This week my friend asked me to be a crew for her final film project, and this time I fortunately practices some new techniques of lighting and I found a big interest in playing with light.
The setting for the scene was the police interrogated the prisoner in the trial room, so we chose to shoot in RMIT’s studio because the surrounding was dark enough to create the serious atmosphere. For the lighting, we firstly set the three point light — fill light, key light and back light to surround the table. Then we also set two board, one was black and another one was white. It was my first time to use the blackboard in the light setting, its role was much more important than I thought lol. The black board was used to block the extra lighting (or absorb excess light?) of surrounding, and it efficiently create the shadows. I was more familiar to use the whiteboard which used to reflect the light to lit the object’s face. With black and white boards the shadows and the lit side created a big contrast, which present the serious and kinda horror feeling very well. Moreover, because our object were two people, so in different shots of different people we need to re-adjust the light setting and this might be the most complicated part of whole shooting process. Because people were keeping moving when they’re acting, the light in some particular angles would be bad. To make it perfect, we practiced a lot of times to adjust the angle of three lights and position of characters then start to shoot. Thus I realised how important the light is, it helps to strengthen the effect on visuality and make the right atmosphere, also to make a good work, it necessary to adjust every details (details make a difference! ). Moreover, for my future film project I would have more choices to create different effects by using prompts like black boards, and I believe I would be more familiar with controlling light in different situations as well.
