Unit 5
Lighting
Analysis of lighting in horror films:
For my horror film analysis, I chose 'Insidious' as this film uses low-key lighting, which means that the overall aesthetic has a dark look, but what's interesting about this lighting choice is the fact that it links to the horror genre, with having very few lighting setups. In the opening scene, Dalton and Renai are going through album photos and the only lighting in this scene, is from the window and this creates a casting shadow on their faces, which kind of creates a foreshadowing effect to the audience as they are expecting something to happen in this scene.
Additionally, the colour of lighting that we see in 'Insidious' uses a blue colour to evoke an isolated feeling or a feeling of being cold. When looking back to the opening scene, we can see that there isn't really any colour choice and that gives great contrast compared to the scene - 'tiptoe through the tulips'. This scene in particular, is very popular and known for the creepy chilling vibes from the red faced demon and when we zoom in on the lighting used in this scene, we can see a strong use of red lighting, which emphasises that vulnerable stage of fear where Dalton cannot do anything but to wait for his Father to save him.
The saturation is quite high in this scene as the blacks are very dark and the reds are easily seen and this technique in lighting is useful because it's more immersive and overall conveys more realism with the use of harsh shadows. Comparing this scene with the other one, this scene has a much higher contrast, whereas the opening scene has a lower contrast. You could also say that this lighting is warm, but not a comfortable type of warm lighting, but instead this lighting represents anger and hostility, which helps introduce the habitat of the red faced demon.
In addition, I think that the people in charge of the lighting for these two scenes had to think carefully about weather they were going to use a natural source of lighting(The Sun) or if they were going to need a few panel lights and a diffuser. From watching the opening scene, you can clearly see that there isn't anything used and the only source of lighting is from the Sun. In my opinion, I think that this is a good method of lighting for scenes in the daylight as you might as well use the Sun, since it is a good light source and it avoids the need of multiple panel lights or LEDs. In contrast, the 'tiptoe through the tulips' scene has definitely used a few lighting methods, such as possibly having a panel light and then by using a red/dark red gel, they could easily get an evil looking red colour throughout the room they were filming in for that scene. However, when thinking back to the opening scene; using a natural source of light can prove to be difficult sometimes as when editing, the colour may not look accurate and may require some colour grading. This is what I don't like from the opening scene in comparison to the 'tiptoe through the tulips' scene as it doesn't look the best when a shot has very low saturation and it kind off makes it look like a budget production team shot it.
Practical lighting is another type of lighting terminology and it basically just means that you can see the lighting used for that shot in frame. So, for this example, we have one scene from 'Insidious' and you can clearly see the lamp used for the lighting in that shot.
1st Shot - Arrival:
For our first replica of one of the shots, we went with the shot from "Arrival", as we were interested with the lighting setup. Since the lighting has to directly shine on a white spot and there needs to be a diffuser on a separate panel light, it makes the lighting less harsh and makes it softer, so the lighting spreads. We made sure that we had a diffuser covering the panel light on the right and that the other panel light was facing the wall, which was a colder tone. In terms of the aperture light, we had it use a warmer light, so that the subject's hand didn't produce a shadow on the wall.
In terms of the struggles we had setting this shot up, we had to face the consequences of not properly adjusting the camera settings for the first few minutes as we had to eventually make the proper changes to the shutter speed and make it suitable for photos as everything was blurry on camera. But, after quickly figuring this problem out, all we really had to do next was change some lighting around, such as changing the positioning of one LED light, due to it's incorrect colour tone, so making it more warm helped a lot.
2nd Shot - Blade Runner:
Secondly, we had the 'Blade Runner' shot to shoot and this one was really difficult at some points in set up, due to the fact that we couldn't find a great spot for the cardboard to go because we needed to block some unnecessary light, but to also make the light shine all together in a more confined space as you can see from the photo.
In addition to this, getting the correct positioning for Lorenzo was quite tedious, as we struggled to find the right spot for Lorenzo to look at. All of this is important to assure that we get a 1:1 match to the 'Blade Runner' shot.
