Light Safety Talk

I attended the seminar for the light safety talk and I am now therefore able t safely use the lighting equipment. There were a few key things I took away from the talk about using the lights:

• Check equipment is safe to use before you begin e.g. no loose wires, no damage to the light or power lead
• Check that the lights are secured properly to the stands
• Place matting over leads to allow people to safely move around the set without tripping over wires
• Warn everyone that the lights will be turned on
• Always use gloves as the lights become very hot when working with them

We was also spoken to about how the different coloured filters worked to provide different lighting effects. The black helped to stop light from spilling and concentrate it to a more confined spot, white helped to create an even soft light and red helped to create a bright natural light.

Next we were allowed to experiment with a camera, filters and 3 lights lookinh at 3-point-lighting. We tried positioning the lights in different positions and with different filters to reduce shadow and give the person a more natural lighting. I have never looked at lighting before and so found this task both interesting and difficult but in the end as a group we managed to come to a solution of reducing the shadow succesfuly.

As I have not looked at lighting or 3-point-lighting before I decided to do some extra research on it and looked on some sites on the internet and found these definitions helpful. (http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/)

Key Light

This is the main light. It is usually the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. It is placed to one side of the camera/subject so that this side is well lit and the other side has some shadow.

Fill Light

This is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is used to fill the shadows created by the key. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key. To acheive this, you could move the light further away or use some spun. You might also want to set the fill light to more of a flood than the key.

Back Light

The back light is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear. Rather than providing direct lighting (like the key and fill), its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.