Directions: Lighting Workshops 1 & 2

For this workshop we spent two days in the studio with Ferg working with the lighting kits and accessories.

Day 1:

On the first day we spent some time looking at Three-Point Lighting. This involved looking at the key light, fill light, and backlight.

Three-Point Lighting

Ferg began by showing us how to set the lights up. This involved looking at health and safety, in terms of cabling and the use of sand bags to weigh equipment down. We then set up a three point light set-up. We looked at the use of barn doors to help narrow the light and we looked at the flood and spot settings, which are pretty self explanatory.

We also looked at settings on the camera that could help with lighting. This meant looking at changing the f stop levels, ISO and exposure to see how it affected the lighting.

Ferg then told us about different filters and gels we can use to change the lighting set up. We looked at the use of ND filters to help lower the level of the light without affecting the colour. Similar to this we looked at Scrim which helps reduce the light level using different gauges. We also looked at daylight balancing filters that remove the yellow/orange colour that tungsten lights create. And finally we looked at a few accessories like Snoots, Flags & diffusers.

Then we went off to complete a task. The task was to create as many lighting set-ups as we could using the lights and there accessories. The results are in the video below.

Day 2:

On the second day we started to looking at imitating light set-ups from the Arri Lighting Handbook. This point of this was to test if we could create a specific set up, say if a director asked for it.

We started off by trying to recreate one set up as a whole group to help everyone get the idea. We found this difficult because the lights in the studio were affecting our lighting set-up and by the end of the activity we were close but it still wasn't quite there.

We then split off into groups and had a go ourselves. We looked through the handbook and picked a set-up each. Underneath a photo of the set-up was a description and plan view of the set up to help us recreate it.

The results are the last few clips in the video below:

Overall both workshops were very useful and taught me a lot about lighting I had never even considered. I also learnt about how much equipment goes into creating a simple three point setup. Lighting takes a long time to get right and so if you use it on a shoot you really have to think about time otherwise you may not finish your shoot in time. I found these sessions very fun and I learnt a hell of a lot about lighting. Although I am not going to use the lighting kits on this project, I will think about using them in the future.