Let there be lights..

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 13

The started with my remaining shots. We have decided that I would shoot in the first half and JJ would start his shoot in the second half. 

We have become a it lethargic. And our blogs take the toll. Everybody was writing the blog and not responding. Sumana was finishing her blog, so JJ opted for being the camera person for the mean time. But electricity was not there.

We started the day off with a grammar lesson - Verbs. Sir pointed out that there are Active verbs and Passive verbs.
[For more details check: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/activepassive.html]
He asked us to underline all the verbs in the script once we did that Sir said we generally write in Active verb but sometimes we falter and write in Passive. That should stop, there cannot be a passive sentence for an action line. "The kettle was put on the stove." Arre by whom? Or did the kettle magically appear on the stove! "The tea vendor put the kettle on the stove" - that's the way to go. Subhodro Da who was standing by, added that we can write what ever but directing has to be in Active verb as we have tell the actor playing tea vendor to do it.

The remaining shots for me were all interior. The first shot was of Kirti moving the files and sitting on the sofa and giving a look at Hindol. JJ framed and took the shot and I loved the moment captured but it was a rough take as the lights were not up. Sumana came in the middle and took over the camera. I told her the shot, but she just didn't give me what I wanted. I showed her JJ's shot too but every time she gave me something else. Anyways that shot was done in some time. But I was getting impatient.

We moved to the next shot. This was a dressed up shot. I had designed it in a way where the bottle would be in the fore ground and the first chunk of dialogue would happen on the bottle, then there would be a tilt and focus shift to get her face and second chunk would be on her face. This was definitely a dressed up apple. Sir asked me what the shot was about and I told him. He asked me to get the actor in the zone. So I asked Kirti to do the action for me once. She got into the zone and did the action. O my God! What fool am I! the whole action was so potent in itself, and here I was, dressing the shot up for what joy only God knew. So before Sumana set the camera, I actually went to her and said, "Kuch bhi lele, bottle shift focus kuch nahi chahiye, mujhe sirf moment dede."[Just take the shot, I don't need any bottle or shift focus, just capture the moment.]

Sumana set the camera at a low angle, below Kirti's eye level and also at an angle where it was not anyone's POV. After seeing the frame, I took Sumana aside and tried telling her that I didn't like the frame as it gave a distortion to the character. Obviously, I had no clue what I was talking about except for the fact that I didn't like the frame. Sir intervened. Sir let Sumana take the shot, while he asked me if I had a sweet spot of my own from where I wanted to take it. He also clarified that, I had said too many words to Sumana and that just showed my impatience and also portrayed disrespect for for my camera person. He said, to speak in Active verb. "Tell her what to do to make it better or don't speak at all." Then he told me to find my sweet spot for this shot, which I did. By then Sumana had made the frame from her sweet spot. Sir asked me if I wanted to stop her, I didn't. I decided to let her finish and then we can try the other one. 

But Kirti took the cake away. She was completely in the zone and what ever she did it just looked beautiful. Once Sumana had taken the shot, as Kirti had acted so well, though I wasn't satisfied with the angle, when Sir asked me if I wanted to take from my spot I said no. But then Sir started explaining. 

When characters are interacting there is an energy transfer happening. So when one characters is talking to the other a cone of energy is being emitted towards the other character. To get the emotion or the energy we need to be in that cone. This cone is created between generally between the eye levels of the two characters and it starts from the character speaking and diverges as it reaches the other character. Next choice is whom to be close to - or whose POV are you talking about. So, who ever's POV you choose, you need to be closer to that person.

We took the shot and moved to the last shot of my shoot. We wrapped it up quickly. I felt happy. I hugged Sumana and told her it was a good shoot. Sumana replied that she was happy that I was so happy. Isn't it all about that. The point where we had started this journey from. In pursuit of happiness.

A quick lunch and we were back on floor for JJ's shoot. We gathered props and set things up. But this time the rules were changed. We would be using dramatic lighting scheme. That is we would be concentrating on lighting up the characters and object and not the background. We would be using the artificial lights. So, we went ahead to get familiarized with them. We got introduced to a Solar(2K), Panja (5K), Baby (1K) and Dinky (300 watt). These were all fresnel light.  There was knob which could make the light hard and soft, this happened by moving the bulb back and front. The other type of lights were the Multi 10, Multi 20. These were not fresnel. We went ahead to mounting and setiing up these lights. We tried our hand with barn doors, cutter stand and wires. We learnt about fall off. Fall off is a factor which determines how much the subject os getting light and how it varies as the subject is moved horizontally as well as back and front. We figured the max light is recieved by the subject when the subject is bang in the centre of the light beams. As the subject moves right or left slowly the light decreases. Similarly, the light is greatest when the subject is bang in front of the light and decreases as he moves away. 

We decided to go with an aperture of f11, so that we could achieve greater depth of field. We would introduce more lights to compensate. JJ had not thought of such dramatic lighting scheme. We started arranging for a shot but it was too late. So we packed up for the day.

Today JJ shoots. With many many lights.