Lighting

LIGHTING

Light in film is extremely important. Contrast, light and dark, creates the illusion of depth and texture.

HMI lights are quite dangerous lights, as they heat up extremely quickly and hotly, and is able to melt the skin. Additionally, actors in front of an HMI light will eventually have light-burn, which is a visible sunburn.

Yellowish light can be associated as warm light. The closer the light is to an object, the softer and diffused its shadow will appear. Conversely, the farther it is the harsher and more defined the shadow will appear.

Another type of lights is fluorescent lights. These lights usually have barn doors with mirrors to reflect light differently. If you want a larger field of light, then you would widen the barn doors. The shadows produced by fluorescent lights are usually very faint, blurry or even nonexistent. Fluorescent lights can also be associated as cold light.

The final and most popular type of light are LEDs. The models we have are bicolor LEDs, which means they have multiple tones/hues of light. The brightness/intensity of these lights can be adjusted. LEDs can be battery powered or plug powered. They are attached to a stand with a ball head, which allows the light to move in any direction we want. In order to attach it, we can see that there are two latches on the stand. The bottom latch locks the light in place, and the middle latch rotates the light. The LED light has four barn doors, each with a removable textured or matte reflective surface. Additionally, there are clips on the bottom of each one to enable a filter to be clipped on. On the back of the light, there is an LCD screen to control the light. The left dimmer controls control temperature, and the right dimmer controls color intensity. The temperature of light is measured in kelvin.

A downside of a LED is that it's prone to casting a weird choppy shadow. However, we can solve this problem by attaching a diffusion strip popped on with magnets. There are all different types of diffusion strips, from tracing paper-like material to thin cottony sheets. Diffusion controls the contrast and softens shadows. It can also smooth out the skin and make people look prettier.

The most used tool on a film set is the C47 clothespin. It's handy and can be used for virtually anything!

We also have color gels. The number of a color gel signifies how much light it stops going through, for example, 1/8th means it stops 1/8th of the light coming through. It also says CTx, which means Color Temperature (Name of the color). Blue gel makes the light cooler and orange makes it warmer.

Don't film in black and white, we should film in color then saturate the image and create our own black and white.

We also have a reflector/bounce. They can reflect light, take away light, diffuse light, or provide a barrier from harsh weather.

There are two styles of lighting. High key, and low key lighting. High-key has low contrast and is evenly and brightly lit. This kind of lighting is traditionally seen on TV soap/Korean dramas. Film noir traditionally uses low-key lighting. This entails high contrast, dark areas, and shadows.

A LED light stand has four legs in its compact form, which then unfolds into three. We have to remember to tighten the ball head, otherwise the whole light might collapse.

We usually have a three point lighting set up. The first light is usually at 35-50° angle left from the camera and is called the key light. It's usually the brightest (at full power) of the lot. The second is the fill light. It's usually the same height of the fill light and has 75% of its power on. The fill light is to remove ugly shadows and round out the face. The third is the back light. It's usually below our subject. It creates a ring of light to separate the subject from the background. Another important rule of thirds is that 1/3rd is the distance between subject and camera, and 2/3rds is the distance between subject and background.
In low-key lighting, we remove any two of the lights in a three point set up and it creates a more creepy vibe, especially when the light is below the subject and facing upwards. Shutters/blinds are a good way of creating contrast noirishly.