Reflection Week 7:
Reflection Week 8:
Reflection Week 9:
Reflection Week 10:
Reflection Week 11:
Assignment 3 Reflection:
Presentation Reflection:
Assignment 4 Reflection:
FILM LIGHT | Assignment #4 | Noah Hodgson
on Category: Media 2 Studio | Film Light
on FILM LIGHT | Assignment 4 Reflection | Noah Hodgson
on Link to Assignment 4 video:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-4ed2xmgnh9Wi2pHPulzUYX8TDsWGq2R
Assignment 4, much like the previous experiment we did, was a fairly pain-free production experience. Once again we shot the experiment fairly rapidly and with few issues, though this time we did have a new set of challenges to overcome. This time we wanted to experiment with lighting a car scene which would include some exterior shots as well as interior close ups. Compared to last time our lighting setups were much more complicated and required a larger degree of tweaking – because this time unlike the previous experiment we were aiming to create a whole scene – not just a single shot. We shot the whole scene with just three lights; a kino flo as our ‘key light’ positioned off to the left of the car and acting as a side-facing key and occasionally a backlight when our talent moved around, an Arri 1K positioned behind the car to act as a backlight that would create an edge around both actors, and finally a dedo to the back-right of the car that would both act as a secondary key for Jagger and a fill light for Angus (Jagger’s friend) in the front seat.
Though the lighting required a great deal of thought in preparation for this shoot and quite a bit of micromanagement on the day, the bigger challenge rather became about the coverage of the scene. We went into this with very little pre-production or planning. There was no script (we wrote it or improvised it on the spot), there was no shot list (I had a vague idea of the shots I wanted) and there was no storyboard. This lack of planning was definitely a detriment to the production stage (though we were still very efficient with our time). Had we planned out the shots and scripted the scene in a more concrete manner it definitely would have made life easier and probably given us more freedom to consider the aesthetic possibilities more thoroughly rather than spending so much energy coming up with the coverage on the fly.
Given the improvisational nature of the shoot, I am overall pretty happy with what we’ve been able to achieve (I’d say about 75% of it I’m really happy with). In particular I’m quite fond of the lighting we did for all the shots of Angus in the front seat. I think these all look really great and at least a couple of these will definitely be making their way onto my showreel. However I’m a little less pleased with some of the shots of Jagger in the backseat. Quite a few of them are out of focus (I’d just bought a wireless follow focus on the morning before the shoot and this was my first time using it – still got a few bugs to iron out!), but more to the point the lighting is a little bit flat. If I were to reshoot his shots I think I’d probably try to maneuver a cutter inside the car to make an attempt at creating some more shape on his face, and failing this I would simply have moved the Kino Flo to the back right window so that it would do more on Jagger for his close-ups (something which would have been easy to do but we simply didn’t unfortunately). This would also help with continuity a bit as well as I’m not entirely sold on the shots and reverse shots of the pair matching together seamlessly for this scene.
Again despite some elements I’m not altogether amazed by, I am overall really happy with how this experiment went and given that the intention was to learn how to light a car scene and to experiment with some different methods of achieving an intended effect, I think that once again the experiment has been a huge success.
P.S. for reference and inspiration we used a couple film scenes that we appreciate. These were car scenes from both ‘The Departed’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ – both of which are embedded below to give an example of what we had set as a sort of ‘style guide’ for our scene, and which helped to inform our choices about not just the lighting but the different shots and coverage we opted for.
