Production - How To Effectively Use Lighting in Actuality Sequences [RESEARCH]

One of the biggest challenges we have faced so far is the lighting in our actuality sequences. For instance, the interview with Dan is grainy because we did not expect the lighting inside the workshop to be as bad as it was and we had not prepared an option if this was the case. The sequence we shot is in no way bad, we can use it and solve the majority of issues with the lighting through subtle editing, but I need to look into this topic further as I want to avoid any issues like this in the future.

One thing that encouraged me when looking into lighting and how we could improve were the words of Daniel Haggett who is a professional Lighting Cameraman and DoP "Don't be too precious of filming something in a considered and beautiful way, if you see something happening that you know will make a good story, shoot it. You might see something that is a bit far away, and handheld, on the long end of the lens, it won't be too stable, shoot it anyway. Sometimes you might need to run and the camera will be wobbling all over the place, shoot it anyway."( www.danielhaggett.com, 2019). Knowing this makes me realise that I made the right decision when realising we had an issue with lighting at the Dan interview. I thought about the possibilities but the only realistic one was to record it with what we had available to us. Thankfully, on this occasion, it worked as the content of the interview was fantastic and we obtained a number of fantastic responses for our documentary. If we had got stressed over the lighting after arriving we may have decided to film in a different area of the garage with less character. Thankfully we filmed it as planned and we got a great sequence out of it. But it is certainly worth noting how we could improve our lighting in these scenarios in the future.

General advice on shooting interviews was helpful but would not have helped in the scenario we were in on our shoot. The advice from lightsfilmschool.com was: "If you’re shooting indoors or in a studio, the basic 3 point lighting technique is a favourite amongst filmmakers. It fully exposes the facial expression and emotions of your subject as well as isolates them from the background and hides unwanted shadows." (lightsfilmschool.com, 2017). The problem for us was that in this sequence we were moving and any fixed lighting would have most likely been a hindrance to our shoot and also made every part of this sequence feel very staged due to perfect lighting. This research actually really helped me though, when understanding what we do with the Jamie interview which we filmed yesterday. I started this research directly after the Dan interview and found this advice particularly important when planning for Jamie. In Jamie's interview, we took his room into consideration and realised lighting was needed to ensure we maximized the mise en scene. We set up a few smaller LED's in this shoot to balance out the light on his face and I think this allowed the shots, especially the widest one, to have a fantastic dynamic range between the foreground and background. The lighting certainly allowed us to make the Jamie interview look more professional and this was thanks to this research as well as understanding the issues from the previous interview a few days beforehand.

After this, I was still a little unsure about to how we light scenes like that with Dan in the future. We have a planned interview with Team BRIT [A disabled racing team] coming up in the next few weeks which will probably take place in a similar environment to Dan's. As I plan for this scene to be sitting down I can take advice from the previous paragraph, but lighting actuality still remains a problem. A quote that struck me when compiling this research was from Jane Chapman: "Filmmakers will choose almost instinctively to shoot in eye-catching places; they will study the available light for the best position, think and look around the action, and consider shooting higher or lower, using shots involving windows, door, reflections or mirrors for instance."(Chapman 2006: 87). The whole reason for the Dan interview to be filmed in the walk and talk style that it was, was to be different and capture the viewer's attention thanks to it being unique. The fact that I made the right decision even though we had bad lighting was a relief as I was under pressure to make a decision at the time. The interview is much more dynamic than if we decided to film it at a desk or wholly inside the car that was shown towards the end of the scene. Still, this does not solve my issue if we were to conduct something similar in the future.

After reading an article on Premiumbeat, it seemed that the answer to my worries was underneath our noses all the time. When speaking about small LED lights, writer Noam Kroll said: "They are so light and portable and can effectively allow you to shoot well in nearly any situation." (Premiumbeat.com, 2015). We had access to fantastic LED lights at University as well as multiple smaller ones that George personally had. We had used the latter for the sequence with Jamie but they still did not give the power range that the ones at University had. It may sound silly but none of us thought we would need lighting of this nature in a scene where we expected good lighting. Therefore, the issue of not scouting beforehand (because it was located north of Manchester) along with the bad assumption it would be well lit led to our issues. If we had asked Dan beforehand what the conditions were like we may have been able to avoid this issue. Alas, we still came out of that shoot with a great and very unique interview which we are all proud of, but understand the steps we can take in the future to ensure the lighting is perfect.

Our rule going forward is that if we even have a small suspicion that we may need lights, we should bring them just in case. "Even if a camera is good at getting a shot in low light, adding light will absolutely improve the shot." (desktop-documentaries.com, 2013) Even if they are just the ones that George has personally, it will allow every scene to have an increase in lighting to improve the shot. We doubt there will be many scenarios where these will be needed, but we are learning from the mistakes we had at the Dan interview and taking them forward to ensure it does not happen again. This research has allowed me to realise the importance of taking lights, even if we may not need them, along with understanding the importance of capturing the key moments of a documentary, even if it means the lighting is not perfect. I certainly hope we don't run into the same issue once again with lighting, but I doubt we will after key findings in this research and not just ones about lighting. I am very happy to have conducted this research, as it will allow the documentary to look much more professional throughout.

References

• www.danielhaggett.com, 2019 - https://www.danielhaggett.com/blog/182-how-to-shoot-reality-or-observational-documentary
• lightsfilmschool.com, 2017 - https://www.lightsfilmschool.com/blog/light-documentary-interview
• Chapman, J. (2006), Documentary in Practice Filmmakers and Production Choices, Cambridge: Polity.
• Premiumbeat.com, 2015 https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/filmmaking-tips-lighting-with-led-panels/ 
• desktop-documentaries.com, 2013 https://www.desktop-documentaries.com/video-lighting-techniques.html