The exercise we did today with reflecting light off a white and/or black cardboard enlightened me to different possibilities that I can think about when lighting. Or as to say, actually being shown how to go about properly lighting a subject or set. Generally, I learned that direct light from a lamp with no filter or medium to pass through creates a hard lighting effect and the desired effect you want in the scene is dependent on where the light source is in relation to the subject.
Upon some reflection it got me thinking about lighting according to the available light and what I can do with simple tools to manipulate the scene. I’ve never really thought about using a surface for light to bounce off but when I ever see behind the scene pictures of shoots or sets there will always be a reflective surface that a lamp would project into, I’ve just never paid that much attention to the purpose or composition of that. What this achieves I believe is a softer light if you need to light the fill side of the scene and conversely, I thought about not lighting the subject directly but to bounce the light off a surface (which I now have taken notice of in many behind the scenes footage) and create a soft light for the key lighting. This would mean that the key would be even more dimly lit or non-existent for a scene to look natural.
We also touched upon how to think about lighting a scene according to the scene desired. For our demonstration we looked a subject directly lit by the lamps and to think of how or why it should look if we were shooting for a scene in the direct sun. Reflecting on this was insightful as I thought about many movie scenes or hypothetical shoots that would encompass artificially creating a scene with the light. One film scene that comes to mind is the interrogation scene between Batman and Joker.
This scene ,being obviously lit in an artificial space, came to my mind upon trying to understand how to artificially light a place to look as it is intended. Understanding how light would be used to illuminate this scene that goes from lit to dark in an instant. I thought about how to compose a shot like this and the lighting and camera-work needed to create a piece for its intended setting such as the outdoors or within the halls of a building.
I intend to continue thinking about film differently from an analysis point of view, as each class rolls on I still reflect upon on more and more aspects as I discover them.