3rd Shot - Black background:
Thirdly, we chose a shot without knowing what film it was from, but it looked really cool as the contrast was quite high because of the really dark spots and the exposed white areas in the shot. Setting this shot up was a breeze as we already knew what to expect with contrast, so we managed to quickly get a black background with ripples in it and a green gel filter on the panel light, along with a diffuser on the other and what came out of it was pretty accurate, since the green gel filter allowed us to get that unique tone in the background.
4th Shot - Saturated Colours:
Finally for the last shot recreation, we chose this highly saturated shot from a film we didn't yet again know the title. To get this one right, we had to use 2 LED panels and make the colour on each of them red and blue, so we could get the red on one side of Jordan and blue for the rest of the left side of his face.
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One of the parts that annoyed us was the fact that we never nailed the saturation fully as we slightly over saturated our version than the one we were recreating but we now know this for future recreations and learnt that we should bring down the tone of the red and blue panel LEDs.
Scenarios in Lighting:
1st Scenario - Moonlight near reservoir
For our first scenario, we went with the 'Moonlight near reservoir', where we've got to set up the lighting, so that the shot has a bright spot on the subject, which makes it look like the moon is shining on them and then we've also got to have a reservoir next to the subject, but that reservoir isn't there because we were actually filming inside, where we had to create a fake moonlight and a fake reservoir reflection. This is how we set it up so that we could achieve this: Panel light with blue gel filter, a diffuser on that panel light, black background for night time aesthetic, see-through water bottle for reservoir reflection and an LED light to shine through the water for the rippling water look. Overall, this must have been the most difficult scenario for us to film as it was incredibly difficult to get a reflection from the water as the lights didn't really work at first, until we started shaking the water bottle along with facing the LED light in the correct direction.
2nd Scenario - Caught in a Thunderstorm
Caught in a thunderstorm was our second scenario and it was a fun lighting setup to do as we had to make the LED lights flash on and off every few seconds, to make it seem as though we were in an actual thunderstorm. I wore my coat and we had Harry waving about a sheet of laminated paper, so we had some realistic wind and we had a panel light, where we had a blue gel covering it, which made the lightning aesthetic. All of this didn't take too long as we already knew what to expect when it came to the colours we needed to use and what to use to get the winds. In post production, Harry added some thunder background sounds to make it extra realistic.
3rd Scenario - Warming by the Campfire
4th Scenario - The Police are Coming
Our third scenario - 'Warming by the Campfire', was not so tricky to setup as all we really needed was two LED lights - one being red and the other being orange. Having these two LED lights made it possible for a campfire aesthetic and we basically got this texture by moving the lights over each other, which additionally made it so the fire was flickering like in real life. We yet again used a black background to have a night time look and this made for some hard lighting technique.
'The Police are Coming' - This scenario required us to get blue flashing lights for every second and of course some red lights as well to get the police sirens effect. For the setup we had: A black background, two flashing LED lights and a panel light. Our volunteer for this scenario - Bryson, was turning around and facing the camera, so that it looked like he was being filmed for the police records.
Bonus Scenario - Waking up during a Party
Finally, we filmed a bonus scenario, where we had lots of plastic cups on the floor and pink lighting to resemble party/disco lighting and this was done by using a few panel lights with pink gels. Whilst filming this, we had Lorenzo act as though he just woke up from crashing out at a party and then me and Harry threw some plastic cups at him, making it look like people at a party are annoying him/ making fun.
Lighting Plans for our Shoot:
Lighting plans were significant for our shoot as some days would require lots of thought into where the key light, fill light and back light would go, especially to get rid of any shadows interrupting any shot. As you can see here from the lighting diagram, we have set placements for each lighting position and where the subject would be for that particular scene.
Still frames of our lighting setups:
Reflector for the natural lighting which is reflected onto the subject.
No lighting except natural was needed for this day as we were outside all day.
