Lecture 7 Lighting: What was covered? Do you think the content is relevant to your project? And why?

Yes definitely I think lighting is very important to not just my project but in any sort of Film . Without lighting the film will look distorted, discoloured, too dark and just make the whole idea of the film very different. The primary reason why lighting is needed in a film is because of the technical requirement for proper exposure of every shot in the film.

Just like with photography, shooting a scene without enough light makes the shot underexposed. In such case, the shot looks too dark, and there are only a few details that can appear on screen. In worst cases, what you see is almost a black screen that even the actor’s faces and the props and sets around are not recognizable anymore. On the other hand, shooting with too much light makes the shot overexposed.

In such case, the shot looks too bright and the entire scene looks annoyingly washed out, even to the point of looking blindingly white with almost no details to make the scene recognizable.

From personal experience, even on very cheap, very slap dash films, we gave a lot of consideration to the light. It was both our best friend and worst enemy. In some shots we had no make do with insufficient lighting, or lighting that did not accomplish exactly what we wanted.

This was because we could not afford more lights and nicer equipment. But in other scenes we were able to use simple lighting effects to highlight the tension and mystery and create an atmosphere that many Hollywood directors turn to special effects to achieve.