouldn’t want to make all this decisions on the spot and waste time and effort from both the crew and actors in the future.

In the last class, Paul was showing us how important lighting is to a film and how it affects the whole production. One aspect of video production that is often unnoticed by many people, including myself is lighting. More than often, I find myself banging my head on the wall during post-production. Whether it’s because my footages are over-exposed or there isn’t enough natural lighting or additional lighting for my shot, lighting is always something that I can’t seem to get it right.

Lighting plays a very important part in films because different lighting brings about different emotions and feelings to different people. Lighting in films can help create composition of different shots and to attract people’s attention to certain objects.

The most basic set up used in cinema is the three-point lighting. It can be broken down into the three different parts. Key Light, being the primary source of light. Fill Light, filling in the shadows casted by key light. While Back Light allows an object to seperate from the background. This setup works together to create a fuller image on screen. However, most filmmakers play with the different lights, varying the intensity and the use of the lights to create different moods in different scenes.

While researching, I found a few examples on how cinematographers achieved the lightings in their films and how the light affected the way audience perceived that particular scene.

[ There Will Be Blood 2007 ]

In this scene, a key light and back light has been placed to shoot this scene. The additional lights not only makes him stand out from the background, but it also draws us to the sweat and oil on his face.

In this scene, there is only one source of light pointing directly at his face and he blends in completely with the background. I thought it was an effective way of making the audience curious to want to see what he is looking at.

[Sin City 2005 ]

In this scene there is a strong key light and back light. Thus a dark shadow is casted on his face. The hard lights create hard-edge shadows and this gives off a very eerie feeling in this particular scene. Video lighting can be a lot more complex than just having a three point lighting as shown in the examples. There are so many different areas to adjust and experiment to intentionally create different moods and atmosphere in my films. This will definitely be an area that I want to try and experiment in my videos.

I found this experiment video while researching about lighting and I was so intrigued while I watched it. It was amazing to pause at different parts of the video to see how the location of the key light changed the entire mood of the scene. I thought it was a great short clip to show how lighting is important, even in such a simple frame.

Sparkles and Wine – Teaser from Nacho Guzman on Vimeo.

As with video and audio, lighting is also something that I need to plan properly beforehand. Ensuring that my exposure settings are right before I shoot any footage isn’t enough. In order to improve on my video production quality, I need to consider the different aspects. Through the four weeks of classes so far, I’ve come to realise that video, audio, lighting are all important in their own ways. In order for me to create a good video or film, I need to pay attention to the smallest details.

During our writing exercise in class, we penned down some ideas that we were going to use for our filming. As this point of time, I’m quite interested in doing a short drama series of POV shots. I want to explore different film making techniques while trying this. Not too sure how and what my final direction would be, but hopefully as I go along and do more research, I’ll be able to form a better idea of where I’m heading.

I will constantly be updating this post about new ideas and hopefully be able to come up with a few scenarios for my project.

List of actions

• Running
• Drinking
• Strolling
• Fiddling with phone
• Sleepwalking
• Drumming
• Getting dressed

List of locations

• School
• Library
• Swimming Pool
• Beach
• Home

List of people

• Neighbour who is living alone, treats her dog as if it was a human
• Student getting ready for a day at Uni
• Girl is late and she runs to her bus stop
• Dodgy guy sitting at the bus stop, sipping on his coffee

EDIT//

After my consultation with Paul, I’ve decided to head in another direction for my experiments. As with my second initiative post, I’m interested in how lighting in a film can affect the quality of the production. For now, I’m planning to do a series of shots for two different scenarios. Basically I’m trying to experiment how different a production would look like if I use natural lighting versus artificial lighting.