GRAD SHOW: CREWING FOR TJ

I sure have been busy these last two terms, and when TJ asked me to gaffer for his grad film I had to say yes. We had many meetings as a crew to discuss the upcoming shoot and looked through all the pre production. It was super thorough, and so instantly I knew what TJ wanted me to do. Myself and TJ had meetings to talk lighting, gels, colour, equipment and pre lights so I was all up to speed with everything that was needed of me. We arranged a pre light and I felt that helped a lot and reassured us both that we could do it. We had four shoot days which seemed like a lot, but they were super crammed on the day, yet still a lot of fun. I feel it went well the whole shoot, despite the fact that lots of the equipment was faulty or broken, but we managed to resolve it all. I feel that I did my job well as a gaffer and gave TJ what he wanted, he seemed pleased with the lighting outcome so that was reassuring. I tried my best to keep the lighting as similar as possible when I had to change the lights around. There were a few difficulties as the space on the third and fourth day was super cramped, so some of the lighting doesn't match up as nicely as I wanted. But it isn't unfix able in post production colour grading. 

After the shoot was over, TJ asked me if I would like to edit and I said yes of course because it was a great opportunity and felt like I was up to the task. However I got a week into it and had to go to hospital with heart problems relating to stress and felt that maybe I had taken on too much in one term. So after discussion TJ handed the edit over to Nina and Rufaro. I am dissapointed in myself that I couldn't see the edit the whole way through but if I had continued then I know I would have made myself more ill. Overall I enjoyed working on this shoot so much and love helping others and getting stuck in doing what I love, and I can't wait to see the final piece. Below are only a few images I took, there will be some more BTS coming as Preston took those pictures. 

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

STUDIO SHOOT: PRE LIGHT

After all the building it was time for our pre light! I was a little nervous for today as I knew it was going to be super busy with dressing the set and sorting out my lights. I spoke with Anne about my lighting sketches, we then referred back to the picture and talked about the placement of my lights etc. Luckily Junaid is able to help me for pre light and the shooting days so we got to work creating the lighting we wanted. I firstly set up the lighting that would happen throughout most of the film. This took me an hour or so, as I was working with Junaid and Chris at this point so we were seeing what looked best and what I wanted.

We decided to have a light from behind the blinds to create a street light effect to show time of day was early evening. We used an orange gel on this too. We then set up the big light to create our fill for the set, this also had a very slight orange gel to it so it was more tungsten and had an orange glow. We included a light on top of the set with ND on the front to soften the light as this was acting as the light from the lamp on set.

 I was very happy with this set up so we moved on to the second set up which was a dramatic spotlight. This was quite straight forward as the director wanted it very theatrical, so we decided to turn all the other lights off and just have one rigged light on. We pulled the light down and adjusted the barn doors so there wasn't any spill over the back of the sofa or the coffee table which took a little once to get it perfect. But we got it and it looked really good, I was very pleased and it looked really theatrical and intense through the screen on the camera.

The next lighting set up was the red scene. The director wanted me to highlight the left corner in red where the character would get backed in to. I was unsure how to light the rest of the scene as it was meant to be surreal but I didn't want normal lighting to ruin the feeling. So Junaid, Chris and myself discussed different ways we could do this. We set the spotlight up first using a primary red gel and adjusted the barn doors so not much spill was on the rest of the walls. We were super happy with the spotlight and so was the director, so we moved on to the fill light for the set. We decided to use the fill that we had for our normal lighting set up and just put a scarlet red gel over the top of it, and had all the bars of light on to create enough light in the room for the camera to pick up. We felt it looked perfect, the director and I were happy so we settle for that lighting. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take many pictures of the red set up but I have a few.  

I hope you enjoy. Thank you

TUNGSTEN LIGHTS AND GREEN SCREEN

Today we had the privilege to have a whole day in the huge green screen studio.

Life's a Beach

We got to set up a green screen set, complete with a background to edit in in post production. Here was the set pictured right. I enjoy green screen a lot because of how versatile it makes one room. Just with a few lights and a green screen you can be anywhere you want. As having experience in green screen work this was a chance to explore more into green screens and getting the technique correct. lighting the background we used two lights, although I normally use three point lighting, we managed a very well and evenly lit background. We then had to light our actors and to also adjust the lighting on them so they would suit the background we would be putting in place in post production. They were going to be at a beach, so we had a spot light which replicated the sun and as it was a sunny day in the background we didn't have to do too much alterations to the brightness.

Leading Light 

In the morning we got to experiment with the beautiful Tungsten lights, being so interested in lights this was such an incredible opportunity. You can have such control over the mood, time of day and period just with lighting. We got in to our production groups and experimented with different shadows and highlights. Over the next few hours we found some really beautifully composed scenes just using this light, showing sadness, happiness, and suspicion. I thoroughly enjoyed this task as it was so hands on and could see the results of your hard work from directing the model and the light. I particularly enjoyed creating half shadows and silhouettes across the face, by having the model sat forwards, and the light at a 45 or 90 degree angle with the camera just underneath.

Black Jack

After this activity, we got in to bigger groups to create a moody, film noir scene of a poker game in a shady looking room. We weren't allowed to use sound so had to create this atmosphere just using lighting. We were able to find an over hanging light and rigged it to the lighting rig above us to hang over the table like in the image to the right:
We then had a main camera facing the card dealer, a second camera to the right of the card players so you could see them both, and then a third camera which was handheld so we could get some close up shots of the players cards, hands and expressions.

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.