A4 Reflection #1

A4 Reflection #2

A4 Reflection #3

A4 Reflection #4

Reflection #4

Project 2 – Brews Runner 2018

Hard shadows almost define the film noir look; hard lights can leave sharp edged shadows, that’s why we initially chose 2K ARRI as the key; we wanted a light to produce hard lights so to achieve a dramatic effect. At the same time, we planned to set up two Dedo lights as backlight respectively with red gel and green gel to create a neon light like lighting, as we wanted to have a future sci-fi Noir looking derived from Blade Runner (1982). However, the 2K ARRI was too strong compared with the two Dedo lights so it was overwhelming the lighting effect created by the two Dedo lights while one guy was switching them on and off alternately. Hence, how to balance the illuminance between the different lights, while trying to implement some lighting effects, has become my first part to reflect here. We did not need the 2K ARRI to illuminate the whole studio, while we only needed some hard lights spotting on my body, so I suggested Max try to change the 2K ARRI with a Dedo light as the key but set onto spot and put it really close to me. As a consequence, the key light produced by the Dedo through the ‘Cucoloris’ (venetian blind pattern) worked so well with the other two Dedo lights, because the key light and the backlight had become the equal illuminance. And by rolling up our ‘Cucoloris’ (venetian blind pattern) helped emphasize the shadows and harsh lighting, since we wanted to create a sense of depth and volume.

We introduced a white core board from my right side to reflect some light, so it can fill in some of the shadows left by the key and add an outline to separate my black outfit from the black background. And meanwhile we also introduced a cutter (black core board) to block out the backlight reaching into the camera in order to avoid getting a milky image. By thinking in a cinematic way as an actor, I was moving my hands to block out some of the light deliberately and meantime Max was directing me to find the right spots. I really like the mid shot when I lift up my left hand to the most with the light glaring from the zips in my jacket. So it has become an unexpected dynamic change of the light.

Why didn’t we have a camera operator who was really on the camera the whole time? True, we should have had a guy on the camera to see what got changed while we were manipulating the lights. The Lumix GH4 we used to shoot for our projects has a greater exposure latitude than the Sony EX3, but sometimes through the LUT (A special LUT made by Panasonic for the Lumix GH4) makes it look overexposed so we have to check the waveform to be sure it isn’t. We also turned on the zebra patterns during the shooting and the brightest skin tones were around 80% (100% = overexposed level). On the Atomos the LUT is just there to give us an idea of what the graded footage will look like. Therefore, Max gave the special LUT to Matthew so he can apply the LUT to the clips he uses.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ikKx4ue9xS8ZVPWfK14rBvQ6yo7-7BNm

Reflection #3

– General Reflection to the Ultimate Week 11

• The venetian blinds scene in The Conformist ( Bertolucci, 1970)

The lighting effect of the alternating patterns of dark and light created by venetian blinds can make a unique sense of hiding. Since we can clearly see the hot parts and the dark parts are separated evenly, I’m pretty sure they set up strong lights from outside of the window to illuminate the whole room through the venetian blinds; the strong light sources were motivated lighting which simulated the existing sunlight. I don’t think there is a physical reason why the partial venetian blinds keep rolling on there, but it helps convey the two character’s emotions by making the dynamic lighting shift. The whole room lit with the stripy shadows matches up with the actress’ black and white stripes dress. This makes her appear more vibrant and also implies that the room is her own private area where she usually has a romance with the male protagonist.

• Lighting for Film Noir

All the clips with the compelling low light images we watched on Wednesday week 11 would not have come directly from a camera looking, instead they have all been graded and applied with a specific LUT that has made the images turn out more contrasty. However, through the whole semester, we were not allowed to colour grade our images in order to see the raw footage we had filmed without any correction. Because for a professional film lighting crew should always ensure everything is carefully lit and exposed on the shooting day, rather than rely on correction in the post production.

