Secrets & Lies

I'm sorry if i have kept any of my dedicated readers in an unbearable state of suspense but a lot has happen over the passing months have prevented/side tracked my on going blog.

A few days after the birth of my blog I was on location in a very nice little church in Bournemouth shooting our “Secrets & Lies” project.
We were on set from 9am until about 6pm, a very long day but doing something I love. On this particular shoot I had the role of Gaffer (Chief Lighting Technician), It was my job to dress the set with a very atmospheric spread of shadows.

I was taken to location the day before the shoot with the director who showed me what parts of the church we would be using, and what sort of lighting he wanted.
I took some photos and went home and began drawing up a rough lighting map so that when I got on set on actual day of the shoot I would be able to quickly set up my equipment and fine tune my lighting to satisfy the DOP.

We had two very good actors (as far as student films go) who both gave very good performances (for that I credit our director Chris). They were very helpful and professional as well as easy to work with.

I feel that the shoot went well considering the lack of better equipment. In pre production we has spoken about the possibility of getting some grip equipment, such as a small dolly or a jib. The use of a fix lens adaptor was also thrown into the mix. But both ideas were pushed aside due to some people not wanting to use the groups budget for these items.
Initially we had planned for more movement throughout the production, however due to our constraints we decided to use a tripod rather than trying to mimic the actions of a track through hand held. In hindsight this worked out quite well for me as I was able to light the scenes much better than I had anticipated due to the fact that i didn’t have to concentrate on projecting light onto a moving subject.

This shoot allowed to practice some of the lighting techniques I have learnt through my own studies. I found that John Altons Book Painting with light was a very useful starting point to further and progress my understanding of lighting.

I have seen a rough edit of the production which I am pleased with, but I am still to see the final production. I was not really involved with the edit of this project as I digitised, logged and edited the last of our productions.