FILM LIGHT | Presentation Reflection | Noah Hodgson
on The presentation day for Assignment 3 was a really enjoyable experience for me. It was good in particular to see that each group had chosen a very different element of film lighting to experiment with, to differing degrees of success – yet all interesting and informative in their own way. The presentation that I probably got the most out of was Joseph, Terrance and Tully’s silhouette experiment. I think this group did a really great job of taking an in depth look at a very specific lighting effect, and very clearly showed that with each lighting setup they did they were experimenting and learning and adjusting their approach to the next shot accordingly. I was particularly impressed to learn that they did all of this using the frankly pretty terrible cameras we have been using in class throughout the studio – with their terrible dynamic range, digital noise and all. The second shot in particular I thought was honestly really cool. I liked in particular how they had allowed just the right amount of light to wrap around their subjects chin so that you could make out the humanoid shape and the allusion of a face, but not so much that you could see any facial details. This created this really interesting faceless effect which almost looks like something you’d see as a villain in a Doctor Who episode or something along those lines. I also liked the dual-tone colouring of it, with there being a warmer colour temperature light illuminating one side of the face and a cooler one the other – it’s almost close to the sort of ‘orange and teal’ look which has become very popular in a lot of hollywood action movies (John Wick for example). This dual-tonality actually got me thinking about ideas for some lighting experiments I’d like to do myself at some point regarding lighting a scene where you would have one source replicating a sort of rainy day coming in through the window and a second source being a warmer interior light – but that’s an idea for another day (and mostly unrelated to this experiment but it got me thinking so I figured I’d mention it). If anything I think that this group could have gone further with this experiment and maybe experimented with different levels of silhouette – ranging from something that is more ‘standard’ looking but heavily backlit, and moving back towards the more extreme silhouettes that they displayed in their presentation (but of course this isn’t necessarily what they were going for – just probably what I would have done if it were me doing this kind of experiment).
FILM LIGHT | Assignment 3 Reflection | Noah Hodgson
on Link to Assignment 3 video:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FJgCP6IaJNyk0dnz–9sdqhUK53KL1Gs
Despite a few initial setbacks regarding our shooting location, the production of this assignment was a pretty pain-free activity. The task that Jagger set for us for this assignment was to try to create as many ‘cinematic’ looks as we could using only a single light source (an Arri 2K Fresnel + gels and diffusion) and a single cutter and bounce. We then extended this concept to trying to replicate some looks from a few films that we found to be inspiring or exciting in some way, which gave us some direction in how we could approach the experiment. Given the limitations of the challenge we set ourselves and the fact that we got through four different lighting setups in only a little over two hours, I am all-in-all very pleased with the results of this experiment.
It was great to be able to take some of the concepts we’ve been learning in class and apply it directly to film lighting practice – and especially to do so with limited gear (something I’ve found to be a common occurrence on lower budget shoots – though perhaps not to this extent). I also think that the four film excerpts we chose (Lost in Translation, It, Her and Arrival) were sufficiently distinct and each came with their own set of challenges so that we could fully explore the challenge we had set ourselves.
For the ‘Lost In Translation’ shot, the biggest challenge I found with lighting was matching the tonality of the film. The film excerpt is extremely soft and naturalistic looking, with a lot of motivated ambient light, so achieving this with a single source was certainly difficult to say the least. The film looks as though it was probably top lit through a large diffusion screen and then heavily filled front onto Scarlet Johansson’s face. For our version of this we couldn’t really find a way to top light it in the same way (my lounge room doesn’t have a very high roof), so we put the light as high as we could and filled it back as best we could to try to create an even exposure across the whole face. We weren’t totally successful in recreating the look of the film, but it is definitely on the right track. Our version has a bit of an exposure differential look from the right side of the face to the left, something which if we weren’t trying to replicate a specific look would be absolutely fine (and I think in isolation the shot we’ve taken is quite good and professional looking), but given that we were going for a direct reproduction of the shot from the film I think the end result is almost there but not quite.
The shot from ‘It’ was challenging in an entirely different way. For this shot we were replicating a shot which I believe is quite heavily reliant on SFX makeup and VFX for the eyes (and as was pointed out in the presentation may not have looked anything like the finished product in-camera). We tried to replicate this look by half-cutting the 2K to create a shadow over the top half of my face and then positioning a bounce at my chest to bounce light back up into my eyes to at least try and replicate the look of the film. I think in the case of this shot we’re halfway there – and maybe if we had the same makeup and VFX budget we could have made this shot extremely close if not identical to the original. But as it stands it’s just not quite there. I think that the shadow cast over my face is almost perfect but the shot really just isn’t the same without those eyes. As we discussed in the presentation it may have been interesting (if we weren’t trying to do this with a single light) to potentially use a mirror to try to shoot a very small light directly onto my eyes – though given the parameters of the experiment I think we’ve done an admirable job of recreating the original shot.
Our recreation of Her is frustratingly close but again just not quite there. Much like the shot from ‘Lost in Translation’ – if we weren’t trying to perform a direct translation of the original shot, then what we have created would be perfectly acceptable and I think it looks pretty good in isolation. We created this look by positioning the lamp to Jagger’s back, placing a cutter to his left to reduce spill coming from the room itself and create more shape and then placing a bounce directly in front of him to replicate the heavily filled original shot. The only thing that lets this replication down is the position of the 2K; if it were only just a little more direct onto Jagger’s back I think the replication may have been almost perfect – in our version the light wraps around Jagger’s left, whereas in the film it appears to very slightly favour the right of Joaquin Phoenix.
