Practical Task - Lighting - Louise Hyam

For my practical task I decided to experiment with lighting and the effectiveness of shadows as in the opening scene of our film we have decided to use shadow effects so for my practical task I decided to do lighting checks with this. For our opening scene there is a murderer and his face is never shown for my practical task I decided to try and make shadows using a person and a hoodie with low lighting.

First of all I got someone to put on the hoodie after that I positioned them so that only the outline of the face could seen to create more of an effect so that it was just a hoodie and an outline of the face. I then used low lighting to ensure that the outline of the face stood out in the low lighting making it more creepy as the face is never shown.

This is the outcome of my practical task experimenting with lighting and creating a shadow:

 

These two pictures above are showing a shadow created by the low lighting and it is shadow of the outline of the face and someone wearing a hoodie.

These two pictures above are showing someone wearing a hoodie and no face being shown at all in this shot. This shot would be used in a long shot from behind in our opening scene to show the killer with the hoodie on from behind with low lighting to make it more scary.

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These two photos above are showing more of the outline of the face and more of the face is shown but the lighting is still low enough for the person to still be unrecognisable which is effective in a slasher because it doesn't give anything away. This was done by pulling the hoodie that the person was wearing further back so more features were shown and more of the face was shown but the lighting was kept low enough so the person is still unrecognisable.

 

 

The things that I think went well with this practical task is that the shadow is very effective because I made sure that the lighting was low enough and that the hood was pulled back just enough to show the outline of the face to make it more creepy. However for the real thing to improve I would make sure that there is nothing else that is going to cause a shadow within the filming and that it is only the shadow of the persons facial outline that can be seen.

Practical Task - Lighting Checks

For this Practical Task I decided to look into lighting. As we have decided the location for our film opening I felt it would be useful to scout the location a couple times at different times in the day. This would allow me to look at how light or dark it is and work out what the best time to film would be to ensure it looked dark and eerie when filming, but also ensure that everything was still easily visible in the images and videos.

I visited the location twice at 10am and 3pm and compared the lighting in the images I took. Here are a few images from when I scouted the location at 10am.

When visiting the location at this time the lighting was very bright, making the woods feel very open but also creating lots of dark shadows in the woods, although these shadows would be effective when filming there wasn't enough to create the dark and eerie atmosphere needed for our film opening as the light shone through the trees and lit the woods very well. As we want our film opening to look as though it is set in the night we must film at a later time when it is slightly darker to make it look like dusk in our film opening, making this an unsuitable time to film our opening scene.

I then visited the location again at 3pm and took the following shots:

At this time the location was a lot darker and the light was very dull and low. This created an eerie and creepy atmosphere. This was further enhanced by the cloud cover which made the woods darker. I think that this would be a suitable time to film our opening scene as the lighting was low and dull creating the atmosphere we want in our opening scene but will still allow us to ensure that the filming is successful and that everything can easily be seen when watched back. If we wanted the atmosphere of the location to be slightly different then we could prepare to film slightly earlier or later than this time in order to get the lighting that we need and want when filming.

I feel that we should visit the location slightly earlier than 3pm as the light quickly fades and it becomes dark very quickly at the location. I feel that in order to film everything in one session then we would need to visit the woods at roughly 1pm. Although this may affect the lighting slightly, it will mean that we have more time to film our film opening and ensure that we get everything completed.