Planning: Lighting

Lighting is often a very unnoticed part of a video which audiences don't consider as much whilst watching the film or video they are viewing. 

Using lighting can really make a difference between a high quality video  and not so good one, but not many people realise this. A lot of people tend to cut the lighting equipment from the production stage if they have a low budget as it is not seen as something which is essential, but they don't realise how much they are missing out on. Just because the sunlight may be out, people tend to think that this will be sufficient lighting and they can just use that, but thats not the case. To get the best lighting to make a person stand out even more and highlight areas of them, lighting will be very necessary.

Here you can see we have set up a simple lighting scene with two box lights and a white background sheet. This was easy to set up and we found a space which was large enough to accommodate us which meant we weren't getting in the way of anyone else which was good.


The light boxes we used were PhotoSEL LS21E52 Softbox Lighting Kit as seen in the image below. They are easy to set up and turn on with a simple on/off switch which only needed to be plugged into a socket into a wall. The lights height can be adjusted with ease with a simple tightening mechanism. The lights stand on a stand with 3 legs to achieve stability whilst in use.

For the light testing, I set up a small shooting area and used my friend Elliott to perform as the model to test some of the lighting on.

In the picture on the left you are able to see that light has not been applied to Elliott's face. It is dark and doesn't highlight any of the features on his face. Afterwards we took a photo of Elliot's face with the light on and you were able to see a considerable difference.







The picture on the right is what difference the Lightbox makes when it is turned on. You can clearly see his face is lit up a lot more and can see a lot more colour within his face. This adds a lot more quality to the results of the photo shoot.

This is another picture where we have manage to light up Elliott's face very well and add definition to his jawline.

Basic Lighting Tips

To gain more knowledge on how to use lighting in my film, I went onto YouTube and found some more videos which explained techniques and set ups that helped to get the most out of your equipment. On YouTube there are a lot of videos on how to increase your lighting so I will definitely be looking to increase my knowledge by watching these videos and then implementing them into my own film.