CDM 347 Yr1 FMP (Lighiting)

For our first lighting workshop we were tasked to pick some shots from a selection of lighting focused stills given to us. As a group we recreated these shots trying to figure out the lighting setups they used and get a still that is as similar as possible to the original image.

Lighting

For this shot we made Leo Lie on the floor and had one warm light above him to highlight the upper side of his face as seen in the shot. Obviously colours vary due to the costumes and hair colours etc, being different. I think we where successful in the placing of highlights but overall this recreation could've done with being a little more high key as our background is much more of a void than the shot in Inglorious Basterds so to help this we could've maybe tried lighting specifically the backdrop and floor as well as Leo to give a bit more variation to the image

Leo Led Down on floor

Camera propped on floor

This is another shot that suffered from our use of a completely black background as while we did get some of the colours through on my face we failed to make it quite as bright as the orgiginal. Additionally we needed to use a brighter blue as our use of warm red light to try and get that highlight on the hair seen in top right resulted in the still seeming overall more purple that the blue shade. Other than the colours the framing of this shot is decently similar to the original however we definitely should've paid more attention to detail when getting the right colouring as the ones we used needed to be more saturated

For the Bladerunner shot we managed to get similar framing by directing our subject Max to the correct position and placing him on a chair which we made look bigger with a blanket. In the original the characters eyes are highlighted in a way that's meant to create the effect of looking like a cyborg. We didnt manage to recreate this part of the shot as it was quite difficult to do and I think to do it you'd either need contact lenses or a light with a very small point of focus that's able to reflect in their eyes without the lighting bleeding to much into the rest of the shot. Another thing that could've been improved was the placement of the window. Its very bright in the original so we ended up using a panel light however after trying to get it to look right for so long we ended up with it a bit too high up which is inconsistent to the original. As well as this you can see the light stand and the bottom barn door of the light which takes away a lot of the believability. However in terms of the colour composition I think we did a good job of doing things like making the wall blue with a big blue filter. Originally we tried doing the shot agains a black background but once we realised the background would likely look out of place we switched to a white wall and shined the blue against it.

For this shot we backlit Louie with two big red lights with a nice rich blood red hue and created a silhouette effect as seen in the original. This went pretty successfully and looked especially good given the fact that we had a cardboard prop knife to use which looked pretty convincing when put into silhouette. The only things I thought might've been better where the fact that we used a male actor so didn't get the hair effect masking the face meaning some of our actors emotion can be seen if the brightness was turned up. We could've used a wig pretty convincingly to solve this but we simply didn't think of it or assumed we didn't have access to one at the time. The framing of the shot is pretty good considering the positioning of our subject however the wall to the left needed more work as in the original it takes up at least a third of the screen and In ours it takes much less though I feel this may of been due to working in different aspect ratios which made it more difficult to gage exactly where everything would end up

Backlight to imitate window. (white)

Aperture light with warm light

On the second day of our lighting workshops we were given the task of creating 4 clips from a prompt of shots. These included scenarios such as, "sitting by a campfire", or "caught in a rainstorm", in which we had to create lighting setups that reflected these scenarios making them look believable to the prompt

1. Sat by a moonlit lake

For this scenario we had to find away to create the impression of moonlight reflected on water. To do this we started by putting up a black background to make it look like outside at night rather than a classroom. Then, picking some leaves and branches from outside we placed them in shot as some very basic set dressing in order to sell the idea that the shot was taken outside. Then as it came to lighting we decided on a blue hue to mimic the subtle blue of moonlight. Once we were happy with how that looked we spent some time thinking about how to make it look like there was moonlight bouncing of the water. Eventually after some experimenting with lights and water we found out that the best way to do it was to have one of us of to the side out of shot shining a bright light through a water bottle and moving it around. This created the effect of light flickering in the subjects face as the water moved.

2. Sat around a campfire

The lighting in this scenario was done by getting the warmest tones we could and using the various settings on our aperture lights creating a flickering effect to sell the impression of fire. Its just one light below our actors Max and Tilly which though its minimal it works. To further sell the scenario we again had background foliage but mainly the thing making it understandable was the acting of Max playing campfire songs an acoustic guitar and Tilly warming her hands by the fire. Things which make it hard to believe the scenario could be anything else.

3. Caught in a rainstorm

This is probably my favourite scenario we did and it took the most people to pull off. We had a constant blue light to the right of me and to the left we had a bright white which we set to flash on and off. This light created the impression of lightning striking. We had the most foliage in shot for this scene as it was contextually important to know that there was wind blowing in the scenario. We had a team of two who stood on chairs behind the backdrop. They were there to drop extra leaves into shot as if they were being blown through the sky. This took a bit of coordination to pull off and direction to make sure the falling of the leaves looked natural the last thing we did to properly sell this scenario was to have someone fanning wind into my face with a piece of cardboard this allowed the viewer to see things such as hair blowing etc which make you assume that the shot is outside.

4. The Police

In this scenario we decided on someone getting arrested to show the police. It seemed obvious but red and blue lights flashing were essential for the scenario. We basically had Leo walk into camera and put his hands up as the lights turned on as if a police car had just pulled up. So we essentially had the police lights next to the camera and a white light to the side on a very low setting. The only other light we had was a flashlight which we shined to make it look like a policeman holding it. Finally we had another person come in at the end to put Leos hands behind his back and walk him off camera to give the shot some sort of ending.

<----light shining through water bottle

foliage

blue lights to imitate moonlight

blue and red lights (flashing)

flashlight

foliage

leaf dropping team

person waving cardboard to create a breeze

lightning flashes on white light

Warm light to imitate campfire

foliage

Use of lighting in a horror film essay task:

The workshops we did helped give us more knowledge and practice for our end of year project where we would have to light scenes for a short film of our creation

Here is the finished short film. The lighting we used in the film consisted of a variation of two panel lights and a couple of aperture lights for any stylistic choices as they gave us a wider choice of colours to choose from. In the middle image below for example where you can see Harry shining one onto the microwave shot. We wanted to keep the lighting fairly low-key and moody as it was a horror film so for this reason we kept the lights on low power for most of the scenes. It was important to us that scary scenes such as the shots in the stairway would be shrouded in darkness as this leaves more to the imagination of the viewer and encourages them to look closer to see if they can see more. For the majority of our shots we found having a two point lighting setup was most effective. This allowed us to have one light facing the subject behind camera as well as an additional light to the side to create a more dynamic shot,