Monthly Archives: March 2018

《无问西东》 FOREVER YOUNG

https://movie.douban.com/photos/photo/2511528900/#title-anchor

Before I start to do the film scene analysis, I have something to say about this photo. As you can see there are some Chinese on the left top of this photo, it’s the name of this film. I’m sorry that I didn’t find out a better same photo of this film scene. If you don’t like it, please ignore it from your heart.

This film scene comes from a Chinese film called FOREVER YOUNG (无问西东), and it released in the last year. Above all, roughly to say, this film talks about three different stories happened on three different generations of university students of Tsinghua University in three different periods. The core of these three stories is love what you love, do what you do, follow your heart, and do not hesitate.

This film scene is from one of three stories, and the location of this classroom is in Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. As you can see, there are three big windows in the classroom, while the main sunlight/daylight comes into the room through these windows. Also, obviously the sunlight/daylight is the key light in this screen. It is very interesting that the windows area actually is already overexposure, which means the lights in this screen we can see from students’ faces and clothes should be very hard. However, the light is not very hard as we can see many details of students’ faces and clothes. Moreover, the overexposure light from the windows create a very dramatic visible feeling, in other words, it gives audiences the feeling of illusion and reality.

In exercise 3, we had two scene in the classroom, but the lights there were not as good as this film scene. Then after some time of speculation, I think there is a very important reason to control the amount and quality of sunlight/daylight in the room, which is the time. Firstly, this scene was shot in the winter, and in this season, from the point of view of geography, the intensity of light isn’t as strong as it in the other seasons. Secondly, the shooting time of this scene shall be in the morning because compared the sunlight/daylight in morning to that in afternoon, sunlight/daylight in the morning is softer. Thirdly, the windows are not directly facing to the South because this place locates in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, I have a crazy idea of this scene, maybe they set many reflectors on the ground so the shadow reduced.

This film scene is definitely very useful and helpful for us to learn and investigate how to achieve this feeling and lights environment.

The exercise 2 we did on the Wednesday in week three but I was not there since I suddenly had the painful stomach trouble. Really thanks to Jialu Cheng, she is a nice girl who told me what happened in the studio, and gave me a copy of the exercise 2 document.

Exercise 2 mainly focus on three factors directly determine depth of field. It really similar to photography, to some extent, it’s the common area between film lighting and photography. So the knowledge is easy to understand to me because I’m interested in photography, and I self-study it.

Although I wasn’t there, there are many clips I can watch to analyse and reflect.

Obviously, the first video scene includes more background than the second one, and it’s clear to see the details of the background. The second one zoom in on the main subject so there are more details we can see on him, by contrast, the background is foggy. The first film scene is the large depth of field while the second film scene is the small depth of field.

As we can see in a film, if we want to outline or describe the background or location in scene, just need to make it in a large depth of field. Then there are more details can be showed to audiences. On the other hand, if we want to outline the main subject, just adjust it to a small depth of field.

I personal thinking that flexible to use the depth of field in a video or a film is very helpful to express the story. For example, small depth of field can make the focus point switch between different subjects in a screen, which can outline different subjects on by one or in the other ways.

Like this one, now the boy is in focus but the girl is not. If the director wants to outline the girl rather than the boy then he/she only need to easily adjust the focal length to the girl.

Video and film don’t like the photography, they are dynamic.

Regarding the exercise three, this is really a formal shooting but it seems like we didn’t do really well. I know that Robin always mentions and stress that there is no right or wrong here, but go to read the instructions is really serious.

I also did many record this time, and all of these are mostly about the location of each equipment like where is the light, where is the camera, where is the windows and sunlight. This is really helpful to let me remember how this screen was created, then I can try it next time. Day by day it will be my precious experiences.

Except reading the instruction, the problem that we were facing was the sunlight/daylight from windows. When we were in the process, we don’t want to put down the blind because classroom should be full of comfortable light. All the blind is up here so the sunlight is full of the classroom, then it comes to be hard. The idea we had at that time is using the additional light we have to light on us (Jialu and I were the characters) to complete that sunlight. However, the result is not as good as I imagine.

Right now there is a weird idea just came out in my mind that if there is enough blue gel or yellow gel, why don’t we try to stick the gel on all the windows? Once there are filters on the windows, the sunlight will be softer. Maybe we can try this idea next time.

To combine painting, daily life, and studio technical skills.

Film lighting knowledge we learned from studio seems to be very theoretic and foggy but actually, when it acted or expressed by people, we would found out that we experience similar environment before.

In the assessment one, there was a description of the painting, someone might be curious that what’s the values? Painting is hugely different to film. Personally, I would say no, painting has valuable relations to the film. Panting was created in the times without camera, and most of the painter (except typical abstract painters) notice and value the lights (whatever kinds of lights).

For example, a week ago I went to the National Gallery, and I saw a painting of the lights in living room.

This painting shows us the lights in the living room, and for further details please see the photo above. I know that this painting seems like not that very realistic but I am very curious that how can I turn this painting into real life. The light in this painting is soft and incredible. How can I use lights and other equipment like many blue gel to control lights? How many lights that we need to set in a black room without windows. Moreover, we can see that there is warm and cold light in this painting so how to set up different kind of light to achieve this.

When we are describing a light, there is not only hard or soft but color temperature.

Let see what happen on audience’s feeling to these two photos was took by me in class in week 4. As you can see that the first photo is warm, in other words, it’s in lower temperature. While the other one is cold, in higher temperature. In the first photo, the angry degree of Robin is very high, like the fire is going to burn the whole classroom; on the other hand, in the second photo, the angry degree is lower, just like Robin got a big shock and he is frozen, can’t refresh his head.

Film lighting has magic and actually, we can see it in our life. Art is from the life. So pay attention to the environment we are in will be very useful and helpful to study and review film lighting.

THE PIANIST by Roman Polanski is really really one of my loved films

There are many good uses of lights we can see

Here is a represented scene

From the shadow on the ground we can see that the sun is on the opposite of the main character, and also we can see the light reflect strongly on the ground and main character’s shoulder. Normally, from our experience, people or objects under strong sunlight will create strong shadow, in other words, it’s hard. However, the shadow on this scene is not strong, we can see many details not only their faces but other parts. There is another interesting point that in this film scene, only the main character faces to the camera, the audience. Mass and chaos background, and lonely main character, here is the high contrast!!

This painting by Rembrandt is the one I like most of the resources. Oil painting normally has better and attractive colors, compared to some other painting styles. There is the high contrast in this painting, especially on his dress. But on his face, it’s soft. Obviously, the key light comes from our top left corner, his top right corner, then focus on his Golden Helmut. It highlights the Golden Helmut rather than his face, which makes audiences directly feel his might and horner for the first time. Low contrast on his face makes audiences feel like he actually was not ogreish, and there was something upset he was hiding.