Advanced Lighting workshop

On Friday my class were given an advanced lighting workshop in which we were shown different lights and how they can be used. We were first taught about health and safety with regards to the lighting. It is important that when we are in the studio we are fully aware of any wires connected to the lights so we do not trip over them and break them. We also need to be weary of the fact that the bulbs in the lights, especially the redhead lights can burst which is loud and quite bright. 

Therefore both Blonde’s and redheads have a protective mesh over the bulb so the glass doesn’t burst all over the people in the studio.

A redhead light more specifically comes straight out of the bulb and hits the actor; it is quite bright and concentrated. Changing the angle of which position the light is in can change the shadows reflecting on the actor which can change the mood of the scene. Putting a trace on, which is a waxy piece of paper can stop the light from being really harsh/ bright.

A blonde is fairly similar to a red head, except it is even brighter and bigger.

Another lighting technique was using a soft box. This is where we put a theatre flat with a plastic sheet in front of a redhead light. The light gets broken up through the gel which gives it a much softer shine.

A florescent light is a long beamed white light of which you can put different gels onto. It is however hard to tell the colours of the gel apart in normal lighting, so you can shine your phone torch inside the gel and it gives a clearer image of the colour. 

When setting up fluorescent lighting, you don’t want to put the lights right next to each other if they are different colours, because the colour will just blend together. You may want to put one as a key light and one as a back light, you can also incorporate them into scenes.

A key light is the main light source on set focusing on the object. A fill light is used to ‘fill,’ the absence of light from a certain angle and gets rid of unwanted shadows that may be in the object. Backlight is shone from the back of the set behind the point of focus/ object and it helps differentiate the point of focus from the background. Blondes are typically used for this job. This lighting technique is called three point lighting.

‘Beauty lighting,’ is a lighting technique use in the film industry. One kind of beauty lighting is using only back light. By adjusting the exposure making it darker on the camera, it makes more things in focus, while making the exposure lighter puts only the object in focus. Extra light however may come into the lens, so if that does happen we can use a MATTE box to get rid of the unwanted light.