Aria and her group mates are going to recreate a cool scene in a famous thriller film called Psyho which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The scene is the woman walked into an old room without windows, and she got shocked by a sitting dead body. Her hands accidently crashed into a hanging tungsten light bulb, and so on the continually waving and changing light caused by the waving bulb on her face.
I am really looking forward to their work because there is some great exposure here could be learned and recreated. Please see the above and below few screenshot photos.
Alright, the exposure on her face is really great but I could not screenshot everything and post them here. In order to figure out why the light is soft on her face while the light is hard in other places like her clothes and other obvious surroundings. Later, after I repeat this video, again and again, I found that there is not only one light (the bulb) in this room, in other words, the bulb isn’t the key light, and there shall be at least two lights (includes the bulb). Why?
Let’s see the below screenshot, concern on the shadow of the dead body.
There should be a light in the front upper. Also, this film made in 1960, and the tungsten light bulb won’t be bright enough to make the whole room bright. This conclusion I got from my personal experience since I used to live in a mountain village (my mom’s hometown) for a while. The mountain village lacks electricity at that time, and tungsten light bulb is very common in almost each single house.
So I personally suggest Aria’s group that observe this video carefully, then imagine each location of the light, how the film team set up the lights to achieve this feeling. If it is possible, soft frost or half frost could be used.
Also don’t be too much worry about the part that the woman’s hand crashed into the bulb, making the bulb waving and moving. From what I observed, the bulb could be counted as a fill light rather than a key light, and the angle of the bulb is side fit. To summarize that once the key light location is chosen, the biggest challenge will be done.
Please note the references:
All the photos in this blog are screenshots from a youtube video: