LIGHTING WORKSHOP: BRINGING THE SCENE ALIVE

The biggest scene I have for lighting is the scene inside the pub between Shaun and Ed. Below is a photo of how the lighting looks in the original film:

The lighting is very orange and tungsten. Which is classic for a pub, I've worked in pubs since I was 16 and I've never really seen a pub with white lights, it's always very orange and warm lighting in pubs and also you can see in the photo above. It's like little pockets of lights, so you aren't completely lit and it's never directly above you. It's more like pockets of light around the pub which helps to light up the area. As you can see not all of their faces and bodies are lit up but this is what is expected in a pub.

Here are 2 photos from different pubs but as you can see, the lighting is almost exactly the same. It's always been the way pubs are lit to give a warm and homely feel to the customers. It's also not as blinding or harsh to look at as bright white lighting. So with this I also wanted to get this type of lighting for my film. So in our lighting workshop I tried to get this look with the Arri Lighting since that is also Tungsten lighting.


I started by setting up a basic 3 point lighting and dimming the lights on one side but this didn't really get the effect I wanted. I tried adding on some ND filters on the lights but again this didn't get the lighting effect that I needed. So instead I set up a key light on my actor and then took off one of the lights as well. Then I turned another light to light up the back of the location, so we're getting pockets of light from different angles.

The next issue we had was there wasn't enough light on my actors face, it wasn't balanced enough so I brought in an LED light and put it with an orange filter and set it to 50% to help balance the light but also give that effect of the pockets of light around. But when I looked back through the camera it was still too bright even though I'd tried dimming the lighting more. So rather than changing the lighting more, I decided to work with the camera.

I kept the Iris on 5.6 but added the first ND filter onto the camera. This helped dim the lighting and really give that effect I was going for. However, I didn't know whether this would work at my location because I was practicing this at the studios in a big open and empty studio which isn't what I'll be working with. So this was when I decided I'd need to do a tech run with my crew to see how we could use the lighting.