Lighting Task

Prior to the lighting workshop, I needed to take some notes to better my understanding of lights, and their purpose, and what makes them effective:

After learning of all the different types of light, I began to set up the lights in a basic set up, and experimented with brightness of each light whilst the actor was rehearsing. This allowed me to consider lighting ratios and the shadows being cast.

After trialing different positions of the lights, and the brightness, I was happy, and began to shoot the medium close up. From here on I encountered a few issues:

• As I followed my actor round the room in a close up, she blocked the light and cast a harsh shadow on the wall behind her. This wasn't an effective lighting set up, and so I needed to change this around to make it more so. I decided to start the scene in the dark, with just the back light tilted towards the ceiling to bounce light onto the actor whilst still looking natural. The lights operator that I had followed the path of the actor with the back light, still keeping it pointed towards the ceiling. As I was filming in a closeup, and the actor was taller than the key light, I was able to film her walking past it without it being in the shot.
• I then faced the issue of turning the key and fill light on gradually so that the lighting still looks realistic, so I added a lamp to try and mask the increase in light. I first tried this without the source of the lamp, but this cast a shadow on the actor's face, and so we plugged it in to eradicate the shadow. This worked fairly well, although it was difficult to synchronise the turning on of the lamp, with the turning up of the lighting switch.
• Due to the low light in the beginning, the camera's performance was not as high as it would have been in brighter lighting conditions. Therefore, it lost focus as my actor walked towards the desk. To resolve this, I filmed an insert shot to cover this up. 

Lighting and Camera Evaluations

After I had set the lights and directed the action around it, I was happy to shoot. In the take shown above, the lights operators managed the mask the brightening of the lights behind the actor turning on the lamp. I was also content with the back light operator's use of movement to trace the actor and highlight elements in the background a little as well.

Through selecting the strength of both the key and the fill light, I established a lighting ratio that is clear and can be seen on the actor's face.

As my actor moves closer and further away from the camera whilst she is being covered in the frame, the shot sizes began to vary as she moves. There are points in which her head is almost completely cut off, and points where there is. However, at the beginning of the movement, and at the end, I am satisfied with the framing and amount of head room and nose room in the shot. I was also quite pleased with the use of anticipatory framing, as I don't think that I cut off the actor as a result of panning/tilting too slow or too fast.

Overall, this was quite a successful technical exercise in showing the amount of thought put into lighting, despite the aim being to look natural. I will be using lighting in my film as it creates meaning for the audience to decode, and this task was certainly helpful in furthering my knowledge on aspects behind the camera.