Using A Single Light Source

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We shot this particular piece of footage high contrast monochrome to reflect the style of the Neuvelle Vague, which more often than not includes films that are shot in this way, meaning we are in keeping with our initial brief. The fact that this is a fairly cheap form of lighting, is something that links it with the Neuvelle Vague as these are films that were shot on a small budget (Godard's A Bout de Souffle had an estimated budget of around around FRF 4-500,000, which is about a third of the average films budget at the time).

You can from the this screen shot above, taken from Truffaut's 400 Blows, that the subject is shot using minimal light. The shadowing on one side of his face suggests that the larger light source is coming from his left side, hence the strong shadows on his right cheek. In this scene the young boy from the film, has been put into a holding cell in a police station. We would imagine that the light source would be big enough to fill the room, however, due to the position at which the subject is placed he is not lit particularly well. Creating light shadowing on one side of his face, we can assume that there is in fact only one light source.

Edge Lighting 

This edge lighting technique, is the one I feel we achieved most successfully. As you can see from the clip below we managed to achieve a nice shadow on one half of the face with the eye still slightly in view. This looks particularly effect in high contrast monochrome, creating atmosphere, an air of mystery and a nice aesthetic for the shot.

I feel that the composition of the this particular shot is the best out of the three lighting techniques we tried. The subjects eyes are at a good level within the frame and he is well centred, ensuring we followed the rule of thirds.The subject in the foreground is in perfect focus, helping the technique to look as professional as possible, and the backdrop is slightly out of focus as we chose to use an aperture with a small f-stop number giving us quite a shallow depth of field.

 
Edge lighting no reflector from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.


Butterfly Lighting

The Butterfly lighting technique was a common lighting technique used in 1950s classical Hollywood movies (as mentioned in previous post). The idea behind this technique was that it supposedly made the subject more attractive, most commonly used on female subjects. We opted to stick with this norm and also use a female subject in our own test.


This clip is the technique without the use of a reflector

butterfly lighting mo reflector from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.



 Rembrandt Lighting

Rembrandt lighting comes from the way in 17th century artist, Rembrandt, lit his subjects before painting them. This is quite a classic style of portrait lighting, easily recognised by the illuminated triangle beneath the eye on the shadow side of the face.
To achieve this (as mentioned previously) the angle and position of light, camera and subject is vital. As you can see from the clip below, we did manage to achieve this lighting without the use of the reflector. We did experiment using the reflector, but again you can see from the second clip below, that the reflector did not achieve this rembrandt effect as well as without, it lowered the contrast meaning the signature illuminated triangle was less noticeable detracting from the effect the technique should have.



Rembrandt Lighting no reflector from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.