In our Thursday workshop we grouped up and began exercise 6. Within this exercise we were tasked to shoot a simple interaction with two characters sitting opposite each other. The scene required 3 shots, a wide and two MCU’s of each character. The issue that needed solving was that one of these MCU’s had to be shot in a completely different location. To complete this exercise realistically we opted to shoot our first 2 shots in our ideal location without compromise, then look for a separate location for our last shot. We did this because we thought, in a realistic circumstance why would you plan different locations instead of shooting in the same area. Recreating the same setting for our last shot was difficult but what we ultimately looked for was a similar temperature lighting source with similar background colours. Because our original lighting source was soft and an extremely odd shape, we attempted to use exisiting spotlights bounced off two white cards to recreate the coverage we needed. Overall I thought we did a really good job of recreating the setting and using the tools we had at hand. I think our biggest fault would be in the colour temperature of the light source. It did seem that our second location ceiling lights were a little warmer than the initial location. However this could have also been more prominently pronounced due to the different skin tones each character had. This exercise also provided us with more problem solving skills which is a vital aspect of filmmaking.

Robin also touched on the basics of sound recording in this workshop. Talking about the different types of microphones available. However primarily focusing on directional or shotgun microphones and how they are very useful for most on set situations. This is due to the focusable nature of the microphones making it easier to drown out the irrelevant sound and focusing on the sound that is important such as dialogue. Robin talked us through how to set up the shotgun microphones on a boom pole and connect them to the EX-3 camera we are using. This is basic information yet is vital to know when working in these environments.

This week in our main workshop, we organised and attempted to shoot a full scene of dialogue. This was the most extensive scene we have attempted this semester. To create this scene Robin assigned us roles, I was the cinematographer and was required to work closely with the director and the First A/C or focus puller. Although we were unable to finish the scene, I found Robins discussion around on-set etiquette very interesting and ultimately extremely informative. When going onto sets I feel I will now have a greater understanding of what is required of me in my role, how to behave and know who to report to etc. I also thought the step by step process of how a scene would come together on a professional film set was very useful information. The act of blocking a scene proved very useful in this exercise and is definitely I process I had previously underrated.

Lighting this scene was a challenge within itself. We set the scene up how we liked it with a 2k Fresnel aimed at a white card bouncing onto the subjects sitting down. However when the Director, Robin, decided to open the curtains in the background there were some major reflection issues from our existing lighting setup. To solve this we were forced to setup 2 more cutters between the lights and the reflective glass. Ultimately having to move our actors slightly further away from how we originally intended. This is a perfect example of how filmmakers need to be quick problem solvers and was a great way for Robin to let us figure out ways to solve these problems by ourselves. The shot was ultimately better for it as the clear window added depth and extra colour to the image.

Robin also touched on the strength of conventional circuit boards in Australia and why, when lighting scenes with powerful lights, you have to be mindful of the strength of the circuit. Your average Australian circuit is 10 amps. So you cannot plug any lights into a circuit that requires more than 10 amps of power. To know whether your lights are going to max out the circuit, Robin gave us a simple formal to remember: Watts / Volts = Amps. With wattage being the amount of power used by the device and volts being the amount of power able to go through the output which is typically 24v in a traditional Australian PowerPoint. With our lighting setup we were only using a 2k Fresnel so 2000 w / 240 volts = 8.3 Amps which is safe to plug into a 10 amp circuit. This is very useful information that will be extremely valuable knowledge as we progress into future careers.

This week we started talking about colour temperature. Measured in Kelvin. The lower the temp the warmer the light, the higher the temp the cooler or bluer the light. Now Naturally our eyes do a white balance but film camera’s do not so it’s important to have an understanding of the colour temperatures of your light sources. We mainly discussed that 3200 is a warmer light (tungsten) and 5600 is pure daylight edging on the bluer side. While using lights set at these temperatures, you can change the temperature of these lights with Gels, which is something we got further into this week. While learning about colour temperature I began to notice the temperature of the lights around me in my daily life. When I’d walk into a room I would acknowledge the temperature of the dominant light source. It also got me thinking about how filmmakers can use colour temperature to add meaning to their stories. For example, using creating a cooler, bluer light source to develop the feeling of sadness within a character as we would typically associate the colour blue with this emotion.