Flags put up to block strong lighting from the Sun. Helped with the saturation of some shots.
We didn't really change much from the lighting plans, but we didn't really label on our diagrams the fact that we would use a lot of flags and diffusers. Most of our referance to the lighting plans, was for days 3 and 4, where all the lighting was needed for every scene and the fact that we had a replica for the Sun lighting, for using warm lighting with filters and a high exposure.
Finished Horror Short with write Up and Evaluation:
Write Up:
Our first day of the shoot required natural lighting as we were shooting in the fields and we had multiple reflectors and flags to block some of the unneeded light from the Sun. So what we had done was place a reflector near the camera and placed a big flag on the far side of the camera and this enabled us to have no strain of light on the camera. The next lighting problem we had was the sun setting, so we had to worry about this in post and figure out the correct saturation.
Other than those issues, day 2 was next and this day included a lot of lighting; particularly for the nail scene as there was quite a few shadows involved, so we used a key light and fill light, which got rid of the shadows that weren't nice to look at. Rain started to pour down, so we covered up any electrical equipment to aid our lighting, but we mainly just needed to worry about the camera as the lighting was under cover. In terms of the colour of lighting that we had used at the time, we focused on a more natural and warm atmosphere, with just one need of a diffuser to help direct the lighting to more appropriate spots in our shoot.
Day 3 involved the most amount of lighting as well as day 4 because these days consisted of the same location. We had key lights, fill lights and back lights and we used all of this to our advantage. For example, we had a blue screen behind a window in the house, because the scenery outside that window didn't look remote, so we placed a blue screen behind the window and correctly lit it with a fill light and key light and then, we just set up the lighting for each scene, so for the scene where the farmer spots a note, we had to light up the entire area and more specifically focus the lighting(warm lighting) directly across to the note, to make it more apparent.
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Finally, day 4(same location, different scenes) we realised the sun was setting just like day 1 but to counteract this, we had placed lots of lighting, with warm filters to match it's colour and exposure to the Sun and it worked really well.
Evaluation:
After filming across all the days with all the lighting that had to be set up for a variety of scenes, I can say that it was a big challenge, that required a lot of time, thought and energy. From the use of reflectors and flags to block some of the Sun lighting and the three point lighting to correctly light some scenes, especially for the blue screen for post production, I found that correctly lighting scenes requires descent warmth and exposure from the lighting and this was something that we only just realised throughout the shoot as when the sun started to set, we consequently had the issue of saturation changes and to combat this issue, we evidently had to use flags to block some under exposed or under saturated points in our scene and this did work, but with a cost of the problematic wind that really irritated our efforts. For example we had this big flag up to help our shot, but then a big gust of wind came and swept that flag over to the ground, so we needed to have two people hold it up, whilst simultaneously setting up the shot and using the clapperboard still.
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Looking at day 3, I really wish that we would have lit the blue screen just a little better, as I had to eventually use after effects to mask out the window to replace it with some scenery that looks remote. If this was lit correctly, I would have only needed to use Premiere Pro to mask out the window and use ultra key to replace the blue screen with the background scenery. Next time, we must use three point lighting on the blue screen and tinker with the exposure of each lighting to get rid off any grainy points in the blue screen in Premiere Pro.
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Day 4 involved an attempt at fixing the issue of the night time as this shoot was meant to be filmed for a day time aesthetic, so we had to set up lots of lighting just outside pointing across to the subject, so from the camera's point of view, it would look as though it was day time, when actually it was pitch black outside. Although our efforts at this was great and it worked really well, we should next time plan this just in case, as we pretty much had to improvise for this particular scenario in setting up lighting.
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In conclusion, I was very pleased with the result of our lighting across each day, but next time we have got to plan for any of those problems that I had mentioned above, because improvisation was needed and at times we took a lot of time and effort to perfect the lighting. Other than that though, everything else in terms of lighting was spot on and I couldn't have asked for a better attempt at using lighting in our shoot.