Our version of Arrival is the one that I think is probably the closest to the film version (in a bootleg, low-budget kind of way). Of course again the reference frame from the film is a VFX shot so we couldn’t perfectly recreate it, though I think our method of using Jagger’s hands to cast a shadow onto the sheet of diffusion we used as a backdrop is pretty effective at replicating even this (even if it does look a little goofy). For this shot we essentially just shot the 2K through a full CTB gel and a sheet of diffusion, past Jagger’s hands and then onto another sheet of diffusion, all of which worked to illuminate Eleanor’s silhouette. This shot took a bit of finessing to get right – through trial and error we had to adjust the distance of the lamp from the diffusion screen backdrop, add a layer of diffusion on the lamp head to spread the light and remove a hotspot from the backdrop diffusion and also control Eleanor’s proximity to this backdrop to first and foremost get a wide enough frame without going outside the bounds of the very small sheet of diffusion and also to control the amount of light that would wrap around Eleanor and effectively how sharp the silhouette would be. The end result speaks for itself though I think – this shot out of all the ones we filmed is the closest to the reference shot we were going for.
Despite me being somewhat hyper-critical of my own work, I am legitimately pleased with the results of this experiment and despite some of them being closer to what we were going for than others, I do think that each of them in isolation (maybe with the exception of our version of ‘It’) could definitely be applied to a legitimate film or TV production fairly seamlessly with the help of some costuming and production design!
FILM LIGHT | Reflection Week 11 | Noah Hodgson
on El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and why we light for film.
This week I finally got to watch El Camino – which essentially serves as an epilogue to one of my all time favourite TV shows (if not my number one pick), Breaking Bad. While the film in and of itself is great and serves as a brilliant send off to the show and the characters, it was the cinematography that I paid most attention to – and arguably was what I found most impressive, and most surprising. The original show as shot on film, so you would almost assume that the natural choice for the next chapter in the series would maintain visual continuity and do the same, but El Camino goes in almost the complete opposite direction – it’s about as digital as digital cinema gets and I absolutely love it. So often I hear about DOP’s and filmmakers that swear by film, making comments such as they hate the sharpness of digital cinema cameras (often opting to soften this with filters or post production smoothing) or film just has a cinematic quality to it that isn’t matched by digital replications. This film in particular I think finally puts the nail in the coffin of that argument. Not that analogue film doesn’t have its place and doesn’t look incredible – it’s just to say that digital cinematography has not so much surpassed but rather innovated on the more analogue years now passed. There is something distinctly contemporary looking about this film – like it couldn’t have been shot at any other time but now, and this to me is so incredibly exciting. It shows that the cinema is continuing to innovate and evolve into something new and exciting – and of course it would be a film that barely even screened in cinemas that would make me think this way. For once I fully believe in digital cinematography’s capabilities of matching film, especially when the large format Alexa 65 and Arri DNA lenses are involved (also worth mentioning that my model of camera was used somewhere in this film – cool).
Beyond just the camera side of things, this film also got me thinking about the lighting choices and more broadly the reasons we light for film. All semester we’ve been talking about different approaches and reasons for lighting the way we do in filmmaking – this isn’t something which came as a revelation to me, but it is something that got me thinking. After watching El Camino I think I can finally pinpoint what I think is my favourite approach to the question of why and how we light film – and that is a hybridisation of naturalism and stylistic liberties (if I got the chance to shoot a feature film, this is what I would want it to look like). This film absolutely fits within the modern trend of naturalistic lighting, but does so in such a tasteful and stylistic way that so perfectly sets the tone of the film and above all serves story and character. Which brings me to the most important reason I think we light for film and why the DOP is such a critical member of any film crew – and that is because lighting is such a massive part of the way in which we understand a films story and character. While we’ve moved away from the very on the nose (yet still very beautiful) lighting of the film-noir era, lighting still tells us so much about characters and their motivations – whether or not we realise it. In the right hands lighting can do so very much to elevate a story, El Camino proves this. That is why we light for film.
FILM LIGHT | Reflection Week 10 | Noah Hodgson
on Editing my showreel and what I’ve learnt from the studio (and everything else).
