This week’s subject was lighting.
Discussion surrounded the idea that everything affects lighting. Exposure and lighting are indivisible. Blocking affects lighting. Acting affects lighting (e.g. change in facial expression can change way lighting falls on face). Props affect lighting. Then things like gain, F-stop, white balance, whether you have an ND filter in or not all affect lighting/exposure/colour temperature. Everything is lighting decision-making. It’s a matter of trying to work as much control over these things as possible.
And this also relates to week 8’s work on focus – the matter that lighting affects depth of field. Implications of a brighter lit set are that you can have a smaller aperture and a greater depth of field. A darker lit set, on the other hand, might necessitate a wider aperture and consequently a shallower depth of field. This is wholly relevant to my coverage style investigation project.
In fact, in the week 8 exercises, there was an exercise on exposure. We had to situate the subject against a bright window and (1) expose for outside, then (2) expose for inside, then (3) try to find a middle ground, and finally (4) try to bounce key light and fill the subject. And note the F-stop. It’s always difficult to negotiate lighting for a subject against a bright background. I prefer the aesthetic of an underexposed frame. Perhaps this preference is partly due to Robin having hammered in the idea that it’s better to underexpose rather than overexpose (except if you’re shooting on film) in terms of colour correction in the edit. But underexposed often just looks nicer. Overexposed shots can look tacky. Unless they’re done really well. But I personally don’t know how to do them without having them look tacky.
I really enjoyed the little exercise (as well as Robin’s motivational/inspiring speech) to go out and shoot an “interesting exposure”. I encouraged my group to go downstairs to the dark corridor in building 9 that has those neon lights. I thought we might be able to at least get a cool silhouette or something. But we ended up really just playing with the lighting that was there – the changing coloured lighting reflected on the brick (? I think it’s brick) wall. Whenever someone would walk through the corridor, their vague shadow could be seen against the shimmering green/blue/pink/purple bricks. Then we had our subject stand next to another neon light source (green, I think) so that one side of their face was lit with this green light, and the other was in darkness. (I think. That’s what I remember of it.) So our final shot was the subject’s face in green chiaroscuro lighting, and then the creeping shadow on the shimmering colour-changing wall. It kind of looked like the subject was in line outside a bar or club. It was great playing with this low lighting and mesmerising colours in a dramatic-looking brick-wall corridor location. Pretty cool and inspiring class.
Note (to self) to look up “exposure latitude” (“# stops of latitude” came up in discussion a few times).