Post 11: Advanced Production Skills Workshop 1

One way of creating a distinctive style for our short film is the lighting and how it is and so forth. To help us succeed in this our class had a workshop put on for us with a discussion about lighting. We looked at Double Indemnity (Film Noir) and the 1940 classic Rebbecca to help us learn a bit more about lighting in films. We also watched Lemon by Hollis Frampton, watching these resources will help our group greatly when it comes to filming.

The first source we studied for lighting was Double Indemnity a 1944 American Film Noir. Film Noir was a cinematic term used to describe the Hollywood crime dramas. They were about hard-hearted, disolutional male characters who encounters a beautiful seductive woman. She turns him into being the fall guy this usually follows to a murder happening. First of all we spoke about different types of shadows. Cast and attached shadows are the two main types of shadows. A cast shadow is created by an object blocking a light source and 'casts a shadow'. An attached shadow occurs when lighting falls to an illiterate part of an object because of the shape and size. From watching the film I learnt many important facts about lighting I could use when coming to film our group short film. For instance the lighting can control what an audience can see or simply to make an object stand out. It can also focus in on the protagonist of the film using the light to shine on them. In relation to Film Noir many of these techniques were used to make the atmosphere dark and mysterious.

Double Indemnity (1944):

Rebecca (1940):

The second film we watched was the 1940 classic Gothic thriller Rebecca. the film is about a marriage and relationship of a innocent young lady to an overburdened widower.

Attached Shadow - Rebecca

Cast Shadow - Rebecca

After watching Lemon by Hollis Frampton we found out lighting can affect the shape and texture of an object. Lemon is a four minute video fixed on a lemon showing different lighting techniques used. This was the basis for inspiring us to create our own lighting test. We was given an object to record while using different lighting techniques to enhance how it looked. The object we used was a shell which was a object with many groves and holes.

The end result has been inserted below:

All of this research will help me and my group greatly when it comes to creating our short film.  After speaking about Film Noir, and watching Double Indemnity my knowledge and undertsnding on lighting has been significantly improved.