On a cold Thursday night the group for our big assignment banded together and shot the scene (beautifully written and directed by Michael Firus). For this lighting exercise we use a camera on a gimbal, three LED lights, a smoke machine and two diffusers. Utilising the knowledge that we have obtained we set out to light the scene that was appropriate for the narrative and worked together as a great team. We all took on multiple roles with everyone getting the opportunity to operate the camera to see how we could make decision on how the lighting should be and the positioning of the subjects. 

We had simple three light set up for the first few shots of the car park scene to emulate the moon. The main two lights were a simple key and fill light to light up the two subjects. The LED’s that we used were very useful as we could control the temperature and the intensity of the light. This manipulation of the intensity proved to be useful so that we can keep a consistent exposure for the later shots in the scene. The third light that we used was a small LED light that was emitted on the pavement in background. The purpose for this tertiary light was to create a sense of depth in the shot. This light was lit with a smaller intensity in order to create good separation from the background and the subjects. 

This is a partial example of the light set up that was used for the first few shots in the scene:

This exercise so far gives a good practical understanding of how lighting works in a real life situation. When we study about light, it is always good to know and implement complex lighting techniques. However in the real world, we do not always have that flexibility to think of elaborate ways to light a situation. In the case of our exercise, people had to leave at certain times and we only had a limited amount of equipment and hands at a time. We not only learnt about lighting, but also how to work around the limitations that we had at the time.