Don’t Get Left in the Dark
Picture this - it’s three in the morning and you wake up because your cat decided to incessantly lick yet another plastic bag. The inconvenient urge to head to the bathroom creeps in, so you pull yourself out of bed slowly and begrudgingly “to stay sleepy” you forego the bathroom light, do your business in the dark and head back to the warmth of your bed. Somehow you did not trip over the cat, wave your hand around searching for the faucet or stub your toe on the bed frame. That is because the human eye, for lack of a better word, is amazing! Thanks to our pupils, rod and cone cells, and photopigments (click the link, they are cool!) our vision can adapt to varying lighting conditions. This allows us to see outside on bright sunny days and also in our pitch-black house at 3 a.m.
Despite designing cameras to mimic the human eye, they do not register light at the same efficiency or clarity as a healthy eye. A camera simply cannot process the details and contrast a human eye can see and differentiate without a little help. That help is lighting.
Without lighting a shot properly, you can lose detail in a shot creating dull, nebulous images. Lighting without the proper color temperature (yes color has a temperature!) the skin tone of a person could go from their natural olive to a highly unflattering magenta. Without proper techniques, the drama of a shot can be lost to flat, uninspired lighting. For the same reason a haunted house is unnervingly dark to scare you or a restaurant has dim, soft lighting for an appetizing romanticism, a videographer must light the shot so that the camera registers the desired focus and emotion of the video.
For any professional video company, lighting is one of the most important skills we bring to the table. The proper lighting can focus the audience’s eye to an important focal point in the shot and can also evoke emotion, drama, inspiration, humor, horror, etc.
Proper lighting can make the biggest difference when filming human subjects in both interviews and acted scenes. Get your iPhone out and take a selfie in your office with overhead fluorescents. Now head over to a window with soft natural light and take the same selfie. Big difference, right? The production crew at ASR can mimic that soft flattering light right in the middle of your office.
Sure anyone can film something quickly on their phone or DSLR. But without professionally crafted lighting, your video might get left in the dark.
For more information on video lighting technologies and techniques, check out this lighting 101 article on audiobuzz.com: https://www.audiobuzz.com/blog/a-quick-guide-for-lighting-in-filmmaking/