Minor Project: Lighting set up

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, my aim is not to improve my camera work and lighting skills in this module however, it can be said that both of these can add to a performance if done correctly. As such, we took the time to light the scene properly and mimic the shots as best we could without spending an unnecessary amount of time in comparison to the pay off. So we spent a good amount of time lighting the scene, we did this because when it comes to the real thing we want it to feel like a complete film shoot so the actors are as close to a fully functional film shoot as possible so that anything I learn can be carried over to future shoots. Anyway, to get back to the point of this post, I am simply writing this to evidence the lighting that we did and how close I feel we got to the source material and also how we might improve it going forward.

This is the first lighting set up for the Mid on Mr Holden (the Blade Runner), for this Liam used a red head pointing from the side to simulate the big window in the real scene, this was then covered with scrim to disperse and dampen the light. The light next to this was another red head with a blue gel to act as a fill light to give the dusk effect of the scene by adding blue highlights and to slightly fill some shadow on this side and accentuate shadows on the other side.

 This is the original shot.

This is our recreation of the shot.

I think that when you consider that the cinemascope black bars will crop down our shot more, I feel that we got the framing pretty close in all honesty. The lighting too is pretty close, the only issue I would potentially point out is that perhaps our shadows are a little bit too strong and we could have maybe done with another fill light on the opposite side just to add some of the detail back to that side of Liam's face, otherwise I would say we did quite a good job. One thing I will also point out is the background, it will become more of a problem when we see the other shots and their completely different background that the green curtain is a bit of an issue. But all in all, I am a fan of this shot, I think we did a good job.

This is the second lighting set up which covers Shaun's side of the scene and lights his face in a similar way to how we lit Liam, the set up was the same just flipped, nothing special.

 This is the second shot we tried to mimic

Again, if we factor in the black bars, this shot is almost spot on, we really benefitted from having the images in front of us to really nail the framing. Aside from this, I feel the lighting was a little off on this one, the shadow is less 50/50 than on the original, in the original shot there is almost a line down his face that the shadow forms, on Shaun the ration is more 60/40 light to dark, and again, like with the last shot the shadow is potentially a little too intense. All that being as it may, it is a very good and solid recreation of the shot.

 This was the last shot we attempted.

This was the final shot we attempted and it used the same lighting as the previous one so the issues here are the same, the only thing to mention is the shot itself which is almost spot on, potentially the angle is a little off but I think it might be the shadow or the shape of Shaun's face that makes me think this way, in actual fact I think that the shot is fine. It has the same issue of a too harsh shadow and an off ratio of shadow to light on the face but again this is a great shot and I would be happy to take this forward to the real thing if we just correct those minor issues.