The light within "Super"-Hero!

 Welcome back bloggers! In today's post, I will be discussing a VERY overlooked element of film media: Lighting! Specifically, we're looking at lighting in our film opener: "Super"-Hero, but not just from our first take. We actually tried a different filming plan in our last film day due to unexpected circumstances, and I will be examining the lighting in BOTH takes!

Photos from the January 11th shoot:

    With the shooting from January 11th, every scene was filmed during the daytime. As such, many scenes have something called high key lighting, which is essentially just shots with a lot of light, manmade or not. We had this kind of lighting due to the natural light outside, that being daylight. Earlier in my Preparing to Film post, I'd mentioned how my group made the decision to not use any sort of special equipment. This includes using any sort of lighting equipment that wasn't already provided on location, those being the lights in the actual house. We felt that going through the extra trouble of getting special lamps or tools to light up certain parts of the frame just weren't necessary for what we wanted in this film. With that in mind, the daylight actually worked in our favor, as it allowed us to keep the goofy non-serious mood of the film fresh. After all, this is a superhero comedy! It makes no sense to give Power-Man the same kind of dark lighting as Homelander if all he's doing is dropping some witty quips and getting knocked out with a bat. 

Photos from the January 17th shoot:

    For the January 17th filming, my point earlier about how day light portrayed the mis-en-scene we wanted for the film can better be shown. This filming session took place in the evening, so daylight did not last long for us at all. We ended up having to turn on lights throughout the house so that we wouldn't be shown covered in total darkness. Although we hadn't realized it at the time, this did have an effect on the mood conveyed in our film as well as how the characters were presented. Specifically, it made the scene with the robbers intruding into the bedroom seem way more hectic and thrilling than we had intended. This opening should come off as goofy and silly to audiences, not tense. Additionally, the scene where the homeowner gets knocked out just seemed awkward when filmed with darker lighting, or low key lighting. Once we compared the footage together, we unanimously decided that our film MUST be shot in the day, because when shot at night it just looks ENTIRELY out of place!