Lighting: Plan and Inspiration

Performance

The Pretty Reckless: Make Me Wanna Die

This spotlighting is particularly effective in illuminating certain parts of the singer. It is efficient as part of an  introduction as it keeps the allure of mystery around the singer, which is suitable for the genre.  As this was one of the bands main singles, it is probable that this may be the first video potential new fands see, so it would be important to keep their attention through intrigue as the music progresses.


We are particularly interested in this scene as it has a similar lighting and setting to a scene we will be shooting. The key lighting really illuminates the singers face and the additional spotlights in the background help illuminate the setting and give the shot more depth.




The Pretty Reckless: Heaven Knows 

We really liked this shot as it incorporates back-lighting and flares which we feel we would be able to easily recreate with a UV light. The spotlight in the background is very important in introducing the performer as the main figure and emphasizing star image so that the majority of the viewer's attention stays on her.





(Our Footage)

This was our first attempt at our performance scene.  We now see that the lighting we used was too harsh and makes the video look slightly amateurish.  In our final footage we will emulate The Pretty Reckless video by using a spotlight and back-lighting of a softer light.  However, as want to conform to the conventions of metalcore, we do not want to use too much of a golden light as we believe it will not fit in with the song's lyrics.

Narrative

The Wonder Years: Cigarettes and Saints

This video was the central inspiration for our own.  We loved the simplistic but effective performance shots and the successful use of back-lighting.  However, we were also inspired by the outside scenes and the use of sun as a predominant light. Unfortunately, as their video was filmed in America, presumably during summer, their available light was much greater than ours will be in Britain in November.

We tried to combat this by filming at golden hour, which actually worked very effectively. We were able to capture some brilliant shots basked in a rich golden light  and were even able to recreate a sun flare shot from the wonder years's (see above and beside).  Now, our main issue is simply finding another clear day to film at golden hour for our final footage.






In this shot the lighting is consistent with the scenes before.  We had an issue with this when filming our test footage as unfortunately, our golden hour did not last very long. There is very little we can do about this however so we will just have to film on a clear day and use additional filters and colour correction when editing to keep lighting consistent.



We did not use this editing on our practice footage as we wanted to see how much the lighting change would effect it.  Although it was not very noticeable we do believe it made our footage more amateurish.  Therefore, for our final footage we will place more emphasis on lighting to make sure it stays consistent and looks professional.

Our Lighting Choices

Performance

• Filmed in the dark
• Use street lamps to create a key light light
• Use UV torches for spotlighting and to create back-light

Inside the house

• In the bathroom: One lamp positioned above the actress, to her right (On a cupboard) and one positioned below the actress to her left (In shower area)
• In the bedroom: Two lamps on either side of bed and maybe and additional on the dresser when she is getting made up. 
• Main lights - Not to be used in bathroom as will create too much of a glare but may be used in the bedroom if the lamps are too dim. 
• Soft Lighting - All the lighting we use will create a soft light which can then be manipulated later

Outside (Running Scenes)

• Golden hour - To recreate the best lighting we need to use this to be able to film natural light flares and a soft glow.
• Additional spotlights - We will take extra lighting as a precaution, in case golden hour fails us and we need to illuminate different parts of the character's face.  However, this will just be for backup and not to be used as definite lighting.