Planning: Lighting

I practised with the camera and lighting equipment so I could teach myself how to use it all for when I come to creating my CD Digi pack and magazine advertisement as I might consider having a photoshoot of my artist in different lighting, in addition to the type of lighting I want to use for my music video. 

I am thinking that during my music video I will have the artist singing in front of a plain back ground switching between it being blank and having a projection. When the background is blank I want to have quite dark lighting to emphasise the sad tone to the lyrics of the song. Due to this I not only experimented with basic lighting with the light boxes placing them in various positions to see how to achieve natural but professional looking lighting with out it looking too artificial. 

First I researched various types of lighting such as low key and high key lighting to get  better understanding of what type would be more suitable for emphasising the tone of the song. 

Low Key lighting: Low key is a style of lighting that uses a hard light source to enhance shadows, often used to coney night time, or to isolate a subject to create a more dramatic atmosphere in a scene. This type of lighting may also be used to reflect a character's emotions and could also be used to make a scene more sinister. Rather tan using traditional three-point lighting, to achieve this low key lighting you would use only one main key light (usually a fill light and sometimes suing a reflectorThe Complete Beginner's Guide To Shooting Low Key) which creates contrast due to the high light ratio and dark tones from filming in at night or in shade or dim lighting. 

High Key Lighting: High key is a style of lighting that reduces the light ratio in a scene which can be used in day or night scenes or to create an upbeat/airy atmosphere. To achieve high key lighting, you use multiple sources of light, usually using three-point lighting however using soft lights creates the same effect. Unlike using low key lighting, you don't have to makes adjustments for each scene you shoot however it means that shits might look less dramatic. 

I feel that using High Key lighting would be a lot easier to use for all of the shots in the music video however I don't think that doing so will be as effective for the song I chosen. Additionally there are sections of the song that sound sad and I like the dramatic effect that Low Key lighting creates as I think that this could emphasise this. 

Here are some of the articles I found during my research of different lighting and techniques: 

. The Complete Beginner's Guide To Shooting Low Key - I found this article quite helpful as it covered the basics and also ways of shooting in Low Key on a budget which could be quite useful. 

. Using lighting style to create mood: High-key and low-key lighting

. Lighting - High Key and low Key - DIY Photography

I looked at lighting for photography as well as filming as I could use similar lighting for the CD Digipack and magazine advertisement as I will in the music video, as this might help to create an image for my artist, because a lot of artists and bands have their own motifs when it comes to how they and their music is shown in the media. One example of this ids the 1975 who's music videos are filmed in often low key lighting or in black and white.

Here are some examples of the use of lighting and colour in different 1975 music videos:

                1st Album                                                                                                1st Album                    

               2nd Album                                                                                              2nd Album

Here are examples of the use of lighting and colour in different 1975 album covers:

               1st Album                                                                                                2nd Album

        

As you can see the band has it's own motifs that correlate according to their albums; the black and white music videos from their first album (The 1975 (2013)) which is also black and white with low key lighting, and the use of one single colour in the music videos for songs from their second album (I it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it (2016)), which was done created through the lights and in some videos colour grading.

Equipment:

. Backdrop - White cloth 

. Soft Lights x2

. K180A  Light

. Stands 

First of all we set up the stand for the back drop, and hung and clipped the white cloth on it. 

due to not being put away properly previously it was very creased making the light reflect unevenly which appeared very clearly on camera, however this can be fixed by ironing the cloth beforehand. On the other hand, I may use a plain white wall or surface to use in stead of a back drop because I might think about filming the shadows and I feel that in addition to having a clearer background, that the shadows would be a lot sharper and I would use the lighting to help me do this. This is something that I would like to test out next regarding lighting. 

When setting up the lights, I used Two Point lighting due to having backdrop set up where a back light would be if I were using Three Point lighting. This mean that I had the two soft boxes set up either side of the camera facd in the direction of the person I was photographing, who I also adjusted the height of the lights according to. 

Once I set up the lights I then practised taking photos I could learn to position the lights according to how what lighting I wanted to achieve and what worked and what didn't in terms of how the lighting would look on camera. 

In addition to practising using the lights, I thought I would experiment with coloured light because although I haven't experimented with colour grading yet, this could be a useful alternative that could create a similar effect. I did this by fixing coloured sheets onto the front of the light so that when it shone through it would give off that colour. 

When experimenting with the use of coloured light, I set up the K180A Light in between the camera and the soft box to the right of it so that it could reflect onto one side of the face to create a very subtle effect. However, I want to try this again when trying Low Key lighting as I could only get a weaker colour against their face due to the High Key lighting of where the lighting was set up. Overall, I really like the idea of using coloured lights in my music video as I think that I could it to convey a characters emotion to an audience due to connotations of certain colours (Red=danger etc.). 

Due to having a large window next to the lighting set up this caused a lot of natural light to come through which meant that the lighting of the corridor was already quite High key so I didn't get a chance to test lower key lighting as we weren't in a dark enough environment. Due to this I might have to find a darker area such as the school theatre to experiment with Low Key lighting. 

I experimented with the proxemics of the lights to the person I was photographing to see the effects would have.

The closer the lights were to the person the harsher and brighter the light looked on their face, I think this would be a good effect to use in a flash back of a memories it looks very intense so to the audience would be very distinct that that section of the music video was not taking place in the present.