exercise: atmosphere

Record two very short scenes (either a single shot or a maximum of four shots that edit together). Invent your own or pick from the list.
• A romantic dinner for two
• A depressed person alone at home
• Oh what a beautiful morning
• A stalker arrives
• A child takes its first steps

• Another mundane day at the office

Before you start, clearly define the atmosphere you intend to create. Think about how
you can use lighting, shade and colour to achieve this.
• Find a suitable location. Think carefully about available light and colour.
• Test how the light looks through your camera.
• Use additional materials to create desired colour and texture within the scene.
• Use reflectors and additional lights if they are available.
• Record your image(s) and edit them.

Well, this is not my most successful project. Should I have had some more time I would have tried harder, but I feel under the pressure of time, as I should already be doing assignment 2, so I have not waited to the proper light of set up the scenes properly. Below are the results for A Romantic Dinner for Two and Oh What a Beautiful Morning. 

A Romantic Dinner for Two




I tried to rely on the light of the candle to create the whole atmosphere, and it is not really successful, as we can see. Takes from above to the table, and during the dinner, would have possibly helped. 

Oh What a Beautiful Morning



In this case, it was almost necessary to have a sunny day. With more time I would have shot some takes at the park, with the sun through the trees, or having a coffee in a terrace.  
So, in summary, light is ESSENTIAL to create the atmosphere, and while editing the images I didn't stopped thinking that sound would also give a huge boost to the videos above, so lets move on to Project 10, Sound.

exercise: reflected light

In this exercise we test different reflectors. I tested different white textures, such as a paper and a white cloth. The white cloth reflector gives a very soft and faded reflection that is almost not captured by the camera. The major differences have been recorded in this short clip, changing different coloured hard surfaces and the white paper.
With different colour reflectors we can give the tonal colour we want to the scene, even when the main source is the same.

viewing: light and colour - Matilda

We're asked to do some viewing in project 9, light and colour.
Firstly we need to look for sudden changes of light in a scene, and how are the changes justified or motivated.
Afterwards we need to look for use in colour to represent

• change of atmosphere, 
• emotion of a character
• general mood or atmosphere or
• a range of feelings, emotions and atmospheres.

To make things easy, I chose Matilda, which being based on a Roald Dahl novel, and targeted for all publics, seemed like a good movie to find colour and light use... and I was right.

Avoiding continuity problems
If the light changes within the scene, the spectator should know the reason of the change, otherwise it can be perceived as an error.
Some of examples in Matilda:

Day comes through the window

Someone turns off a lamp which we can see

Matilda tampers with the connection line of the school director's house

In the first and third ones we can see the reason of the light change and the light source. 

In the second image we don't see the source of the image (the window or the sun) but all is understood from the context. 

Colour

In Matilda, colour is also used to infer mood and atmosphere, as can be seen in the images below:

Dark colours, yellowish lights to show the bad tempered adults (though the parents of Matilda, who care little about her, are usually depicted in bright colours and tacky spaces, in situations where the mood of the scene requires it, the light is low and dark):

In the scene below the director of the school is punishing a pupil to eat a whole cake. The colours are dark, almost black in the whole scene, with a pitch dark background, and the only note of colour is from the students, who show hope as they'll begin to cheer the poor kid. He'll finally finish the cake, triumphant. 

Happiness is always shown with a mix of pastel colours and well lit scenes.