In the last class, Paul was showing us how important lighting is to a film and how it affects the whole production. One aspect of video production that is often unnoticed by many people, including myself is lighting. More than often, I find myself banging my head on the wall during post-production. Whether it’s because my footages are over-exposed or there isn’t enough natural lighting or additional lighting for my shot, lighting is always something that I can’t seem to get it right.

Lighting plays a very important part in films because different lighting brings about different emotions and feelings to different people. Lighting in films can help create composition of different shots and to attract people’s attention to certain objects.

The most basic set up used in cinema is the three-point lighting. It can be broken down into the three different parts. Key Light, being the primary source of light. Fill Light, filling in the shadows casted by key light. While Back Light allows an object to seperate from the background. This setup works together to create a fuller image on screen. However, most filmmakers play with the different lights, varying the intensity and the use of the lights to create different moods in different scenes.

While researching, I found a few examples on how cinematographers achieved the lightings in their films and how the light affected the way audience perceived that particular scene.

[ There Will Be Blood 2007 ]

In this scene, a key light and back light has been placed to shoot this scene. The additional lights not only makes him stand out from the background, but it also draws us to the sweat and oil on his face.

In this scene, there is only one source of light pointing directly at his face and he blends in completely with the background. I thought it was an effective way of making the audience curious to want to see what he is looking at.

[Sin City 2005 ]

In this scene there is a strong key light and back light. Thus a dark shadow is casted on his face. The hard lights create hard-edge shadows and this gives off a very eerie feeling in this particular scene. Video lighting can be a lot more complex than just having a three point lighting as shown in the examples. There are so many different areas to adjust and experiment to intentionally create different moods and atmosphere in my films. This will definitely be an area that I want to try and experiment in my videos.

I found this experiment video while researching about lighting and I was so intrigued while I watched it. It was amazing to pause at different parts of the video to see how the location of the key light changed the entire mood of the scene. I thought it was a great short clip to show how lighting is important, even in such a simple frame.

Sparkles and Wine – Teaser from Nacho Guzman on Vimeo.

As with video and audio, lighting is also something that I need to plan properly beforehand. Ensuring that my exposure settings are right before I shoot any footage isn’t enough. In order to improve on my video production quality, I need to consider the different aspects. Through the four weeks of classes so far, I’ve come to realise that video, audio, lighting are all important in their own ways. In order for me to create a good video or film, I need to pay attention to the smallest details.