This class exercise was the last exercise for this semester, I’m so glad that I was in the camera position. I supposed to keep the document of the host that Robin gave us but I forgot it in the classroom. In this shot, according to the script, we need to make a completely dark environment, and Evan needed to sit by the table, reading a book. The only light needs to appear in this shot is the table lamp. Beside the table lamp, we use an extra light to light Evan as the table lamp is not high power enough to do it.
This is the picture of the shooting situation at that time.
The first challenge that we were facing was how to make the classroom completely dark. We Lowered the blind but there are much electricity in the room, some blue light dot we can’ t switch off it. Also, we changed the position and direction of the table because we can’t let the Television on the wall reflect the light then negatively affect our shooting.
Because of the low power table lamp, we set up another light on the left side of the camera, in Evan’s shot, to fill Evan. It worked.
But the second question came out:
The fill light we set on the camera’s left also fill the back of the lamp, it’s obviously telling everyone that we are using an extra light, so fake. To solve this question, we use blackboards to control the direction and range of light propagation.
this is how we set at the end
At the same time, we considered the exposure problem of the lamp, we put a piece of soft filter or paper in the lamp’s cover. In this case, the light of this lamp could be lower little bit and the cover at the mouth of the cover reduce the direct light on the table and hand, which helps to solve the over-exposure question.
This is how it working during the shooting.
I think it was successful, the light on his face is hard, the hand part has a little bit natural over-exposure because the hand back is the closest part of the lamp.
I don’t want to mention Catherine shot here because of it not difficult as the Evan shot.
At the end of this blog, there is one thing that I want to say is about the angle of the camera.
I was thinking about to put Evan in the middle of the screen because this is a simple structure screen, to put the main character in the middle of the screen can stress him. Later Robin told me the camera should set as high as Catherine because of this copy Catherine’s perspective. Well if this is Catherine’s perspective, I would like to say Evan might be better to look at the camera rather camera’s right side (Catherine was standing there to guide Evan’s eyes).