Since I decided to experiment a noir film lighting in our project 2, I have noted down some research and my reflection in relation to how to light for film noir. Film noir was originally created by those filmmakers during 1940s who were bound by their budgets; there is a large amount of portion of the frame would go completely dark, so the filmmakers didn’t need to spend too much on the production design. The common thread of film noir lighting is low key lighting (Chiaroscuro style) that is trying to overcome the bland flatness if a film does not have much contrast. The low key lighting setup is still based on the fundamental three point lighting, but the most prominent lights are going to be strong key light and back light. Fill light should be weak because we want to exaggerate the contrast and get the low key look with a very high lighting ratio. Therefore, we’ll probably need to use a 2K ARRI light as our key to produce hard lights in our project 2 shooting. Since creating shadows is so essential to film noir, we’ll make our own ‘Cucoloris’ with the venetian blind pattern by cutting some black core boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=635dNLtxiZQ

Reflection #2

Project 1 – Matt Runner 2018

First of all, we knew we were going to use a large number of lights to illuminate a substantial area of the wall by reflecting light from the water pool, and meantime use other light sources to specifically illuminate Matthew’s face. Hence, we had got to consider how to set up all the lights without overloading any of those circuits. There are two 10-amp power circuits respectively at each side of the basement (Diagram attached down below). I calculated the total electrical load by this equation: watts ÷ volts = amps when connected to a 230 volts power supply. The left side circuit was connected with one Dedo light (0.65 amps) and two 1K ARRI lights (4.35 amps ×2), so it became 9.35 amps in total less than the rated power. And the right side circuit was connected with two Dedo lights (0.65 amps ×2), one 1K ARRI light (4.35 amps) and one Kino Flo with all four banks on (1.4 amps), so it became 7.05 amps in total less than the rated power as well.

The background lighting of water reflection was our main part of the project. Since we set up the lights right in front of the wall, there was no way to let Matthew sit between the lights and the wall without creating his own shadow on the wall. At that moment, I was thinking all we wanted was to have a perfect symmetry shot, so why we had to let Matthew sit right in front of the wall instead of letting him sit just next to the lights and finding an angle to film him but still having the shot symmetrical. As a consequence, the medium close up turned out well and seemingly it’s not an angled shot, but actually it is. However, there are still a few flaws in the shot that is the shadow on Matthew’s face, which was caused by the container’s edges. There were two possible solutions we could introduce to tweak it. One was to put the rectangular container vertically instead of horizontally so that giving more water area to reflect light. The second one was to ‘feather’ the light reflected by the container’s edges by using a tiny core board, so the shadow on Matthew’s face would be softened.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10HNSeh-gWP2Ws0xu15AVdW17PAjCcs1A

Reflection #1

BARNEY “Under the Table”

On Monday week 9, we were tasked with filming the scene called BARNEY, which is from a Sci-fi suspense film. So we decided to take the opportunity to test a more stylised and non-naturalistic approach to the lighting. I came up with the keyword of ‘Cyberpunk’ that is a set of production design applied in the film of Blade Runner (1982) with the dark, humid, mechanical, neon-light-like, messy, depressive dystopia world. Then we managed to take the elements of “Cyberpunk” into the scene.

First of all, we closed all the blinds in order to have a night interior, but still some of the daylight went through from outside, so we used a black core board held up by a C-stand to completely block the light out of the background in the shots. We put a Dedo with four layers of the blue gel as the key light from the right-hand side of the shot, so it became dramatically blue. We would probably need an even higher than 5600K white balance to match it up. And we put another Dedo with one layer of blue gel from the left-hand side of the shot to illuminate the background, as from the wide shot we can see the spotlight on the ground through the holes and the one table’s leg in the middle has been brightly lit up. Besides, we set up a Kino with two layers of orange gel spreading well as the backlight and meantime to illuminate all the coiled cables under the table in order to make the entire shot appear more vibrant and contrasted in the aspect of colour. Additionally, we told Matthew to turn up his phone’s brightness as maximum and use a white jpg picture as the wallpaper, so the light from his phone can give a little bit more dynamic change of the light on his face while he was picking up his phone. For the exposure control in such a low light shooting situation, we would better use a light meter and precisely judge how many foot candles of light each source was producing and thus deducted the f-stop based on those parameters pertaining to 25fps when setting at medium gain.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AS2bC0tpAgqVGy5u1D3MPqw8TlkYW4EX

Mid-semester Presentation Reflections

Cinematographer Research

Assignment 3 Reflections

I’m very intrigued by the light and colours in the film of The Last Emperor (1987 Cinematographer: Vittorio Storaro), because the light and colours drastically help the film shape the protagonist’s (Pu Yi) personal traits and also convey his own subjective mood/feelings.

