March 09, 2009

Having finished cutting and continuity editing, today's single lesson was dedicated to lighting. It is unavoidable that the lighting between shots will vary unless we use bounce cards or other lighting equipment. However, because we filmed in only two locations there was minimum variation in lighting, which was good news for me because natural lighting is much better than edited brightness.

The main tool I used to help me in editing the lighting was the "colour correction" function, the "RGB balance" and the "White, Mids and blacks balance". Although I had a general idea of what each function did, I had never used them before and it was a really challenge getting the hang of it. However despite this, to my surprise I managed to utilize it quite well and make the lighting constant throughout our film. One thing that i kept in mind before I edited the lighting, I looked through the clips that we had and decided on the shot with the best lighting as the basis and my goal, to make all the other shots with the same lighting as that one.

The first few times that I tried adjusting the lighting were unsuccessful. Then being "open-minded" and being a "risk taker" we tried changing the film into black and white in an attempt to make each shot's lighting constant. However, that didn't turn out very good because the parts of the shot that were originally quite dark turned even darker which is the opposite of what we were trying to achieve. So I continued to play around with the "White, Mids and blacks balance", then through adjusting the saturation as well, I manged to produce a good outcome.

One problem that I encountered with adjusting some shots with really poor dark lighting, was that because we used the basic elementary camera rather than the HD one, the quality of each shot wasn't particularly good. Even when I adjusted the lighting, the shots were very heavily pixilated and grainy. To increase the quality in the editing process (especially if the lighting is very dim), is very difficult and a tip to remember next time would be to film with a better quality camera or to use some sort of lighting equipment.

Overall, our light editing process was a very time consuming one. However, i think it was worth it. Compared to the initial lighting of some shots, the edited lighting made a big difference. Despite the pixalated appearance, I think that task really tested my ability as editor to face different problems and have learned lots from this experience. Today exercised my "open-mindedness" and my "knowledge" parts of the IB Leaner profile. And from reflecting on how I coped with each problem, I was able to "reflect" how the outcome of what I did and learn from my mistakes and the things that I excelled in.