Lighting defines the genre of your film. Whether it’s a horror, a thriller, a science fiction or a romantic comedy – lighting is key.
When preparing to make my short film I Did which I released on the channel last week, which if you haven’t seen go and check that out now as I’m about to spoil everything, I created a mood board of films I wanted to emulate.
And actually there were no films on my mood board. Instead there were tv shows. I wanted I Did to feel like an episode from a series that set everything up but tied everything up just as well but so as you felt you had known these characters for years.
So my two main inspirations for lighting were ‘Gavin and Stacey’ and ‘Him and Her’, two BBC3 sitcoms. They were the type of story I wanted to tell. But I watched them again and took screen grabs to see how they lit their shows.
Every light had a purpose, a motivation for being there and you never once questioned it. But it was also very natural.
Now I shot I Did back in 2015 when I didn’t have the lighting I have now, so I had a 250w flourescent softbox & 4 125w flourescent softboxes all daylight balanced with a cri of 80. Looking back, I had some serious green costs to clear up. But this is what I had.
We were also fortunate that it was sunny outside and that gave us a good amount of natural light, enough for me to use the lights I had to enhance what was there but not completely control it sadly.
As I had quite a few lights I was able to light whole scenes and then move the camera around freely without having to re-rig between set ups. This saved us a lot of time and kept the days moving very fluidly.
Lighting was really important to me and it was key that we got a nice evenly lit locations which had justified lighting – or a purpose to the light.
I learnt so much making this short film and it’s taken me nearly 2 years to not only release the film but get plans going for another short film.
That’s something that will appear on this channel in the next few months hopefully and I’m going to be working on another short film as a DOP and that one is a horror which in itself should present lots of new lighting challenges.
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To see what kit I used to make ‘I Did’ see my Kit Page
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