Lighting for black people- what we can learn from Ava Duvernay!

People of a certain age (and certain hue) look back on old high school yearbook pictures with mixed feelings. Chances are, the more melanin you had, the less likely you would show up as anything more attractive than a smudge, a muddy smirk — or worse, a lurking presence — as you hovered in the back row of the chess club photo.

Part of the problem is that racism was built into film processing. Until the 1990s, professional film developers compared the skin tones in photographs against a universal guide known as “Shirley cards” which helped them figure out the right mix of chemicals to process a photo properly.
The Shirleys were always white and demure.

Lighting ANALYSIS Assignment

RTD 365A  Lighting Exercise                                                

Assigned 9/14/15             

Due 9/23/15 and 9/24/15

This assignment gives practice in seeing light as an intentional manipulation of the space inside the frame. It will give you practice in describing what you see and the accompanying reading will introduce you to some terms that are used to describe lighting.

The reading you need for this is online: Millerson“Practical Lighting”

Lighting Analysis assignment:

Select two scenes from a day or nighttime serial tv/cable drama or sitcom. Or from a movie.

The scenes you select MUST be interiors because we want to look at how light is artificially manipulated to create a natural looking space as you will do in some of your work.  

You can use the same series, but you will need to select two different scenes- in different locations.  You will need to get still images from this- so it is easier to use online sources of the series. You don’t need to watch the whole thing though- so even if you find a clip online, that will work.

While watching, stop the player and select a still from this scene.  Below are instructions for making a screenshot. 

Look carefully at the lighting in this scene.  I want you to describe what you see.

You do not need to guess at what kind of lighting instrument they have used. 

Describe the visual components – the way space, shapes, lines, colors, and tone is constructing the space because of the lighting.

How is depth constructed or ignored- because of the lighting?

You can use words to describe lighting characteristics drawn from the Millerson reading. 

These are intensity, quality, contrast, direction and temperature.

video of lady singing: sarah bright

good example of high contrast highly directional lighting