In our Thursday class we also reviewed the results of exercise 4. In this exercise we had to shoot two daytime scenes in a class room, with one of these featuring a lighting change where the character Emmaline stares out the window as the sun comes out. This was an interesting exercise that forced us to problem solve how to complete this effect. We ended up using a cutter stop the light hitting Emmaline’s face and when it was time for the sun to come through, we slowly moved the cutter out of the light’s path allowing it to beam onto the character. This exercise got me thinking about the use of exposure within the camera as we had to slightly under expose the original image so that when the light beam came through, the character wasn’t over exposed.

Finally, this week we touched on the topic of sensor size and how it influences depth of field. I found this conversation quite interesting. There’s a general misconception that the larger the sensor of the camera, the shallower the depth of field. This is definitely not the case, it purely depends on the focal length of the lens. This misconception is around because we tend to us shorter focal length lenses on smaller sensors primarily due to space constraints which will ultimately affect the depth of field.

Reflection 1 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-intro-reflection/

Reflection 2 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-week-2/

Reflection 3 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-week-3/

Scene Analyis – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/09/drive-scene-analysis/

Painting Analysis – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/09/the-calling-of-st-matthew-painting-analysis/

Reflection 1 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-intro-reflection/

Reflection 2 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-week-2/

Reflection 3 – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/08/film-light-week-3/

Scene Analyis – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/09/drive-scene-analysis/

Painting Analysis – https://www.mediafactory.org.au/tully-hemsley/2019/08/09/the-calling-of-st-matthew-painting-analysis/

Caravaggio painted the The Calling of St. Matthew in 1599 and depicts the moment at which Jesus Christ inspires Matthew to follow him. The painting depicts the tax collectors sitting around the table and Jesus pointing towards Matthew who looks to be in shock. The Painting is visually lit by only 1 light source, the sun. A strong key of warm light beaming through the what appears to be a window frame. Due to the angle and temperature of the light source it would appear to be sometime around late afternoon as the sun begins to look warmer and gets closer to the horizon. It’s a hard beam of light that creates harsh contrast with distinctive shadows across the scene and the subjects faces. The light seems to bounce off the floor and walls. Acting as a slight fill for the subjects clothing that isn’t directly hit by the sunlight.

I really appreciate this painting and the realistic refraction and bounce of light within the frame. The beam of light creates this holy grail seemingly from the heavens pointing at Matthew and as the painting is about his choice to follow Jesus, this was intentional. I also appreciate how Caravaggio has used the window door above Matthew’s head to focus that beam of light onto his face, so the viewer knows exactly who to look at.

Scene Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ufgkJ-uVE

Drive (2011) was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and stars Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. Nicolas Winding Refn uses interesting lighting choices throughout the film and more specifically in the Elevator Scene. The scene opens with three characters in the elevator; the driver, Irene and Henchman sent to kill the driver. The lighting is extremely warm in the elevator and is lit from above with tungsten down lights providing the key. While there are two tungsten lamps on either side of the elevator with some sort of diffusing sheet panel in front of them which act as a fill on the actors faces. The lights from above are hard yet the lamps are very soft. The driver notices the Henchman has a gun and puts his hand over Irene to protect her. The lights quickly dim and sort of isolate the pair as they share their first kiss. During the Kiss the pair are lit by what seems to be one downlight from above and an edge light from behind, coming from the lamp on the side of the elevator. This takes the characters out of the tense environment they are in and into their own sort of visual universe. Once the kiss is over, the lights return to their normal warm conditions as the driver begins to beat the other man in the elevator to death. The elevator stops and Irene, who is horrified, steps out into the cool toned, overhead fluorescent lighting of the carpark. while the driver remains separated in the warm tones of the elevator. Creating a visual separation between the two characters through lighting temperature.

I liked the use of lighting temperature as a tool of visual separation. I thought this was interesting and I also liked the decision to use warm tungsten lighting in the elevator. As throughout the film Nicolas Winding Refn has used warm lighting only in safe and trustworthy situations. While this scene in the elevator is graphically brutal. Emphasizing the unpredictable and dangerous nature of the driver through that Irene has never seen.