This week came with the opportunity (and requirement) to finally try to put together a showreel of footage that I’ve shot over the last couple years. Looking back at my catalogue of footage has been a very interesting and enlightening process for me; it has shown me both how far I’ve come since my first major project (a music video I filmed for year 12 media – not on the showreel) and how far I still have to go. For me and my journey as a filmmaker I think there has been three key events that have shaped my current ability – those being beginning as a camera assistant back in early 2017, purchasing and beginning to use my own proper camera early this year and then undertaking this studio. Beginning as a camera assistant taught me the basics of the practical side of filmmaking and how to be helpful to a low budget production – whereas getting my own camera and beginning to take a more leading role in creating various videos and films has begun to teach me the creative side of filmmaking and how the choices we make on the practical side can affect the creative output. But it wasn’t until I began this studio that I feel as though I could bring those two things together. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean by this, but to summarise I’m essentially trying to say that before this studio I had the practical skillset to make a film happen, and I had the vision for how I wanted the end result to look or be, but I lacked the ability to translate one to the other. To give an example, prior to the studio I knew how to setup a light, and I knew what I wanted the light to do, but I didn’t really know how to connect those two things. Now that the studio is over though I feel like I am much closer to being able to visualise exactly what I want in pre-production, go into production and make it happen, and then see it come to fruition as I had envisioned it in post-production. Now of course I’m not there yet, I’ve still got so much to learn – my showreel has showed me this. In all honesty there’s nothing on that reel looks as good as I want it to. And that’s not to discourage myself and say I’m not good at what I do, I just simply recognise that the work present on that reel isn’t outstanding, it’s good but it isn’t great. The fact that I can see that though honestly excites and challenges me – it tells me that I’m on the right track and that maybe the next project I work on will live up to my hopes and aspirations.
FILM LIGHT | Reflection Week 9 | Noah Hodgson
on Reflecting on the experience of shooting my first short film.
This week I had the chance to finally put myself and my camera onto some narrative work and shoot a short film for a friend in the screen writing course at RMIT. The process of shooting this short taught me so much about this kind of work in such a short space of time that it will probably be very difficult to get it across in just a single reflection – but regardless I’ll try anyway! I got involved in this project very late (only a week or two before we were due to begin production) after making a passing comment on a shoot last week about how I was looking for more work to put on my showreel. This left me with very little time to prepare for the shoot, which in hindsight is something I would definitely like to avoid wherever possible in future – or at the very least use the limited time I had to prepare more effectively so that I can make the most out of the production time. My late addition to the crew meant I didn’t really get to have much input into locations and production design – something which I found to be a challenge when it came to shooting and especially lighting a great deal of the film. A lot of the script takes place within a conference room, which the producer and director had a hard time finding with no budget to pay for a location, which lead to us shooting in a very small meeting room on campus at RMIT. This created a challenge for me, as I had very little room to position lights and a small white room which created no shape in the lighting at all. Luckily I had a couple hours in the morning to just maneuver lights and see what was possible in the space – ultimately (and to my own discomfort) I ended up struggling to light it using the dedo kit I had intended to use, instead I had to shoot an LED panel into the roof and then shape it as needed with a cutter. This resulted in all honesty with a look that was serviceable, but really not as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped.
The second day of the shoot however, gave me a great deal more maneuverability with the lighting setup and a far less restrictive space. These scenes were supposed to be taking place at night within the lead characters bedroom. Lighting for a night scene is not something that I had done before, so just like the first day I spent the first hour or two before we started shooting just experimenting with different lighting setups until I found a look I was rather pleased with. The set in this case was the directors bedroom on the second floor of his house, which ordinarily would create difficulties in lighting without a budget or much equipment as it would be difficult to position lights outside windows – however I was very fortunate that there just happened to be a balcony close enough to the window for me to setup a dedo that would essentially be emulating a streetlight coming in through the window and blinds to create shafts of light on the lead actor. I then positioned another dedo behind a cutter (which was stopping any spill from hitting the subject directly) and shot it directly into the roof – this was essentially filling in the shadows created by dedo that was aimed directly through horizontal blinds, as I found the image to be far too contrasty and distracting without fill. Both of these lights had full CTB gel on to try to emulate a sort of moonlight or failing that at least streetlight look. Considering I went into the second day of this shoot without even having seen the space we would be shooting in, I was really quite pleased with the results and honestly think this is some of the best footage I’ve shot to date.
