Tuesday 2 October 2012

3rd Outing: Light Reflector Tests, Footage

Summary

During this session of filming we were using a new piece of equipment that was unfamiliar to us, what we were using was a portable light reflector that could amplify a light source. On location it was an overcast day so there was not much sunlight, the silver side of the reflector was for use with hard light so a small light source would be required however, as it was during the day that we were filming the light source was too vast so we decided to try the other gold side which generated soft light and we practised using it with a subject while shooting. The result was that our subject was cast in soft light that highlighted their facial features a good feature to use for high contrast lighting, such as in French new wave genre films.


Reflector Tracking Shot Test from Lewis Mercer on Vimeo.

The camera settings we had to use with this footage was a wide aperture of at least f/1.6 to ensure enough light was absorbed by the cameras sensors and the ISO was set at least 800 with a shutter speed of 1/500s in order to ensure that there was enough light to show the effects of the reflector int he footage, also because with a wide aperture only the subject in the foreground would be in focus during the tracking shot.

The use of a light reflector is considered to be a New Wave technique as it is making use of a cheap, inexpensive form of lighting that is easily portable and can even be homemade if making a low or non budget film. Using a reflector enables the use of light manipulation to create different effects on a subject for very little cost, and it is highly portable and easy to use which makes it a very efficient and cheap alternative to studio lighting.

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