I was just searching through the forum archives trying to find stuff about lighting... seeing as I know sweet bugger all about it, and resulted in... yep, you guessed it, sweet bugger all!
Do any of you know good tutorials on lighting setups? I keep reading how important lighting is, yet I can't find any tutorials on the subject.
If you don't have fancy studio lights, and are trying to make as much of the available natural lighting, use a reflector. Quite simply, this can just be a sheet of white card that is held up near to your actors ro reflect some of the available diffused light back onto the foreground to help with the image definition and make it stand out more from the background. Reflectors are great for filming night-scenes and pretty much any low-light scene where you don't want to flood the area with un-natural light and spoil the ambience.
I'll join you in saying I know cr** about lighting, but what I had been doing, is useing a lot of candles, it seems that they can be picked up, Halogen lights, when I needed a wash, and propane lanterns, but those give out to much background hissing to be effective.
ALso watch out for different colour casts given by different types of lighting. They may seem to have the same colour when you look at them, but on film you'll get differenty results. Fortuinately I believe that in digital editing, it's easy to make corrections to the colour cast, so you don't need filters on the camera.
The link that Syrus posted shows the basic diagram for studio lighting.
Use lots of light, even for night shots. I have learned over time that shows are actually much harsher during night than during the day.
This is one book that I have, and I've found it to be the best for covering lighting and almost all other aspects in filmography for a reasonable price. The author shows many diagrams and has many good explainations. That is my recommendation.
I've spent hours in bookstores looking through various material and resources. I would check out magazines and websites, like the one Syrus posted. Or even spend some time in a book store reading about it. There are just way too many different methods to lighting scenes and subjets to get into it here.
yeah i have gone through books at barnes and noble and have found some interesting material. i'd reccommend books too. i read books that were for absolute beginer filmmakers to very experienced amatuer filmmakers. definitely worth a look. i just sat in the store and read them to figure out which ones would be useful to me.
By the way, most camcorders have an accessory point for an external light, specifically for doing dark shots. You can get these from your camcorder suppliers!
Syras, thanks for the link to the tutorial, I actually remember seeing this a while ago when I was first looking into film production.
The other day I bought three books from Amazon:
-The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook
-Setting Up Your Shots: Great Camera Moves Every Filmmaker Should Know
-Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low Budget Movies
Hopefully they will have some stuff on lighting in them too.
i have one good tip that i learnt the hard way with regards to light at night
(i'm going to use a little scale in this explanation 1 = pitch black & 10 = looking into a magnesium flare, thus other intensities vary)
if u film at night try to have a light intensity of about 2 or 3 otherwise your digital camera will attempt to make the black information itself = BAD
but if you light it with low intensity lights (or use reflectors) you can darken it in post which is much easier than trying to get it right on set and screwing up
if ur not sure, assume the worst
Um... that is a little difficult to understand, but I think I know what you are saying. Simply put: Always make sure you have enough light to sufficiently expose your picture.
