Lighting Workshop

Lighting.

Lighting is an extremely important feature when creating professional productions. Lighting is very technical and personally, I don't feel very confident in it and don't feel that it is my forte, but it meant that I learned a lot in this workshop, since I didn't know it very well.

In the workshop, we worked with basic 3-point lighting, which consists of a key light (the main light), a fill light (fills in/softens shadows) and a back light (gives the subject a halo to make them look more 3D and separate from the background). 

The important features are:

• Brightness/ exposure

This is important to ensure the colours and brightness look close to what your eyes see. If they are off it's particularly noticeable and can make the subject look unrealistic, dull, or unclear, and can be fixed by increasing or lowering light levels/ number of lights used.

• Colour

The colours are important to get right as this will make it easier in post-production to colour-grade. The common mistake with colours is that they are either too warm or too cold- this can be fixed with white-balancing the camera. Holding up something white to the camera and then white-balancing it helps the camera to register white as white which corrects most colours in the shot. if the lighting is too blue or yellow this can affect the colour of the shot and so white-balancing will be needed to fix this.

• Quality (hard or soft)

The quality of the light can affect how shadows fall. If the light is hard (strong, harsh) it can blow out portions of the subject (make them appear white on the camera) and the shadows can have too harsh a line. However if the light is soft it makes the shadows blend together, and can sometimes look too flat. This is why the use of the fill light is important to get right, as it has a lot of effect on how the shot looks.

• Angle (I.e. the key light should be 30 degrees up from the eye level)

The angle of the light is important as this decides where the shadows fall. This is very much down to the style and genre of the production as the viewer will view a character differently depending on how shadows fall on their face. (Lots of shadows can look like a villian, a natural light with highlights on the higher points on the face can look more flattering)

• Shape

The shape of the light can affect not only the subject but the background. A spotlight is more directed onto the subject and so the background will be darker and less detailed. A floodlight will 'flood' the area with light and so the background will be visible as well as the subject but this can sometimes make the light softer and you sometimes lose some of the brightness, depending on the type of light.

When choosing your lighting kit for a production, you also have the option of different kinds of lights and light bulbs.

• Tungsten

Tungsten lighting is a warmer toned light, with drops in quality in blue tones. It's a good light for flooding as it has a wide range, but can also be switched to spot light. You can also use the barn doors to direct the light even more, if you want a particularly dark background. It's good for mimicking a sunrise/ sunset lighting, but if you use the white balance feature on a camera it is a good general light.

It can sometimes be too strong and you will need a lot of room and power to run these lights, as you will need to adjust the distance from the subject to get the right brightness and quality. They also get very hot so you need to take safety precautions when handling these lights.

• Filtered

Filtered light gives soft shadows and more even colours. You can soften a light by using a soft box, which is a material box that goes over or in front of the light to broaden the area giving out light and so the light wraps around the subject rather than hitting one spot more directly. This can avoid any hot spots on the subject.

Another example of filtered light is light coming through blinds. This is a more creative approach to filtered light but you can create shapes or interesting shadows using this. 

Filtered light weakens the source of light so you may need a strong light to use a soft box with in the first place so that the light is strong enough to hit the whole space of the soft box and the light is properly distributed.

Filtered light is a lot more even in colours. It is easier to white balance as light colours are filtered out using the light box, but there is drops in dark blues and dark reds.

• LED

LED lights are growing in popularity as they are safer (they don't heat up as much as a tungsten) smaller and lighter, and they also are more even in their colours. 

LEDs can come in many colours but white LEDs are very neutral white, rather than warm white or cool white. It does lose a bit of colour in lighter blue and lighter red, but it's not as dramatic a difference as a tungsten. 

As they are smaller, their flood isn't as big as a tungsten on a flood setting, but they are good for being used as a fill light to mute out shadows.

Workshop Video

From reviewing footage after the workshop, I learned:

• No lighting looks flat, dull
• A soft box created better colours and exposure
• The N/D (Neutral Density) filter is a filter that reduces all light wavelengths, meaning that all the colours are reduced and so the image is more neutralised (making it easier to colour-grade in post). 
• ISO should be as low as possible, as this will reduce noise. If using a lighting kit it should preferably be completely off.
• A catch light is a reflection of one light in the eyes of your subject. This brightens the eyes and makes them look more human-without the catch light the eyes look very dark, even unsettling.
• You can use the colours of the light to give a different mood to the scene.
• You should give context to the lighting being used- what is theoretically giving the subject the light? A lamp? A ceiling light?
• Back lighting separates the subject from the background to make the image more 3D, and look more real.
• The waveform can give you an impression of the balance of blacks and whites in the shot. 

I feel that the outcome of this workshop was very useful as I learned a lot from this. I learned about positioning of lights, the colours and all the different kinds. I know I will be referring back to this workshop a lot in the future. I'm not great at lighting and I know my video could have turned out better, if I had had more time I would have been able to improve my outcome but I know I need to learn how to set up the lights a bit quicker to keep production moving.