DIRECTIONS: Lighting Workshop

Following last weeks lighting workshop with Ferg, we continued and used more lights and different types, such as an LED light. This time we picked a scene from someones directions film and recreated the lighting in the scene. My group did a scene from Gone Girl for Callum's project.

I was the gaffer, Sophie was DP and George and Jack were the actors. This went well and it was interesting to see how much work was put into creating that one shot. There was so much to do, especially with the lighting, I had to be on the ball and to listen to every word Callum said to get the look he wanted.

We had the key light slightly at the side of the actors and with that we put some blue gel over the bulb which shone a blue light over to them. This made it look like it was natural daylight coming through the window and looked quite impressive actually. I put a filter in the light which had a mesh material covering half of the filter to make the light disperse differently over George and Jack. This worked well as Jack was standing up and George sitting down, therefore the mesh half was over George and the other half was over Jack.

We then had the LED light in front of George as he was playing a video game in the scene and the light acted as the TV. We then found that a good idea was to wave a piece of metal in front of the light to show the TV flashing like it would if there was action on it. This looked really good in the end and was more realistic than if we just had the constant light there.

Lastly, we had a light behind the actors shining towards the wall, acting as a lamp

in the room. This again looked really good. Once we watched the scene back we felt that there was slightly too much light on George and his face was quite lit up. So if we were to do this again, we would have moved the light further away or put another filter in.

Before this workshop, I never really thought about lighting that much. I definitely didn't think we would be using the professional lights so soon, so this made me consider using them. After the workshop, I looked back at my film and realised that the film is shot primarily with natural lighting. As a result of this I would like to keep to the style of the original New Moon and use natural lighting also. Unfortunately, this workshop hasn't really affected my work as I won't be using any artificial lighting but it was very eye-opening and it made me realise how important lighting is in a film and how good it can make a shot look. I will definitely consider these lights for my next project if artificial lighting is required.