Advanced lighting workshop

  

 

 

 

 

When lighting a set it is best to use the monitor to light the shot, this forces you to light for the shot in oppose to lighting in real life. This forces you to move the lights around in order to find the desired shot as the lights need to be engaged with. The main lights in the studio that light the room are called the house lights or workers, these can be seen below. 

 

 

The first type of lighting we where introduced to was 1 singular film light called a ‘red head’ as their chassis is normally painted red, in this case ours was blue as can be seen below. These lights are very powerful and they have a protective film/netting on the front in case they blow glass does not fly everywhere and damage other things on set.  

 

 

When Turing on the lights as they are very bright, it is important to say ‘eyes-down, sparking’, this is to stop the light surprising anyone and dazing them as they are very bright and powerful. 

 

 A simple lighting set up is with just one light, put the light close to the camera and point it at the subject, this will be very bright so you need to adjust the exposure so that the shot is correctly exposed, this will result in a shot such as what is seen below.

 

As light travels in straight lines we want to start to break up the light as in the shot above the lighting is very intense on her face as it all hits her face on. We can move the camera around to create shadows, as we move the camera we can see that the shot has become more moody as seen below. 

 

 

 

 

We can even use tracing paper, that is covered in a glossy type cover to stop it from setting on fire, this helps to reduce the harshness and makes he shot a little bit softer. As can be seen below. 

 

 

 

 

 

The standard lighting used in most TV interviews ETC, is called 3 point lighting. The main light used that is doing the majority of lighting is called the key light, the other we call the fill light and finally the backlight. we use them to fill in shadows on the subjects face. Below is the before and after with the fill light on and off. 

     

  Fill light on: 

                                                                             

Fill light off:                                                                            

 

As you can see the shadow on her face has been filled. With 2 of the 3 lights on in the 3 light system, she feels very flat as there is no real depth and difference within the shot. We then added a backlight, this light was a blonde light this is a very bright light, this creates an edge and kicks up parts of her hair, it also brings her out of the background  and gives a bright edge like an outline as can be seen below. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next type of lighting is beauty lighting, this is nicknamed blade runner lighting as its used all the time there. You turn off the key light and the fill light, and just light from the blonde backlight, you then bring the blonde around and point it more at the camera and then you turn up the exposure, this will give you a result such as below. 

 

The lens at this exposure is giving a shallow depth of field, then when changing the exposure you can make the background less blur and the background becomes sharper, if you keep it at full exposure and bounce light onto her face with a platform or sheet and dial the backlight down a little bit you get this shot below.

The dirty light hits the camera in the top left corner and the clean light is being reflected onto the subjects face, if we block out the dirty light we get the desired shot. 

 

 

 

 

 

The light bouncing off is very gentle and makes a nice shot, this was used a lot in the late 70’s and early 80’S in advertisements. 

 

There are also different lighting set ups that can be used for example, using a theatre flat covered in a plastic sheet, this is thinker then the tracing paper, this can be called a soft box. This gives a frosted effect similar to that of a bathroom, this makes the lighting softer. 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of space is lit with this type of lighting, their head is as lit as their toes the quality is very nice, you can also bounce more light onto her face to the dark side with a reflector. 

 

 

 

 

 

The fluorescent tubes have different gels inside of them, these can be changed and they determine the colour and add a whole new element to the shot. We call them Floras, other lights are dimmable  these are not, can only change brightness with distance or density of the colour of the gels. 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Dress lights can also be included in the shot and can look cool. Th ease below by Keno flow the foto flow light. These if you team them together with other lights you can make a very plain well lit shot as seen below.