There will Always be Light… And Darkness

Today, we work to get all the lighting done for the whole film. It’s kind of crazy to think how close I am to being done! It gets closer and closer, yet even more unbelievable. Only a few more weeks. Sheesh, time does fly when you’re doing all the work. Lighting work that is!

For this post, I just want to talk about how important contrast is. For a while, I wanted everything to show up. The little blades of grass, the trees, the things under the house. It was all necessary to light. But as stated during our Production Pass, it comes off very flat. Since then, we, as a team, have focused more on dynamic lighting, leading the eye and making sure the shot reads well. It’s been a fun journey to see the changes as we approach the end and it kind of opened my eyes to lighting even more. How even just three lights can make a scene feel that much more alive. Especially in the outdoor scenes.

These were interesting shots as they had several in shot lighting sources and sometimes it was a challenge to turn that into three-point-lighting, or make it subtle enough to get the result we were looking for. Whether that’s a dynamic climax shot, or the other world shots (the pink background is our Pinkscreen!), and even a transition from the “real world” to an imagination world using lights as a cue. I also got to learn how to turn off Pinkscreen reflections so they don’t mess up the shot when we add in the different backgrounds in post.

It’s been a long journey, but we still have more to go! See you in the next one!