In our last short film, four scenes out of six were shot without adding any lighting
at all. So how can we make the most of the light that we
already have?
On the first day of the shoot, we arrived at the Red Rose Tandoori take away, all set
to rig a bunch of lights for the scene. But, JP our cinematographer noticed there
was a light fixture that actually was in a really good position for a keylight, so he
suggested that we could actually shoot the scene using available light.
So that's exactly what we decided to do, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
First we got the windows blocked off using black card, since they were completely flooding
the room with light. Then we tried out some different gels on the
light to make the foreground warmer than the background, more orange.
After changing the white balance on the camera to match the gelled light, that cancelled
out the orange, and also meant that the background (which was daylight) turned quite blue. Then
we removed one of the fluorescent lights in the kitchen, which meant that (except for
a couple of hotspots) the background was now darker and bluer than the foreground.
Separating the foreground or the background through color or brightness is just one of the
many ways we can add depth to an image. But what if we wanted to go even simpler,
what if we didn't want to change anything at all with the lighting?
For this scene, we made use of the natural sunlight on a cloudy day.
If the sun had been in a different position, then this whole section could have been way
too bright, or maybe this whole area over here would have been too dark, meaning that
we might have needed to rotate the whole scene around and film from a different direction,
depending on where the sun was. You can actually find out exactly where the
sun will be by typing the location into google earth, and it’ll show you the direction
of the sun at the exact time of your shoot. You can even find out what time golden hour
will be, when the sun is low in the sky and everything looks kind of magical.
But I personally don’t think that the sunset look suits every scene - in my opinion, it’s
best used for that kind of summer’s evening, relaxed, playful, beer commerical kind of
vibe. And this scene was not about any of those
things - it’s about a warning, which is why I felt like I would have been a mistake
to shoot this with a nice kind of sunset in the background.
But that's just my preference, of course there are no rules at all when it comes to this
kind of stuff.
Scene four was similar, the sun position was good, providing a nice keylight for our main
character, and again I wanted that cloudy, muted look.
But of course shooting in natural light - nature doesn't have to follow your shooting schedule,
it can change at any point. So we kept having problems, where the sun
would come out from behind the clouds. We’d wait fifteen minutes, and then have
a mad rush to try and get a take in before the sun came out again.
It was really slowing us down, and the sky was only getting clearer and clearer.
The pressure was rising because we had another scene to shoot straight after this, so we really couldn’t
afford to waste time waiting for clouds. Then, Anton, our production assistant, which
is the lowest ranking job on the set, he suggested why don’t we just move the shoot over a
couple of metres that way? And I was like - sorry Anton, we’re actually
in the middle of.. And then I realised where he was pointing - it was a very similar area,
but the difference was a massive building that was actually creating a permanent shadow
from the sun. If we moved over there, we wouldn’t have
to wait for cloud cover, we could shoot no matter what.
So we went with his idea, and we all moved over a couple of feet. And there were two
things I learned from that: Firstly, you never know where a good idea
is gonna come from. And secondly, it's so easy to get bogged down
by a problem and trying to fix it, but sometimes the best solution is just to step back, look
at your options, and just completely avoid it. Completely avoid the problem.
My name’s Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide and i’ll see you next week.