Lighting Seminar

On friday we had a lighting seminar on how to use lights correctly during our films and how they would improve the quality of our footage. The use of good lighting can make our film go from looking home made to something quite professional. We had a lecture first which explained some of the technical terms and showed us some examples. We were told about Coherence, Colour Temperature and intensity.With coherence we were shown the difference between hard light and soft light . Hard light is a directional light source which is more focused and brings the detail as well as casting shadows. Soft light is a omni directional light source and gives softer edges as well as shadows.

We were shown different examples of lighting that we can use and also how to adjust the lighting using gels which can balance the light source.

We also had a chance to experiment with the equipment and were given a chance to try it for ourselves. We were put into groups and with some help and advice were able to set up the equipment satisfactorily.  We were given a camera to see how it looks on video and also to learn how to adjust the camera settings with the lighting setup such as the white balance and the iris . The iris controls how much light is let through the lens. The more the iris is opened the more light is let in.

The first light set up we had to do was 3 point lighting which consists of a key main light, a fill light for shadows and a back light.

                                                                      Key hard light:

Fill light - soft light 

Back light - hard light 

Afterwards we had to set up a low key light which usually just uses 1 or 2 lights. The aim was to keep the light focused on the person being interviewed in the shot and not have the background lightened up.

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