Vittorio Storaro used massive natural light in the film, while a portion of them was resourcefully simulated, as a result, the Forbidden City appears classic and eastern-appealing. The most of scenes in the Forbidden City were filmed at the ‘Magic time’ which is the period of sunrise and sunset. Therefore, the light in general turns out more red and orange at the beginning part of the film that the hue of red symbolises the new birth of emperor and the hue of orange represents Pu Yi’s childhood; Meanwhile, the hues of red and orange are both warm colours that imply the Forbidden City is his home. In Vittorio Storaro’s opinion, different colours can shift audience’s emotion such as red can increase their blood pressure. However, he asserts that he didn’t use those colours in The Last Emperor as a type of specific symbolic language, instead to depict the different stages of Pu Yi’s life by different colours. Yellow implies his royal identity of emperor and it’s the colour of sun; Green is his British teacher’s bicycle and hat’s colour that implies the western knowledge brought to him; Red comes back to screen when Pu Yi had his first wedding implying another new start; Blue implies depression when Pu Yi’s second wife wanted a divorce with him. Near the end of the film, Pu Yi’s life in the prison came to the end. And he had completed his own inner journey, bringing all the feelings and impressions together. When Vittorio Storaro combined all the colours together, the hue turns to white in the scene of Pu Yi got a special pardon and became free at the snowing courtyard of the prison. At the end of the film, as if a miracle Pu Yi returned to the Forbidden City; And the last part lighting is a vibrant naturalistic style that covers all the colours of the spectrum. The approach of filming The Last Emperor by Vittorio Storaro was to let audience empathize with Pu Yi’s subjective mood/feelings by using the different colours, which highlight the dramatic evolution of Pu Yi’s life from an emperor to a prisoner, and eventually becoming an ordinary person.

Vittorio Storaro asserts that the light is not only a physiological need for young Pu Yi who was always surrounded by shadows but also a significance of freedom for him being an emperor who was actually trapped in the Forbidden City. With the growth of the little emperor and progressively becoming more aware of the world, he started to realise how helpless he was because all the constant changes outside of the Forbidden City had far surpassed his real authority and control. In this transition, the light development is from the little emperor was completely surrounded by shadows, to gradually adding the natural light on him, and finally creating the shadow on his face. And last but not least, Vittorio Storaro introduced hard light to illuminate Pu Yi’s face in order to create a dramatic effect (Grief and indignation). Additionally, the low-key lighting, side lighting, Rembrandt lighting, and backlighting were applied to the film for many times to create the Chiaroscuro effect, since the high lighting ratio fits well with many scenes especially when Pu Yi was in a dilemma.

https://youtu.be/SY_GFZsmgcA

Reflection #1

Exercise 8 “The Misunderstanding”

On Monday week 5, we watched some scenes from A Clockwork Orange and several French movies, all coming across with a ‘long take’ (One shot lasting much longer time). All of the elegant long takes relied on elaborate blocking/staging, styled mise en scene and significant camera movement. Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwanese film director) once said that ‘It can’t be regarded as a real film if there is not a long take within it’. So I couldn’t wait to experiment a long take to cover the whole scene of Exercise 8 “The Misunderstanding” as graceful as it can be.

On Wednesday set, we neither used any core board and reflector nor set up any light, since the west foyer of Building 9 was fully lit well by daylight. However, when we reviewed it on screen in class, I started to think that isn’t the outside of the window over exposure a problem? If it is, then I think I have two approaches to solve it out. One is to shoot with a tighter shot. Another one is to light up the entire set inside and lower the outside and inside exposure down as a whole. In practice, we did control the outside exposure by shifting aperture whilst Andrew and Adelle were walking out of the foyer.

The ‘long take’ actually consists of three different shots, from the starting point of an over shoulder shot (Andrew) slightly tilting down to become a common two shot (Andrew and Adelle), and then panning towards the right to follow up they walking out of the foyer. I told Andrew to bend his knees down all the time before he turned to leave, in order to have a nicer look frame respectively in the over shoulder shot and the two shot. We marked up two positions in relation to the camera for Andrew, and one stop mark for Adelle, so they both knew where to start and where to stop. Meanwhile, Andrew and Adelle were both told to deliberately turn their bodies more towards the camera, as a result, we can see a bit more their body language.

