Lighting & Filming

WELL THIS WAS STRESSFUL.

So I'll give a brief bit of description of our process and the difficulties. But to be honest, I would rather focus on the post production and get this finished on time rather than write this blog post, so I'm going to keep it short and sweet. And I'm going to say if you want to see photo's of this then please see the lighting folder.

So Monday I went and took out, two tripods from photography, a slider a head and a decent lens from Matt. Then I proceeded to use three Dedo lights around the set.

Then I didn't even know where to begin setting up the lighting. I've never lit a set of this size (everything I'd done previously has been a lot smaller and has required just a desk lamp), and even though we'd had the 3 point lighting induction it was really difficult to know what to do when you're actually doing it. It's like all that knowledge flies out of your head. So I'd booked with Matt Burton to help set up the lights, because I know that's what he revels in. I hope my tutors didn't take offence for me going to Matt for this stuff, I just find that when I do certain things with him I actually take it in easier and remember what he's saying. I really wanted to focus on edge lighting and it's like we are on a more similar wave length so he gets what I was after, also because this was done 3/4 days before deadline there was always other people constantly needing help so it was just easier to book a few hours with him get him to teach it so I remember it and can do it myself next time. So he came up we did some test shots of several scenes, and then I tried to re set them up and I plowed through and I think I must have been rushing the shots, because I went and looked at the footage with Matt and it was pretty shocking. Such terrible lighting. I might have shed a few tears, freaking out. But it's because I really wanted to do Anna's models justice more than anything. I also wanted it to be dark and broody. But in hindsight (even though I could have used this time to do some serious blogging) I'm really glad this happened because I learnt so much from it. From the importance of lighting and ISO and aperture (I already kind of knew this but now I really understand how it affects the difference in picture) to where the lights needs to be so you don't get flat lighting (on the corners). In the end I got Matt to come back again on the wednesday, and he helped set up an overall lighting setup that we could use for every scene. I'd bought some Foam Board because he'd suggested bouncing off that and that was the final result. See photo's for our test set ups and how they developed. We tried a few different positions of it clamped up to give it a fill light. Then I just moved a flagged dedo around to create edge lighting. Then for the door scene we used the LED light behind the door to get the silhouettes.

I also borrowed a HDMI screen off Matt B because our set was a bit too big for the area we were filming in. As for the slider, it was a bit of a failure. It wasn't really long enough, or able to get close enough to get smooth enough shots. I think next time, I'd go down to wood work and make my own tracks that could go in the set to get more sophisticated shots, with the railings in the middle of the set we just couldn't get into it well enough.

Also during filming the set walls fell down, so I borrowed some sandbags from Matt to be sure that it wouldn't happen again.

I kind of just took the lead and got on with it when it came to filming the Shots. A part of me felt bad for not including Anna, but she did say she wanted to do certain poses so I did make sure I did these shots with her, but because she has so far to travel she normally gets in early and I stay late, so I really wanted to get them all done on wednesday because I knew there was going to be a fuckload of post work and editing to do. I really didn't want to leave less than a day for this. At the same time though I found that when I was doing it by myself I was a lot faster at it, if we had more time then I would of been more than happy to do it really slowly and show Anna how to do it effectively, and I plan to on Monday for PPP but for the sake of the deadline and the fact that I know she doesn't enjoy this part of the process and isn't enthusiastic about it. I don't feel the need to do that, when I actually enjoy it I might as well just get on with it, was my rationale, and I'm so chuffed with some of the compositions of the shots. The one of the pigs heads swinging on the railing is so arty, I'm just like that's the dog's bollocks fiona well done. Some of them are shocking though so I didn't use them but I took enough to be able to make that judgement which is good.

I have to say I was a bit heart broken when I came in the next morning chipper as a Bee and I could tell Anna really really wasn't impressed with them. She said they were too dark. And I can understand why she was a bit gutted because she's spent ages modelling them and wanted them to be in bright light to show off her modelling skills, but I just thought that's why you get the lovely softbox photos of the bits to show off in your portfolio, this is about a really dark subject, it suits being dark and edgy. But because of this I was extra meticulous with the post production to make sure she was happy with it. (She was really impressed in the end I think she was just a bit stressed about it, which I can understand because I did take the control off her from this point, but because of the task I had for my disney interview I knew I'd be able to boss the editing side).