Lots of Fancy Words to do With Lighting

Some more developments on the pitch project this week; we are now moving away from the idea of using a collage as the background as it was too distracting from the main animation, which is quite simple. For the moment we are experimenting with random abstract shapes for the background, such as ink splats. I have produced a couple of designs, taking inspiration from Ralph Steadman’s work; especially pieces such as Old Blue Eye where he incorporates his drawings into the abstract shape of the splats. I also admire the way he uses colour; using bright, bold colours to emphasize certain areas of his work. I think I may have got a bit carried away though becoming more concerned with producing a finished piece of work rather than simple, abstract shapes and this may create the same problems that the collage did.

At the moment I am not doing an awful lot on the Exeter project as a lot of the stuff I need to do can not be done till next week. However, I am helping Sean to come up with ideas for how the Phoenix eye lighting up could work and I have had a quick think for a possible lighting set-up for the stop-motion. I have brushed up on my film theory and now know lots of big words: My plan is to use a single key light to act as the main light source, the sun, with gels or some improvised kind of filters to create the colours and patterns of the stained glass windows, although that may be able to be dealt with in post. Also, depending on the size of the set, I may need to block some of the light to stop unwanted shadows being cast. I’m also going to go up to the media store tomorrow to see if I can get my hands on some reflectors to provide the back and fill lighting, as it needs to look like there are no other light sources, to create the sense of a musty interior. It may all look too dark, in which case I will have use more lights to provide the back and fill but I would probably try to diffuse them somehow. Although I say all of this now it is most likely that it will all go out of the window on the actual day and I will just move things around till it looks good. My main worry at the moment is that the sun is behind the clock tower, which would silhouette everything that is going on the set and also have the light shining directly into the camera and would need quite a lot of fill lighting to correct (I think).