I always close every semester writing about the things I have learned in each respective studio. Many times I am sifting information and academia overload to try find something practical I took away, something I have actually learned during those four months. I cannot say the same of this semester. Unlike, every other studio I have taken there is simply WAY too much I have learned to fit into a little over three hundred words.
Every week was something new some nugget of Gold from Robin or Rory or Paul or that Production Designer (I forget her name forgive me), where to start?
- I don’t guess any more when it comes to lighting.
A Production Still from a film I worked on last year. It’s really scary showing my old work.
Lighting is no longer a reactionary concept for me. I know what I want when I get to a scene, I can see the lighting I want ahead of time and I now KNOW how to achieve it and what it will look like when the lighting and modifiers are in place.
That isn’t to say once you get the lights up you shouldn’t move them around and make it better, but this isn’t step one anymore for me. I don’t start by throwing light around.
2. I can actually describe what I want to do.
Another production still from one of my films two years ago, the equipment is quite bad but it’s the thought that counts.
One of the things about analysing lighting in class that’s super rewarding is drawing on Robin’s knowledge of what techniques might actually have been used and how just from the image on screen. It’s one thing to watch movies and it’s one thing to see how lights work, but putting both together, to be able to see something in the frame and be able to go, “this is how you do that,” is amazing.
I’ve now gotten to the point where I can actually describe to people how to setup. I know what the proper terminology is for not only so many physical objects but also, so many things you can do to a light, cutting and spotting and shaping and all the assorted ways one might do any of those things.
3. I’m aware of all the lighting all the time.
Watching a movie is completely different, I had always watched for editing and camera but lighting was one of those things that never really occurred to me. A lot of that is because (as Roger Deakins would say) good cinematography is invisible. Especially in realism, the key light always has a rational source and what fill light there is, can be easily justified by a real thing. BUT, that all goes out the window when you actually have to make it happen on set. Light just doesn’t behave like that and almost every scene of every movie I see now, I notice something about how the light has either been modified or artificially created and that’s the biggest thing I’ve gained, an awareness in film, in real life, of how light behaves and that has undoubtedly changed the way I make things.
Above all, I want to thank Robin and all my classmates a hell of a lot, this class has been something very special.