Lighting Practice

To practice different lighting and to see which types of lighting come across the best on a camera, I decided to practice with different types.

Natural lighting: 

The biggest issue I found with natural lighting (as shown in the time-lapse) is that the lighting changes so much throughout the day that it would be very difficult to get the exact same lighting on different days. This would cause problems if I had to refill or if I had a long scene to film and the lighting changed throughout.

However, the use of natural lighting was easy to use as it required no equipment or setting up. It also portrayed the weather very well for example if I decided to use pathetic fallacy to represent a bad mood or dangerous situation. Natural lighting does this very well if the weather is already stormy etc. as it is picked up well by the camera.

Low key lighting:

 Low key lighting will more than likely be a type of lighting I will use frequently in my final product as it is a convention of the thriller genre. However, using no lighting with amateur cameras is not convenient as we don't have the equipment to film in low key lighting and still be able to pick up small details using specific back lights. Also, the camera quality in the dark is not up to the same standard that the quality would be in any other lighting which would look obvious and unprofessional when used in the final product.

On the other hand, low key lighting and lack of lighting is easy to recreate if you have access to lighting that is easily controlled e.g. home lighting that has a twister dial instead of a light switch. Also it gets dark every night so you can always have access to it.

High key lighting: 

High key lighting is not typically used in the thriller genre as it is not a convention. However, it can be used to represent a hero or when filming a character that is intentionally good looking. However, when practising with high key lighting using an actor/actress, it is very difficult without the right equipment to ensure they have no shadows on their facial features.

On the other hand, it is very easy to create and when arranged properly is achieves what it is meant to effectively; flawless features.

Back lighting:

Back lighting is typically used in the thriller genre when there is one character that is in danger and the back lighting is used to emphasise them. Because we don’t have a suitable source of backlighting as a group, I decided to use the sun to see how it appeared with my iPhone camera. When i took the picture, although the foreground of the shot appeared to look normal, the source of the backlighting itself went blurry as my camera couldn't focus. Howe veer, when I considered the opening sequence, I decided this shouldn’t be a problem as I don’t think there is a plan to include backlighting or low key lighting that would make backlighting necessary.

How has this helped me:

This has helped because i know know what lightning does ad doesn't work well with my camera. It has also made me consider what equipment would be beneficial to have when filming on the day eg. professional lighting.