In the reading Robin posted this week by Sven Nykvist documenting his life and views on filmmaking, one specific part stuck out and felt relatable to my whole outlook on lighting. He wrote, ‘Light is a treasure chest; once properly understood, it can bring another dimension to the medium’. This is the exact sort of epiphany I had the first time I really tried to light a scene, seeing how much potential there was in the art, and how much it can drastically change the potential of a scene.

Whilst we didn’t exactly achieve that sense of enlightenment in Exercise 4, the group definitely felt how difficult and mind straining it can be, even when a simple solution is right in front of you!

On Tuesday, Noah, Jagger, Elenor, Amelia and I were tasked with filming two shots for Exercise 4, with one of the shots requiring a lighting change, with the sun coming through the window. Luckily, we didn’t have to show the window, so this could all be done behind the scenes.

The team got really creative brainstorming different ways in which we could make this exposure change look as natural and directed as possible, like how the sun would bounce into a room. We decided we wanted to use one of the 1k Fresnel lights in some sort of way, just because we had our hands on them. Below is the video in which our test shoots are shown, starting at 3:00.

I think the main problem was that we may have thought too hard about how to make the sunbeams enter, with an easy solution there all along.

I really like how the scene is lit all together. The light itself feels really natural, and our faces are well lit. However, in the first take of the second shot, there is a glaring hot patch of over-exposed wall next to Amelia’s head. Luckily, that is not the case in the second take!

How we made the ‘sun’ come in was by moving a black bounce board away from in front of the Fresnel light. While the brightness of the light I feel looks fine, it cuts too hard a shaped shadow on the wall, being a very direct edge.

What was later pointed out to us, was that we should have just raised the blinds in the room, which would have probably worked better, and been easier! Never the less, experiences like these teach you so much about lighting, so I wouldn’t trade this version for the best version in the world! (maybe for a portfolio piece though!).