Lighting continuity is a factor of lighting which I had never really considered or thought about until I came across it in the week 7 reading. Lighting needs to be maintained in a scene or else it will be noticeable in the edit of the film. For instance, if we have lighting which is bounced onto a white board onto an actor, then we re-take the shot and change the angle, the lighting will be slightly different. This could be a problem if we are using several different smaller shots from different takes. The foreground must remain consistent to the background lighting. If light streams in through a window and makes the scene lighter, that will be noticeable, unless that transition in lighting is recorded on film and used. When I was reading about lighting consistency, I was interested to read about how the subject could be more illuminated without lighting up the background more and hence the skin tones would change. I thought about how lighting continuity would be a massive factor we would have to consider for our short film. If we are doing a close up shot, we should increate the fill light so that there is not a drastic change.

Another reading which I found quite valuable was the week 7 reading on lighting a scene. The subject in particular was controlling hard light. This was particularly interesting to me becuase I knew that we would be working with uncontrollable sunlight which can be quite harsh and strong. The black boards (aka cutters) can be used to cut off the light and create a shadow where needed. If the day is a really bright one and there is a lot of backlight, then a cutter can be used over the actors face to diminish the harsh contrast in lighting and shadow. Another way a cutter can be used is to block out the microphone shadow if it is casting one. We may need heaps of cutters because if the sun only creates a head on lighting, we need to diminish the lighting in the foreground so as to break up the light. Something I found really amazing is that Philip Lathrop once had up to 20 cutters on the scene just to control the harsh lightig. Let’s just say, I hope it is overcast.