Week 4: Concept and Production Skills Development (Cinematography)

This week I went into university for the first time for 8 months and attended a cinematography workshop in the sound stage. In this session we worked on familiarising ourselves with the new FS5 camera, some different lighting equipment and lighting set ups. Although this was a great opportunity after learning how to stay safe with Covid-19 regulations online, to actually be able to learn and show good practices in person.

Sony FS5:

This was a great chance to show what I had learnt about the FS5 camera online in person and familiarise myself some more with it and its components. In the workshop we went through some different camera settings, changing different lenses, applying adapters, attaching rods and various other camera grip equipment. The camera overall was very good I was surprised at how such a small camera could be so versatile, portable and ultimately provide a nice clean crisp image.

Lighting:

In the workshop we also looked at re capping some simple three point lighting settings with a basic subject on a chair in the middle of the room to create a interview style set up. We used the conventional tungsten lights, LED panel lights and the one that was new to me the smaller dedolights. We played around with the lighting and the conventional 3 point lighting set up in order to create the perfect interview set up. We achieved this by: controlling shadows, limiting the amount of over exposure, manipulating the height of the lights, changing the positioning of the lights, moving the key light, using the barn doors creatively and by bouncing the light off walls to aid the background. We also looked at soft, hard, low key and high key lighting.

High key lighting- This is when the lighting behind the subject becomes over exposed creating an atmosphere that's cheerful and bright

Low key lighting- This is the opposite of high key lighting and is when the background is darker than the subject. This creates dramatic and moody effects.

Soft lighting- When shadows are appearing to be blurry this is soft lighting.

Hard lighting- When shadows are clear and crisp this is hard lighting.