The teaching of basic videography skill in this week comes to lighting. It is, as Robin said, my previous projects all simply use the existing lighting without carefully considering whether it could suit the content. We seldom shoot our footage in a completely well-setting studio. However, I agree to Robin’s statement that the usage of lighting not only refers to set up those equipments but also refers to make adjustment to the environment. By learning from the demonstration in class, the first step is to observe the location to determine the source of light. Before all the heavy equipments setting up, we could still move to a better place if the light condition is too bad to film. Then, we are going to achieve the ‘ideal’ lighting. For me, lighting is comparatively difficult to plan that it relates to various elements, such as filming style, time, emotion and the overall atmosphere. Also, I reckon it is not always necessary to make change to the light source. For those casual and ‘neutral’ scene, the main purpose is to get the proper exposure to reveal the information. In those cases, actors on the frame could easily move around to find the perfect standing point. Robin also demonstrated a few artificial ways to create the particular effect and talked about the quality of lighting which refers to its softness and hardness. These tricks of using cardboard would be very useful for close-up shots, for example, the talking-head interview, because light and shadow are very related to emotion that could shape the image of the speaker.

The appointment with Robin helped a lot to develop the ideas for assignment 3. We discussed and decided to film my ‘elevator observation’ as an individual one. Things that I’m working during this week are picturing each shot, considering the setting in detail and determining the actor. For the second one, I prefer to work in a group which could bring a different experience. Four of us (Aria, Lyreca, Jack and I) formed a group that we could all brainstorm to form a combined idea and film it together. Unexpectedly (in a good way), Neville inspired us by introducing Lyreca’s ‘online friend observation’ and we came up with so many interesting ideas. I think this is the most significant meaning of collaboration that numbers of fragmented thoughts could finally turn to an attracting concept. We talked more to know the actual background of Lyreca’s story and somehow interpreted the main theme to ‘speaking to someone online vs. meeting them in real life’. For me, this story focuses more on the weird atmosphere between two characters so that it could be shown in a ‘virtual’ way, for example, not directly showing the face of the ‘online friend’ but only showing her hands and voice. We would keep developing this idea and exchange new thoughts in next class.