Film Light | Assignment 2 Links

Posted on August 13, 2019 by jonahahearn

Week 4 Reflection:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2019/08/13/film-light-week-4-reflection/

Week 5 Reflection:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2019/08/13/film-light-week-5-reflection/

Week 6 Reflection:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2019/08/13/film-light-week-6-reflection/

Scene Analysis:

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2019/08/13/film-light-scene-analysis/

Film Light | Scene Analysis

Posted on August 13, 2019 by jonahahearn

Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8guAnshoMk

The film I have chosen to perform a scene analysis on is Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 Academy Award-winning spaghetti western Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is set two years before the Civil War in which Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, accompanies a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to capture the vicious Brittle brothers. The scene being analysed is from the very start of the film in which we are first introduced to Django and Schultz acquires him.

The scene takes place at night in a dark forest lined by tall trees, and the hard light cast onto the ground as shown in the below screenshot is from the moons ambient lighting, casting hard shadows off the trees onto the ground. This is used to give the effect of the This provides most of the fill lighting for the scene particularly in the close up shots such as the one above evident by the cool area of exposure on Schultz’ shoulder. To compensate for the lack of natural light, working from both a practical and narrative standpoint, hand-lamps are held by the characters and act as spotlights that has a very tight beam allowing for a highly directional key light. This is used to draw the viewers eye to whatever the lamp is illuminating, in this case, Django. Had the scene been lit more generously, such as daylight, particularly in the above shot, our eye would be drawn potentially towards the other slaves. This way, Django is quickly established as a key figure in the film through the use of lighting to draw the audiences eye.

The lamp is held by Schultz between him and Django who are facing each other, and acts as the key light that is directionally cast directly onto the front of the subjects, limiting shadows cast across face and providing a flattering effect on the skin. Symbolically speaking, this paints a picture of Schultz as being an angel to Django as the man who is going to help him. The flame provides soft lighting with a relatively low foot candle measure. The lamp is also used to set a clear mood and convey the relationship between the two protagonists. The warm glow of the lamp against the side of Djangos face is a sign of salvation as he is about to be set free, and the warm temperature emitted by the lamp represents a comfort to Django. Combined with other elements such as the tight shot framing as a close up, this creates a sense of intimacy between the two subjects and foreshadows their eventual partnership as bounty hunters. There is limited fill lighting around the edges of the frame to focus the audiences attention on on the relationship between the two subjectss, making the viewer feel as though they are part of a very deep conversation, with minimal bounce light due to limited luminance of available natural light. There is slight fill on the right side of Djangos face, creating patches around the cheeks that are the brightest part of the shot, helped in part to the direction Schultz is facing the lamp, drawing specific attention to Django and positioning him as an important character in the first close up we see of him.

Film Light | Week 6 Reflection

Posted on August 13, 2019 by jonahahearn

Tuesdays class discussed what a three-point lighting setup is and the process of controlling it through blocking and numerous fill sources. Whilst I agree with comments made in class that this setup isn’t particularly exciting, I think it would be beneficial for me to breakdown an example of it and analyse it more broadly as to why it was lit in such a way. I have chosen the below-linked scene from Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge (2016) for this purpose.

I will be honing in particularly on the shot-reverse shots between Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) and a Japanese soldier. Another aspect touched upon briefly in class was the increasing prevalence for source lights in films to embedded into shot in the form of prop lights that are actually purposeful, such as a bed lamp on a side desk illuminating an intimate moment between a couple in bed. Hacksaw Ridge too uses a similar tactic in this scene as a means to light a naturally underexposed tunnel where studio lights would prove impractical given the confined space.