FILM LIGHT | Reflection Week 8 | Noah Hodgson
on Week 8 Exercises – Exposure Differentials (Exercises 5&8)
The exercise that my group did this week was honestly one of the most difficult I’ve had to do as of yet, and not because of some technical difficulty or challenge inherent in the prompt – but because I was in front of the camera. I legitimately found it difficult to step back and let the behind-camera crew of my group work out how to shoot the scene and not try to be too insistent on my own ideas. I honestly got pretty frustrated with not being able to just do things myself, but honestly in the end I think the group did a decent job of tackling the challenge of dealing with the exposure differential of two very different locations in one scene. The shots themselves are somewhat well framed and they cut together mostly pretty fine – there’s nothing incredible here but the task has at least been accomplished – perhaps I shouldn’t have been so skeptical and then I could have comfortably sat in front of the camera and let everyone else deal with the technical component.
I also think the other groups video (exercise 8) turned out pretty well – with some great choices in camera operation, framing and coverage (mostly). However I’m not so convinced that the challenge set by this exercise was explicitly met, as the outside of the building is very clearly quite severely over exposed. As discussed in class this could have been amended by stopping down on the camera and doing more to light the exterior scene, but everything considered I think that again they’ve done a great job.
Both of these exercises were quite similar but had a slightly different approach which warranted unique challenges to both. In the case of exercise 5, the script warranted there being one character in direct sunlight, while the others would be in shade – making matching these exposures critical because without this the scene itself wouldn’t really work. Whereas with exercise 8 both characters existed in the same space at any given time, which in a way would have allowed more freedom in the approach as it wasn’t quite as important that both exposure areas be perfect – only one of the two (which is of course what happened). So for exercise 8 the challenge really was to just bring up the level of the interior so that the exterior wouldn’t be over, which the group who did this exercise haven’t quite managed to do unfortunately.
Both exercises were informative in different ways to me, and definitely will make me consider more closely how exactly to deal with this type of scenario when it inevitably presents itself to me in the future.
FILM LIGHT | Reflection Week 7 | Noah Hodgson
on Week 7 Class Exercise – Emmaline Dreams of Playtime
This week’s exercise for me was an interesting one, as I found the challenge in it was mostly in regards to how we would get coverage of the scene, rather than how we would light it. We spent a great deal of time before we even began filming just discussing different ways we could shoot the scene. Whether for example we would do a simple shot reverse shot with an added cutaway for the view out the window, or what we eventually decided on, which was to film from a single perspective, choosing very purposefully to exclude a reaction shot of Connor (as Ron). This decision in camera coverage to me was in large part really a decision about which characters scene this was. We could have chosen to favour both characters equally, showing each of their performances and getting the reactions of each subject. Or we could have chosen to go slightly off script and favour Ron’s perspective, showing Hilda (Eleanor) as a more distant figure. However to me, the script suggested that the natural choice was to approach the scene from Hilda’s point of view – afterall we were seeing her view of the street and her reaction to Ron’s indifference. I think more broadly this concept of structuring your camera coverage around whichever character you want the audience to associate with the most, is an important one and likely one that I will rely on quite heavily in future.
This exercise also formed a sort of ‘proof of concept’ of something that we spoke about in class, which was the ability to disguise high key lighting and more contrasty images with a desaturated black and white colouring. My intention with the lighting side of the exercise this week was largely to try and experiment with this concept and see at least to some extent, exactly how much you can get away with in terms of contrast and the way in which focus can be guided through a frame. I think that this exercise is exceedingly instructive in terms of this concept especially looking at the difference between the colour and black and white versions. In the black and white version I feel that the attention of the audience, or rather the place in the frame that the eye is drawn to is where I intended it to be (in this case on Eleanor’s face and performance). Whereas the colour version I find these frames to be exceedingly distracting. The exposure differential between Eleanor and her surroundings is not as it should be, which of course is creating a distracting image where the eye is drawn all over the place (really almost everywhere except where it should be) – and this is before we even get into the unmatched colour temperatures of the natural light and the tungsten lamp we had to left of frame.
FILM LIGHT | Assignment #2 | Noah Hodgson
on Reflection Week 4:
Reflection Week 5:
Reflection Week 6:
Scene Analysis: