The main thing I took from this exercise, was how easy it is to use natural lighting to capture different emotions. We saw how we could deflect or reflect the light on or off the subject and how much of a difference this made in the overall feeling of the shot.

I also saw how even the slightest movement of the subject could change the lighting completely and this made me both excited and scared. I was excited because this could lead to an easy decision process for lighting in films but I was afraid because it showed how lighting can be a disaster for continuity purposes. However, it isn’t actually that hard to make adjustments for this so that’s promising. It was great to see the use of the set lights and how they can be used to improve shots and also lead to more expressionistic lighting.

From shooting all the exercises in this studio, I have noticed how difficult it can be to make the lighting consistent without the use of specific on-set lights. For example, we were filming a class exercise that was a over the shoulder conversation between two people. The shots from both sides were meant to be consistent, which they were apart from the lighting and there was no easy fix for this. It also made quite a difference to how each of the shots fit together. However, I have also learnt this semester that slight changes to where the camera and its subjects are located can help to find consistent lighting and that you shouldn’t be afraid to make these changes to improve the lighting situation. As long as the continuity between shots isn’t ruined because of it, it can make a huge difference to a sequence of shots if the lighting is right.

These below screenshots from our interview show how varied the natural lighting was at different times.

• Bright, key and background lighting. Minimal fill light.

• Similar to previous shot except with more fill light. We used the white board to reflect the key light source and get more fill.

• Very similar to previous but Rob’s movement has put more light on his face.

• There is more fill light in this one. This is probably because the white board was closer to his face than in previous ones.

• This was at the beginning of the interview where there was a lot more key lighting from the sun. This clearly increased the brightness of the rest of the image.