The Cardsharps painted by Michaelangelo Caravaggio sometime around 1594.

The first thing that struck me about this painting beyond just the fact that it is beautifully composed was the way in which the entire frame is lit. Unlike some of the other paintings which either had crushed shadows or very bright highlights, this whole frame is reasonably even in its lighting.

The Key light is realistic and photographic even, Caravaggio hasn’t played around with the shape of the light too much. It would appear that the painting has been painted from a real life setting. Obviously, the camera was not yet invented yet so the image cannot be a photo, however photographic it looks.

The key light is bouncing quite obviously off the wall behind the characters and this is also creating a nice even circular highlight on the wall behind them, likely providing the majority of the fill light everywhere in the frame. The fill light is also very golden and the walls seem to be off-white, further evidence that this wall pictured is the source of the fill. The characters shadows are very obviously coming down and right so we should assume that the very large key light (in comparison to the fill light, large key/fill ratio) is coming from the left side of the frame, off camera and ‘up-stage’ if you will. The key is very soft and diffused which, I feel makes a very pleasing image and has a really pleasing effect on the skin tones of the painted characters.

Another Day of Sun  is the opening musical number to Damien Chazel’s La La Land, which as a film itself has some of the most beautiful non-naturalistic lighting moments in modern cinema (in my opinion). Many critics and students know the scene for the fact that the crew shut down a freeway ramp in Los Angeles for three days to record the scene. Most notably one of the things that I find amazing about the scene is the way the scene is lit, almost exclusively with available light. With the exception of the close up shots that get very close to the actors in the cars. These shots could have been filled by some on camera light or a very diffused bounce light from a grip just out of shot, one of the extraordinary things is just how many crew members and moving parts the scene took to complete.

The cinematography is incredible, the way the camera ducks and weaves through traffic and cars in a complex, choreographed way that is reminiscent of the old 30s and 40s Hollywood musicals. To achieve the scene, Chazel moves the camera from a technocrane to a steadicam and back onto yet another technocrane to finish the scene in a one-take. One of the most important considerations of this scene is the way in which Chazel originally conceived the scene in the morning but due to the way in which the clouds and fog were causing the morning to be glory and overcast, the scene’s photography had to be postponed until noon. This was due to the unique relationship Chazel wanted to create between lighting and story. The song is called Another Day of Sun and could therefore not have been shot on an overcast morning.

Chazel’s original intention was to have the glaringly hard, sunlight used as the primary key light in the scene and use the predominantly white freeway ramp to create a fill from underneath the actors. Overall the noon lighting creates a hard, sunny glare that helps to emphasise the way in which Chazel feels about Los Angeles and helps to add another layer of depth to his love letter to the city of stars.

This week, we started in much the same way as last week except, we were able to control the lighting in building thirteen with the use of bounce cards. One of the things we instantly noticed as a group was that we were vastly more indecisive about our lighting setup because we had so many more choices.

Robin could “no longer avoid” pulling out some real lights. We used a number of different fixtures and one of the things I learned was how the focussing process works when you’re with a crew. We also had a demonstration of three point lighting, which of course is one of those things that you don’t really ever use in real life but it was still an interesting demonstration.

In our theory class on Wednesday, we discussed focal length in relation to light and the way it affects the image. It was interesting to watch Robin’s videos on different lighting setups and in some cases, setups that didn’t involve artificial light but were extremely well lit and well controlled. Again, there seems to be this common theme of controlling light vs. just putting up a whole lot of lights.

It’s amazing just how much more conscious of lighting I am in my daily life but also when watching films and video. This class has also got me thinking a lot about my own previous works and how I would light them differently just from the sorts of discussions that the class generates during our theory lessons on Wednesdays.

We also learned some really helpful terminology around lighting and camera this past week. We seem to fill the white board very quickly. I’m really glad we discussed the different ways to describe aperture, especially between whole stops and the different ways to describe depth of field. One of the things this class is teaching me in practise is to slow down during the early process of cinematography. To take the time to calculate what’s going to happen before you press record and make sure you actually get the shot you want before you get to post.

Building thirteen is not a very well placed building for lighting interiors. Considering there is no direct sunlight in the room, the light seems to change profound in the two hours we have class inside the room.

Our first exercise, controlling available light by positioning only the camera and the subject, interestingly, is probably the most relevant exercise to our practise that I could think of. In most cases, students aren’t running around with lights.

On just about every shoot I’ve ever been a part of, the positioning of the subject and camera are more about setting and story than anything else, (the director wants this character on a chair in the corner looking at this wall, etc.) lighting has become somewhat of an afterthought in the process. However, the more I think about lighting in the context of this class, I’m discovering in just talking about the lighting in the second class of the week, lighting can inform so much of how an audience experiences a story, not just make it look pretty.

One of the things that I really love is Robin’s focus on camera. It’s not just about understanding lighting outside the box. It’s not enough to just put some lights up and look at it and make judgements about how it looks.

In my job, I spend a lot of time lighting stages for live events and really, my introduction to lighting was in theatre and theatrical lighting. The relationship between the way lights appear in the world and how they appear in camera is fascinating. I have always understood that perhaps, because the camera lacks dynamic range, the images would be more contrasty, there is something to be said about the fact that you can’t stop down your eyes. If lighting encompasses the control you have in the camera, then of course there are numbers of factors at play.

I love that in the first week of this class we’ve had more practical teaching than I think I may have had in the first two years of my degree, and for that, I am immensely grateful.