2013 Media Language - Lighting 3 (Source & Colour)

So this workshop is all about "source" and "colour", the remaining two features of lighting, as described by Bordwell & Thompson in their book Film Art.

"Lighting can be characterised by its source. In making a documentary, the filmmaker may be obliged to shoot with the light available in the actual surroundings. Most fictional films, however, use extra light sources to obtain greater control of the image's look. In most fictional films, the table lamp and street lights you see in the mise-en-scene are not the principle source of illumination for the filming. Such visual sources of light, however, will serve to motivate the lighting decisions made in production. The film maker will usually strive to create a lighting design that is consistent with the source in the setting."

We start by making the assumption, depending on your lighting style, that any subject normally requires two light sources: a key light and a fill light. We've been over these before at AS so I'm hoping that much of this is familiar but as a reminder:

A key light provides the dominant illumination and normally casts the strongest shadows.

A fill light provides a less intense illumination which "fills in" and softens the shadows.

Classical Hollywood film making developed the custom of using three-point lighting, which we've also discussed before, but this needs to be used with care as lights may need to be moved depending on the position of the camera but continuity of lighting must be maintained.

And finally "colour"..... we tend to think of lighting as limited to two colours - white for sunlight and yellow for artificial lamps but in practice it is a bit more complicated than that. Have a look at this link to http://www.mediacollege.com/ for more information.

Colour Temperature Chart

So, depending on your light source you may well be mixing different colours of light which can have aesthetic qualities you'd like to avoid. But on the other hand carefully choreographed positioning of lighting can also be part of your style!

Other useful websites:
primary-film-focus
cinematographynut