Studio Shoot #11: Simulating Lighting with Practicals with Anne and Research
THEORY SESSION:
Purpose of lighting:
- Creates the mood and atmosphere
- illuminates
- part of story telling / depicts time of day
- helps highlight emotion
- creates depth of field
- composition
High Key Lighting : reduced lighting present in the scene (practical lighting). Suggest upbeat mood. Traditionally a three point lighting set up. However fails to add drama or meaning to lighting. its main purpose is to illuminate which is more practical sometimes.
Three point lighting is the standard lighting procedure that is used in theatre, television, film and still photography. Through the use of three lighting sources, the subject can be illuminated however desired whilst controlling the shadows created by direct lighting. The key light shines directly on to the subject and is the main illuminator. The strength, colour and angle of this determines the overall lighting of the shot. The fill light shines on the subject but from a side angle and is often placed lower and is softer than the key lighting and eliminates any chiaroscuro effects. The back light shines upon the subject from behind, separating the subject from the back ground by highlighting the contours and creating a rim of light. However, we will not be using this lighting set up within our shoot as it does not suit our story.
Dir. Wes Anderson DoP Robert Yeoman
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Hotel Chevalier (2007)
Low Key Lighting: Creates unease and paranoid atmosphere which works for our story as the character is lost in his own head and is stressed and paranoid. It creates a contrast between lighting and enhances shadows creating a chiaroscuro effect, dramatic and full of mystery. Furthermore, because we have described in the protagonists head as dark and eery, this would be super useful to look more at low key lighting and how we should incorporate this in to our film.
Joker (2019)
Dir. Todd Phillips, DoP Lawerence Sher
The Road to Perdition (2002)
Dir. Sam Mendes, DoP Conrad Hall
Lighting Creating a Depth of Field:
Blade Runner (1982)
Dir. Ridley Scott, DoP Jordan Cronenweth
Practical Lighting: mise-en-scene lighting (lighting that is a part of the set in the world of the film.
- With the C300 or FS7 it can be possible, however, sometimes additional lighting is needed to throw further in to the scene.
- 'less is more', if the lighting you have on set isn't working as you want it to not casting the right shadows or colouring, adjust the lights you have until you get it right. Do not add more light sources as this can cast more shadows than you want and over illuminate the subject and set.
- practicals on set can help create a depth of field and enhance dynamic compositions with added colour and contrast.
- Using dimmers is very useful to control the intensity of lighting. this is particularly useful for our set as we are planning to have festoon lights strung at the top of the set which will be visible in frame. Because these lights won't be strong enough to light the entire set, we need to look at over head lighting as well. Dimmers also change the colour of the light making it warmer
- As our story is very dark, we need to consider using dark areas to structure some of the shots.
- The audiences eyes are drawn to the brightest part of the frame.
The Man Who Wasn't (2001)
Dir. Coen brothers, DoP Roger Deakins
PRACTICAL SIMULATION:
In the afternoon session, we mentioned to Anne that we felt really inspired by this image and that it really reminded us of the shadowed figure we always talked about. She said that this could be achievable by using one of the 2k lights hung from the studio ceiling at an angle to achieve this. However, she did mention that in Lili's storyboard drawings, she depicted the figure as a shadow (shown below). This was the original idea as we first started looking at projections and shadows but we then moved from that to using a real figure. Anne, said that we could still use this idea of the shadow by placing the light strategically so that when the figure walks past, he would cast a shadow across the walls and the draped furniture and even incorporate both by seeing the figure flash past the camera and then see its shadow casted across the room. Anne showed us different ways we could achieve this by having the light at a high angle which was really helpful to see what could be created within minutes, so imagine what we could create. This led me to feeling like this is something we would need to properly experiment with in the studio on set. But for now we can carry out some lowkey experiments using torches and lamps at home.
In addition, Anne suggested we look at how drapes have been previously painted with lighting. Looking at how we can use lighting to create chiaroscuro effects with them when using lowkey lighting:
mechanics of the light : never touch the quartz bulbs the oils from your finger impacts on the chemical make up of the class which encourages it to explode.
Focused lighting due to zigzagged glass. You can also move the bulb itself further back and forth to change the focus.
Further back = Focused lighting due to a more narrow beam.
Further forwards = Spreading of the lights.
To restrict the lighting more you can also move the barn doors of the light to its desired position.
Dimming these lights changes the colour from a cold white light to a warmer one and a 3200K camera settings picks up the change of colour.
Vittorio Stararo uses a lot of dimmers in his work. os is said to be the master of light within the films he has worked on.
“To me, making a film is like resolving conflicts between light and dark, cold and warmth, blue and orange or other contrasting colors. There should be a sense of energy, or change of movement. A sense that time is going on — light becomes night, which reverts to morning. Life becomes death."
“I knew this [Apocalypse Now] would be a very difficult movie to control. On all of my previous films, I was able to create a concept or a look by deciding how to control the use of light.
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I think the spotlight much like Gondry's lighting can be achieved if we use a smaller 150 Fresnel and have the lights softened by flooding them more but controlling it with the barn doors. I think we should stick to the cold lighting for the spotlight on the protagonist as it mimics his paranoid feeling. Furthermore, we could even just use an actual torch and put a dimmer over it so it wont be as stark when shone and will only focus on the foreground of the character. But this is something that needs to be decided by the gaffer.
Because we are having the exterior as a coldly lit, but dark and bleak place of the man trying to find his way back to his mind. We want warm lighting for the interior of the set as this will essentially be his mind/brain. So we will be using the warm festoon styled lights. After discussing with Anne, she said it was more than possible to have practical lighting through the festoon lights. Because we really want to see the warm glow of the filaments, it was suggested that we could have a few festoon lights strung across and then the occasional individual bulb. This would also look good because it would create different lighting as some parts would be off or lowly lit whilst a few were brightly lit. In addition, one of the main things we need to look for when buying these lights is maybe bulk buying as they are quite expensive and also to have some dimmer control on them. This is because when the protagonist in our story gets closer to the room the light begins to flicker on and it would be really good if we could create the effect of them getting brighter and darker at certain points to highlight his brain stimulation; when he remembers something or forgets. Kind of like the typical eureka moment where cartoons have a lightbulb that comes on when they have an idea.
Light Meter: Used to keep consistency between scenes by keeping the consistent readings between the fill light and the key light. DoP (myself) needs to be doing this job when lights are being set up between takes to make sure the light vs. the darkness is consistent. The incident light meter is used to measure the lighting ratio.
- Set ISO to 800 for the C300 and the FS7.
- Shutter Speed to 1/50
- Take reading for fill light and then a reading for key light.
- Keep written down note of all these readings to make sure that they are kept the same and documented.
Camera Assistant: needs to take note of the F-stops again for consistency of the depths of field between shots
Diffuser: softens the light and makes it less bold and stark.
A soft overhead light is called a sky light.
Even though we had to watch Anne set up and create this simulated exercise for us, it was really interesting watching her go through different scenarios and different ways of controlling shadows as there are many things you can do to control the lighting. This involved:
- moving the lights around
- using the barn doors to control where the light hit
- thinking about the textured material on which the shadows fell upon
- seeing what another light can do in the frame
- seeing the effect of lighting when the subject moves and changes position
- how dimming a light effects the shot
I think it will be interesting and fun for when Ieva (Gaffer) and the rest of the camera crew (including my self) to have a day to test the lighting, to see how it looks on camera and actually have a hands-on go at doing this ourselves. As we haven't actually been able to do so but this work shop has got me very interested in how you can make one light do many different jobs and create whole different moods and atmospheres.
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