Lighting - experimenting

LIGHTING AND FILTERS

We spent several hours experimenting with various types of lighting and several different filters to find out which would have the best effect. We wanted to test the different types of lighting and filters in different scenarios so on the day of filming we would not have to waste as much time either outside, or if our contingency plan had to be used due to extreme whether.

1) The first type of light we tested was a mains powered yellow light.



This produced a yellow glow on the objects and seemed to have a better range outside with the same effects as the indoor testing. The downside of this lighting is that it requires mains power to work as battery operated equivalents do not have the same life span, meaning filming may become rushed.

2) Secondly we looked into LED strip lighting.


This was similar to the tripod yellow lighting as it required mains power to be affective. However the effect of the lighting was very different to the option above. It gives of 'cleaner' light without the golden tint, meaning a brighter light is visible. This would work well in our indoor back up plan as it is essentially, brighter than the yellow light tripod.

3) As well as LED and tripod camping lights, we came up with the idea of using car headlights as they give the golden tint light the first option described but they have the benefit of not requiring mains power and instead run off the charge of the car battery.


As well as being battery powered the car option has the benefit of having three brightness settings, side lights, beam and main beam which can be changed depending on the levels of light outside. Of course the car can only be used if the outside option goes ahead.

FILTERS

We looked into a couple of different options for filtering and reflecting the light. the idea is to be able to change the tint on the lighting if we wanted and to be able to reflect light to specific place and to remove the intensity of the light.



1) The white light filter allows the intensity of the light to be dimmed and allows a faint glow to be achieved. Alternatively the white sheet can be used to reflect light.

2)



The gold and silver reflector films not only help to direct light as it is required, but also amplified the glowing effect produced by the yellow light and white light on a lower scale. The gold film seamed to be more effective indoors as the gold glow effect it radiates is more visible to the eye under lower levels of external light.


Our homemade aids




We quickly realized that although light reflectors were very effective when used, manufactured products were expensive and meant our budget would be severely damaged and limit other aspects of production. To proceed with the equipment we needed, we created our own reflectors using little more than cardboard and tin foil. We stretched the tin foil smoothly over the cardboard to maximize the reflective quality produced. It turned out that our home made reflectors were far better than the manufactured products as we could make them as large as we needed, and make as many as we wanted. This linked with the fact that the reflectors we made, emitted a 'purer' lighting effect than the ones we purchased.