The key light is natural daylight seeping through a hole in the tunnel good coming from the soldiers right providing a brightness level on Desmond’s face which draws the audiences eye. There is also an unidentified fill light to the right of Desmond which illuminates under the helmet, and is too responsible for the side lighting of the Japanese soldier. The backlight is earlier shown to be a lamp attached to the sidewall, creating a light glow around the edges of Desmond’s helmet which, as discussed in class, brings him out from background which he is pressed up against, as well as giving a physical and metaphorical halo around Desmond. The out of focus background also aids in bringing him into the foreground. The short distance between the subjects and the background creates other implications in achieving the shallow depth of field evident in the below screenshot from the scene. Most likely a long focal length lens has been used to do this and keep both the foreground (Japanese soldier) and the background out of focus. This also compresses the perception of depth and makes the space seem small, an evident artistic choice to emphasise the claustrophobia in the tunnel.

This brief example demonstrates my thoughts on three-point lighting as nothing more than a concept that describes a common practice in shot lighting, rather than a method. Three-point lighting can take on many forms and is usually, in practice, a subconscious decision that is effective in creating light balance.

Hacksaw Ridge Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht0UX_KZpuY

Film Light | Week 5 Reflection

Posted on August 13, 2019 by jonahahearn

In missing out on Tuesday’s class in week 5, I would like to take the oppotunity to reflect on what I felt was the value of reflecting on a painting in assignment 1. To me, it encouraged me to think that the only reason we can see things the way we do is because it is lit in some way, so although yes, a painting isn’t real, we would be able to quickly identify in our minds that something was off if a light source wasn’t vaguely identifiable. We may not be able to pick up exactly what is off about it, but we know it’s not right, and that this is the subtle, yet dramatic effect lighting can have on the way we interpret an image, painting or otherwise. Another way I viewed the exercise was that painting is an artistic craft, and that to show lighting in a painting is to show that it is an artistic form of expression that is given great thought and emphasis, particularly in the painting I analysed. In fact, I would say of all the qualities of my analysed painting, the lighting to me had the greatest psychological impact on my interpretation of the scene, greater empahasising its overall importance on how I feel more generally about something based on how it’s lit. In Thursday’s class we dove further into lighting a production as part of a larger crew, which allowed us to see all the movie pieces on a more diverse set. The task being to create a believable source of daylight using artificial light in a classroom with no direct sun exposure. Analysing the work we achieved from the third person, I felt the effect we were able to achieve was great considering the time constraints. Upon reflection, attempts to broaden the beam of the light would have been more benifical to giving the illusion that lighting was flooding though a window on the key side. Ideally the use of a light at the front and back of the set reflecting light using a bounce board of the key wall would have created a more even flood effect. Alternatively using multiple bounce boards along that wall angled slightly away from eachother would too have generated a broader key spectrum.

Film Light | Week 4 Reflection

Posted on August 13, 2019 by jonahahearn

In Tuesday’s class, we put our theoretical understanding of lighting into practice as we attempted to light and shoot a scene to the demands of a script in which the sun rises and cascades light into the classroom. We were encouraged to experiment and consult with the limitless possibilities for how we could light the scene using what we had at our disposal. The effect of this was that I found encouraged to look beyond the constraints of the rooms lighting environment and mold them into strengths. For example, we found that the fill side of the two subjects was rather dark when the key light, being a lamp with a blue gel over it to convey sunlight was switched on. One solution to this was to use a white bounce board off to screen right to reflect some of the natural light coming through the windows back onto the fill side of the subjects for reduced shadows. However, when the subjects were exposed to the artificial key light, this would create an undesirable increase in bounce light on the fill side, and the light gradient as the sun rose would also be apparent on the fill side which is not its source. To counter this, we positioned another artificial fill light with a blue gel on the fill side of the subjects facing up and reflecting off a white panel back into the subjects for a similar effect to a bounce board, whilst making the changes to the lighting on that side of the face more subtle and therefore realistic. The framing of the shot also established that there was significantly more room screen right out of frame, in which variation on the fill side would indeed be more subtle as light has a greater distance to travel and reflect off. As the gaffer, I was able to apply this newly developed knowledge into lighting a scene and I found it extremely thought-provoking and enjoyable all the variants that go into choosing to light for achieving both creative and technical purpose