The long take caused to have less camera coverage, as we don’t have a view from outside of the foyer to see them exit and head up the road. And last but not least, shooting the long take cost as much time as shooting with three different shots, because it required more rehearsals to ensure the performance, blocking and camera movement are all correct and accurate at the same time.

Reflection #2

Scene 11 “CLASSROOM”

On Monday week 7, I did the sound recording for this exercise. For sound recordists should always know where the key light comes from and what the shot looks, in order to avoid blocking the key light and mic/boom pole getting into the shot.

We didn’t set up any artificial light for this scene, instead the whole classroom was entirely lit by daylight from outside the window. After I reviewed the shots, I noticed that the light on the background (White wall) of Aria’s shot is slightly brighter than Brian’s one, due to the two sides of the classroom with windows. Even though we turned the blinds down behind Brian, there was still more light reflected from the background behind Aria. Besides that, if we had more time permitting, we could have done a better production design. We were supposed to put some chairs behind Brian and Aria to make their backgrounds consistent. However, we actually see the chairs’ legs (Black) in Brian’s shot, whereas we can only see the chairs’ back (Red) in Aria’s shot.

I personally think the shot for Aria looks nicer in terms of the light on her face. We introduced some negative fill in the shot by holding up two black core boards very close to the fill side of Aria. As a result, it gave her a little bit more extra dimension and more contrast, and especially it became more effective on account of Aria’s relatively flat face and her black outfit.

For Brian’s shot, it’s a nicer over shoulder shot, as we can clearly see the soft edges on Aria’s left shoulder and cheek, which is attributed to that we “feathered” the key light off her by holding up a core board a bit far (About three meters) away from her. Since “feather” implies that it can only affect a specific portion of the frame, it doesn’t help Brian’s face look softer and more even.

For the third shot (Aria’s close up), we did this shot in a rush, so it turned out very rough. It’s crossing the line and with an imperfect exposure. If we had more time, we could have tweaked it by shooting from a better angle and diffusing the key in order to get rid of the shadow of Aria from the wall.

A summary of the content of our Presentation:

Our idea is to imitate the baseline scene in Blade Runner 2049 to do an individual interview with a guy who responses to himself. Since we are all intrigued into the ‘Water Refraction’ scene in Blade Runner 2049, we are basically going to experiment how we can manipulate light to create an uncommon and extraordinary sight meanwhile captured by the camera. A lot of the references/examples we have chosen were achieved through the techniques such as shaping or distorting light whether through water or smoke/fog or carved up core boards. To find a curved and relatively big colored wall as the background can help us to accomplish a more distinct scene between the bright area and dark area. Logistics: book the studio in building 10 level 1 as our main shooting location and film our project after Mondays’ and Wednesdays’ class.

A reflection on another group’s presentation:

Adelle’s group: having a generic script from Robin and filming an achievable scene with a specific atmosphere (Mood). They want to continue investigating the techniques have been exercised in FILM FLIGHT in depth and with blocking characters while experimenting how to technically connect the movement of subjects with light (Mise-en-scene). Shooting the most parts of the scene in black and white can help experiment how artificial lighting could influence the light and shadow on subjects. Low key lighting and the Chiaroscuro effect can be applied to their project.

Michael’s group: their idea is to simultaneously make two different videos in a same shooting/cinematography style. Video #1 is a night scene in Car Park Exterior. Video #2 is a day scene in Kitchen Interior. So how can they make the two videos related to each other? The production design is very important. For the warm environment in Kitchen, they can take all the cold stuff out and put an orange gel on the available windows meanwhile they will more or less diffuse the daylight(Sunlight). And for the cold environment in Car Park with spotlight will anyway look blue and sharp in camera, so concerning about the texture in such a low light place is necessary. In addition, grading process in the post is a good approach to achieve what effects they want.

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jianiang-chen/2018/03/25/the-last-emperor_-scene-analysis/

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jianiang-chen/2018/03/25/exercise-5-and-exercise-2-reflections/