Advanced lighting workshop

This is the lighting workshop that we had, and I made many notes during this workshop in preparation for the music video. Once again, we used the black magic camera, with a 50mm lens (for a mid shot). The like normal lights that were originally on are called the house lights (come with the building), and we learned it’s good to shout when you'r turning them off so that people in the studio can get prepared to be in the dark. The house lights is the least you can do - bare minimum lighting.

To make it better, we can use a film light. First one we looked at is called the red head light, as they usually have a red head. A red

head light is slightly more powerful than a regular light, and so has a protective metal netting thing on it to protect it from blowing.

When it blows, don’t worry about it, but it will make a loud noise that will make you jump, just go and turn the house lights on. Get

the red head light, stick it as close to the camera as possible, point it at the subject, tell them to put their eyes down whilst turning it

on. It will look overexposed once you have the red head light on and the house lights off. With the redhead, you get a sharp shadow

on the nose in particular, makes the image very shadowy and moody with really defined shadows. To diffuse this, we can put tracing

paper (frost) on the light: turn the light off first, put it on, then put the trace on. The trace makes it a little bit softer. The most standard

lighting technique is called 3 point lighting (lit from 3 different places). The first light is the most important, called a key light. The key

light that we used is the red head. The second light we used is called the fill light, and we used another red head with trace. This is

good, but the subject all fits into one thing, blends in the the background and it all looks quite flat. The third light we are using is

called the backlight, and we are using a blonde light, and it is very bright and so when it’s turned on, everyone has to have eyes

down. What this does is that it puts an edge on her shoulders and separates her from the background. 

Another kind of lighting technique is called beauty lighting. For this we use 2 different type of lighting set ups.The first one, Matts favourite, is called the bladerunner lighting. For this we turn off all the front lighting (key light and the film light) and just have the blonde lighting. We then move the blonde light over a bit more so it’s facing the camera a bit more. If you adjust the exposure on the camera, the object gets sharper and more in focus. To do this by just using the one light and not the camera, we put a large piece of polystyrene in front of the subject and turn all lights off other than the blonde back light, and the polystyrene acts as a reflector, and its own kind of light source. Then we reduce the power into the mic and turn it down until it looks good. The problem is there can be dirty light going directly into the lens, and so you sometimes have to put your hand over the top of the lens to cover it from extra light that we don’t want coming into the lens. This lighting set up looks very sharp and gives the image a very powerful contrast, but the bounce light looks quite soft and gentle giving a very beautiful front light making the subject look good. 

The next lighting set up we use a big wooden frame with a plastic weird sheet over it that Luke made for a silhouette in a previous music video. We us this with a redhead light behind it, and with the camera at a side angle pointing at her, with every other light turned off. It’s kind of like a massive bathroom light, with a very diffused image. The quality of light is really nice. Also, you can very easily reflect light with even your hand using this technique, you don’t just need polystyrene! If you do bring the polystyrene in, it can look less harsh as well, and looks quite traditional, looks quite soft. A great thing about this technique as opposed to the blade runner lighting technique is that it does a very good job of lighting the entire room, so with this technique it’s easier and quicker.

We can cover these lights with gels or sometimes called filters, and they are like a plasticy sheet. All needed is just to place it over the light, and then it will give you different colours. The first one we saw was called “straw” - very orangy. 

We also have fluorescent lights “florrys”. These lights aren’t dimable (we aren’t able to turn them down gradually like we did with the blonde light). Inside these, we have a fluorescent bulbs, and we can change the colour of them by putting different gels inside. Lighting with these, we should still use the same 3 point lighting technique that we would normally use, with a key light, a fill light and a backlight or at least just a key and a back. These lights are also referred to as dress lights, as you could put it in the shot and they still look quite cool as part of the set. 

The next light is called a FOTO-FLO. This has never been used properly on a shoot. It’s nice and soft, and quite warm. Teamed up with the left sided red head light (with the wooden plastic frame thing), and with this light coming from the right it looks really cool. 

The next lights are made by a company called PHOTON BEARD. The one we are looking at now is called a highlight. It is very cold. Almost white.