Planning: Lighting

For my music video, I am hoping to achieve a soft lighting on my subject and the surroundings. I think that with the time of the year, it's going to be a relatively easy task to film in cloudy weather conditions as it is a very common weather for a country like the UK. Additionally, I get a lot of opportunities to film as the weather conditions will alter rarely.

I will do most of my shooting indoors. Such as the setting of the music video, will be taking place at my house. However, one of the struggles that I will definitely approach is achieving the right lighting from the pet and the location as they're going to be filmed separately. In order to do so, I will hope to film from different angles and get plenty of footage so that even though the source of light is coming from the wrong direction, I will have an additional footage that may match the environment's conditions. This way, I will avoid the need to come back and obtain more footage.

I think that when filming the animals I may have to do it across a few days rather than getting everything done in one day as the animals may get tired of the process of getting the footage and may become unresponsive when necessary. The weather won't impact this progress too heavily as it will be cloudy during the time of filming, so I won't have to worry about the weather as much as the time of day as it lasts shorter in comparison to the long nights.

Because I have little experience with lighting, I thought of looking at some tutorials on YouTube and see how other media-based people go about this area. Here, I have found a simple tutorial that includes the use of regular household items and working with the environment to perfect the lighting on the subject.
I decided to have a go at some of the steps spoken about in the video. Although my equipment isn't as good-quality as theirs, I wanted to see how some tricks alter the lighting surrounding the subject.

Step 1. Adjust tripod

Because I used my sister, Emily, as the subject for this task, I had to readjust the height of the tripod so that the camera was eye-level with her for a satisfactory angle.

Other things I had to adjust were things like clearing up any distractions that may show within the screen, such as the TV that appears slightly in the shot. I turned it off so that there were no movement occurring around that area.

Step 2. Improve attention on the subject

At the start, the shot felt rather flat. Emily was too close to the background, which, in a way, made her blend in with the surroundings. But in this task, I have to make her stand out against her surroundings, so I moved her away from the wall and gave her some space and depth to the shot. At first, I considered the christmas lights to be some sort of distraction, but now that I have readjusted the shot, I'm rather fond of the dotted lights in the background.

Step 3. Zoom in to blur the background

Unfortunately, my camera isn't capable of blurring the background unless I was to really step back and zoom in but there wasn't enough room for me to do so. However, I still zoomed in on the subject to get a hint of sharpness in Emily and some blurring in the background.

Step 4. Darken the background

This source of light, as stated in the video, is titled key light. The source comes from the window on the right of Emily. I was able to drag the curtains across to darken the background but leave some natural light falling on Emily. With these adjustments, Emily stood out more against the dark environment behind her, giving her greater focus from the audience.

Step 5. Light up the shadowed areas of the face

For this stage, I thought I'd borrow some of my mum's lighting equipment to apply some fill light on the subject, however the results weren't satisfactory. The mounted light on the tripod was easy to adjust the direction of lighting, nevertheless the effect was too sharp and too strong, lighting up not only Emily, but the entire room - something I don't want to achieve as everything in the shot gathers attention from its audience.

In this case, I decided to soften the light by adding a layer of translucent fabric, but there were little changes.

I added a second layer of the same material but the impact remained almost the same. I shifted the source of light slightly away from the background and faced it more towards Emily, but the colour of the light made the shot look rather cold, and in a way it made the christmas lights loose their colour and purpose of them being there because the colour temperature they were emitting were warm. In the end, the balance of the two was interrupted.

So, in the end I decided to go with the tin foil idea like mentioned in the tutorial. I attached it to the already-set-up light using laundry clips and readjusted its direction ever so slightly to get the best result out of it. I managed to get a hint of light reflecting off the tin foil and onto the shadowed area of her face, however she still appears dark in comparison to the background.

Step 6. Soften the shadows further

There still isn't enough lighting to contrast Emily against the background, so I chose a desk lamp that can be easily manoeuvred to get the best effect possible. I placed the back light on the table that stands on the left of Emily so that I could apply soft lighting on the rest of the shadowed areas. I had to shade some of the light coming from the lamp so that it had little impact on the background behind the subject, remaining the focus on my sister.

Behind the Scenes shots

Although I'm not featuring any people in my music video, some techniques may not come in handy. But during this task I have gained a better understanding on how different tricks impact on the subject. I have also learnt how I can control the balance of lighting between the subject and its surroundings with the equipment I used for this task. I may not use all the techniques together when shooting my music video, but I will definitely be thinking about the shot more carefully and perhaps use some skills I experienced during the task to develop the quality of the shots and interpret a feel of professionalism within the production.

I'm not too satisfied with the result, neither am I disappointed with it. I would say that I was limited with my camera as it isn't particularly an advanced piece of technology that I used to shoot my footage. However, if the end result is still not good enough, I can always adjust the settings of the footage later on when editing in Photoshop, such as using the effects like Luna curves and Colour Correctors to adjust the colouring.

What I will have to be really aware of is the amount of impact I make on the environment. I may get the best lighting on the shots around my house, but this will make it more difficult when trying to get the lighting on the cats and the dog to match. So, I will have to keep the changes minimum yet enough to achieve the best quality of the shots.