Lighting exercises

Planning: Lighting exercises

In preparation for the task of filming  we decided to go through a lighting excersices  to play with the different angles and levels of obscurity needed to obtain an either gruesome and distorted face look or see what kind of atmosphere we could get out of the lighting reflecting on the character's facial expressions.

Reasons why lighting is need in video production:

• Lighting can determine the mood of the video

Notice how you get a cold feeling on the back of your neck when your watching horror movies. The way the scene is lighted will have something to do it with that. Contrast and shadows can have more of an effect on a film scene than you know. Even in TV commercials or online content.

• Poor lighting = more time in the editing room

If your lighting on a set is not really up to snuff, it means our editor is going to end up paying for juvenile filming mistake. Unless of course you want to go back and re-shoot the scenes, but that means even more time needed to complete your project. If not that means our editor (me) will have to do their best to fix the lighting in the editing software. Which could make the editing process longer.

• Light determines the quality of your project

If lighting isn’t done properly, a video production can go from top quality to a cheap video. Often you see bad examples of commercials either using too much artificial light or too little. Think about it, if a commercial came on TV that was low quality with so much artificial light where it looks like a home movie, would you still by that company’s product? (I’m guessing probably not-I wouldn’t).

Even basic lighting in a production will make a huge difference on a set. One technique that is known by most people in video production is three point lighting. It’s one of the most versatile lighting techniques and is pretty much the most basic one, but this one technique will make a huge difference in your production.

Three Point Lighting:

• Key light:

This is the main light of the three and is placed to the side of the camera and is the main light that helps light the subject of the video.

• Fill Light:

Fill light is the secondary light and is always placed on the opposite side from the key light. Helping to fill shadows casted by the key light.

• Back Light:

Back light speaks for itself. It is the light that is placed on the back of the subject you are shooting. It helps distinguish the subject from the background of the scene and give them a three-dimensional look on camera.

Personally, I felt like this exercise really helped me explore the different possible aspects of setting a tone and atmosphere as I was able to see what reflected this gloomy feeling using different angles.