In Week 3, we initially viewed a lot of examples of films that have used particular lighting techniques. Hard and Soft lighting seemed to dominate the examples yet we began to look beyond the lighting itself and to the creative motivations that led the director to make these decisions. This week was also our first opportunity to look at physical lights. Robin showed us the correct way in which we should set up both C stands and Light stands. Also explaining the correct or preferred use of both while making sure we knew to use sandbags on all occasions when setting up either of these. As the tipping of a light stand would be a very expensive, dangerous and easily avoidable mistake. We looked at 2 Arri lights with Fresnel lenses, one being 1000watt and the brighter being 2000watt. We were taught the correct procedures in attaching these lights to the stand and the correct terminology of the different aspects to the lights. Which I found interesting. Terms like the bail of the light, the spigot and its barn doors will all be useful terms on a future film set. Robin also touched on the safety aspect of the of a lights positioning, as they can get quite hot, it’s important to keep them away from heat sensors as they could trick these sensors into thinking the heat of the light is a fire. All this information was simple and easily digestible yet is vital knowledge required on film sets.

We also completed our third exercise in which required us to shoot a specific scene in a single shot with a set focal length and fixed position. We were allowed to pan yet we decided against it, opting to block our scene in a particular way and choose a location that allowed us to keep the frame still. I was our group’s camera operator or DOP and decided to shoot at a moderately wide 22mm at f/4 which gave the image a relatively large depth of field. This is what we wanted. As with a shallow depth of field the audience may not notice the character Rachel sneak up on the other character Barney, who was the focal point of the image. This was an interesting exercise that I found to be a great opportunity develop my skills as a camera operator and further my knowledge of dictating the light within the image to suit a desired purpose.

In week 2 of the course we largely discussed lighting through the eyes of the camera. We looked over the use of a variety of different camera settings that dictate its ability to handle light and exposure. Robin touched on the use of Zebras in which are overlayed stripes on the viewfinders image that indicate exposure levels. It is a function that can aid operators with more tools to correctly expose their image. Zebras are a very useful tool, especially when dealing with smaller displays. You can also dictate the level of exposure these zebras appear over. An example of this would be the use of zebras at 70% which would usually indicate correct exposure on Caucasian skin or 80% for darker skin tones.

Robin also gave us a tutorial to correctly set up a tripod and camera (Sony EX3). We spent a bit of time going over the viewfinder and adjusting it to accurately display the image the sensor is capturing.  The manipulation of brightness and contrast to correctly expose the black and white colour bars on the monitor proved a great way to get an accurately exposed display. As I’ve used the camera before I already knew my way around it but I found Robin’s comments about the viewfinder settings to be very useful information that will translate across all professional camera equipment.

We spent a lot of time going over depth of field and how it affects the image. Depth of field is the area within the image that appears in focus. Although technically, only 1 specific distance is in complete focus, the manipulation of aperture, focal length, and the position of the camera in relation to the subject can dictate the area that appears sharp within the frame

Today we also completed Exercise 2. In this exercise we were tasked to take control of our depth of field and in groups film the same medium sized close up with 2 different depths of field. The first shot with the shallowest depth of field achievable and the second with the longest depth of field. We shot our first shot far away from the subject at 70mm with the iris wide open, this proved to create an extremely shallow depth of field. We then shot our second shot extremely close to the subject with our lens at 12mm and the iris down to f/5 which created a very large depth of field. I thought this exercise was great way to practice our use of manual controls on the camera and test our knowledge of what the manual controls actually do.

Today we completed my first workshop of this studio; Film Light. As Robin quickly pointed out, this class is about so much more than using lights.After my initial introduction to the course, I’m of the opinion to say it’s about learning to control the light for a desired purpose rather than learning to engineer lights to brighten a subject.  Now this can be done through lights but can also be done through dictating the light at hand. As this studio moves on I’d love to continue to look at this class through this point of view and continue to develop my understanding of film production lighting.

Through the completion of this studio I hope to have a firm grasp of lighting terminology and understand the thought processes that would go into lighting a scene or a subject. I would also like to have some knowledge and physical experience with the operation of professional equipment. Whether that be with professional lights, stands, bounce cards and even cameras.  Ultimately understanding the creative and practical reasons behind the use of light beyond the basic terminology of “It’s too dark, we’ll need a light”, is the primary goal in the completion of this studio.

Changing the way we think about light is also something Robin touched on today. Questioning our thinking towards the use of light as an expressive element in film production. Understanding that light is everywhere and, as filmmakers, we can use this light to develop emotion, mood or style is a critical component of the course. The absence of light can be considered “lighting” just as much as the presence of it and no lighting is “incorrect” as long as its achieving its intended purpose were phrases that took me by surprise. My introduction to the studio was great and I’m excited to continue to develop my knowledge of theoretical film lighting while learning the practical skills to put these into effect.