Lite Down Rational

Title: “Lite Down”
The title worked perfectly with the final version of the count down. The final title sequences worked out perfectly. I continued the theme of creating the numbers by pin by pin. I had taken the photos using two different settings: Fireworks and Night Settings. All my number sequences were used by only using the photos from the firework settings, but for the Lite Down title sequences I flipped back and forth between the firework and the night setting to give it the flashing light look. I not figure this out until the editing process; it was good that I ended up taking both set of photographs to help in postproduction.

Overview/ Synopsis:
When we were first assigned this countdown project, I did not think of how long it would take me from using a Lite Brite. In the end the project took me 10 hours of creating the numbers and taking the photographs and then roughly 3 hours fine editing it all together. Although this project took me a lot of time and effort, it was worth the end result and all the different things I learned along the way. This was roughly the first time I had used my camera that I had gotten for Christmas, so this gave me an outlet to learn my digital camera better and play with all the different feature to get the look I wanted. I found out that it was very hard to take photographs of the Lite Brite since there was so much light involved. This was a great learning experience project for me.

Formal Approach:
The formal approach gave me the most problems. It was very hard to keep the Lite Brite in the exact same position frame after frame. I tried my best to keep everything exactly the same from taping the tripod to the ground to ensure that there was no movement. I also taped the Lite Brite to the table I was using in hopes of that keeping it in place throughout the whole process. Even with all these precautions used to keep the frames exactly the same, I still failed. Every time I went to put the pieces in the Lite Brite I had to push hard to get the pegs in, and the Lite Brite would shift slowly throughout the process.
I originally thought using stop motion would be a pretty easily thing to do…it only made me appreciate the art of stop motion that much more. It was very time consuming, but I really liked the overall effect it had on the video when it was done. It was really cool to see the numbers being formed in front of my eyes. It was a love hate relationship with Stop Motion.

Audience/ Context:
After completely this project and the variety of responses I have received from different age groups viewing my project it really doesn’t have a specific age group per say. Because most of the adults I showed thought I still shot this with a video camera, and this was still a very common mistake by the children I saw it as well. One child I showed it too was very excited to know how I completed this project and was interested to hear every single detailed involved in creating this masterpiece.


Lite Down Complete! from Leah Fendley on Vimeo.

Comparing Readings On Lighting to Guest Speaker

Within this journal post, I will be looking at the two assigned readings on lighting: The First Aesthetic Field: Light, and Structuring the First Aesthetic Field: Lighting and comparing and contrasting to the guest speaker’s workshop on light. First off I found the workshop more valuable than the assigned readings. I am a visual and hands on learner, so this exercise was a lot more valuable because I was allowed to actually use the equipment and try and reproduce the lighting in the books. It made me realize how much I would hate for my job to purely be working with lights on different sets, it is such a time consuming job in order to get it to look perfect.

Lighting is defined as “the deliberate manipulation of light and shadows for a specific communication purpose” (19). I found this sentence to be particularly interesting because it’s true that lighting can communicate a lot of information just as much as say mise-en scène of a film can. If the lighting is bright, then the viewer automatically perceived the scene as happy and nothing bad is about to happen, where was if the scene is darkly light then the viewer thinks it’s very dark and sinister and something bad might happen. Lighting can make a viewer perceive the scene differently just by how the lighting is. The way a certain character is lit can also help to typecast a character as evil or as a brooding. “Lighting helps us, or makes us, see and feel in a specific way” (20). Lighting can be used for multiple functions, where as when you sit and watch the video you do not understand the amount of work put in, to light these different scenes to create these different feelings and shape the way we see things.

When we finally had the opportunity to reproduce the image we picked in the art books provided to us, I thought it would be fairly easy to reproduce the lighting. I did not know that there are so many different light sources that can be used to mimic the effect in image. The guest speaker provided us with a Chinese lantern that I would have never guest would have produced such style of light, we were also provided with sheets to cover the light reflecting off the walls creating to much light. And lastly we also learnt that you can bounce light off form core to help produce the different effects you want.

The certain picture we were trying to recreate had “fast falloff” which the reading defines as “the brightness contrast between the light and shadow sides of an object” (25). Our subject that was being lit had shadow on only one side of their face while the other side was still light enough to reveal a certain contrast between the two and the subject looked “ominous” while sitting in darkness. We had to diffuse the light by using a black cloth to stop the reflection that hit the ceiling from affecting the overall shot. We also had another light that was directional to help give the subject the shadow on one side of the face while having the other side dimly still lit. Below is an example of how the fast falloff can be created and an example of what fast falloff looks like.

Example:

Overall, I found this exercise very valuable because it allowed me to actually try and recreate the lighting as a group. I found this was very helpful, since I learn better when I do something rather than having it lectured on.