Lighting Research

The first part of this video from Film Riot tells us how to light a dark room, and how to make a light room seem dark. This is really helpful for the filming of my film because our location will have dark areas and light areas and we need to light it all in a way that makes it realistic, yet fitting with the horror-thriller genre. Furthermore, our film shoot will take place in the day time, meaning we can't get all of the darkness we will need for the film from the set and therefore darkening the film in post-production is a really helpful technique that we will need to use heavily when editing our footage. 

The information about light reflection is very helpful because I've learnt how this method softens the light and makes it look a lot more realistic than direct light. In this, I've learnt about the ways to light a scene so that the lighting on the subject can be controlled more specifically than have a light solid on both the subject and on the background. 



This video from the same company, Film Riot, goes into detail on the diffusion and breaking up of light. These techniques are relevant to my film because the use of a slitted board breaking up the light in the interview scene could make the scene look a lot more realistic and also build the tension in the scene, as I would like. Diffusion however could be used to highlight the emotions that the characters in the film are feeling in close ups. 




This final video, again from Film Riot, gives some really good techniques for lighting moving characters, which will be key for our horror film which features a lot of action. It tells you how to place your lights around a room in such a way that most of the lights do multiple jobs, meaning fewer lights need to be used and therefore they'll be easier to conceal and smaller production companies, like ours, with limited equipment, can light a scene as well as they want without having to have lots more equipment than they have. Another technique shown is boom lighting which may well serve as a very important feature of our film, being constantly on the move as well as minimal lighting being needed for the suspense within the narrative. Boom lighting is where the light is held above and in front of the subject, out of shot, much like a boom mic. This allows lighting to be used in smaller spaces where setting up larger light kits may not be possible. It's also effective in showing a more uncertain light source that complements the handheld camera work that we're going to use in our film. The final lighting technique in this video is using natural lighting, the sun, to light your shots outside with reflection. This may prove to be essential for our outdoor scenes where using the electric lighting kits isn't possible.