Movie Magic Diary - Lighting and Color
This week in the Movie Bites Club we learned about the use of colored lights to create mood and tone in film. As challenging as it may sound, I’ve been wanting to teach a unit on film lighting for quite some time. Despite some mental back and forth on how doable this was actually going to be (We’re online friends. Online!) I was pretty giddy going into the whole thing. Let me just say right up front that I was not disappointed. We had an absolute blast!
When preparing the lesson plans for each club meeting, I’m always thinking about what the students are going to learn, how “ahead of the game” they are going to be by learning filmmaking concepts and vocabulary at such a young age and, most importantly, how we’re going to keep things fun. The learners are there because they love movies. We share this common bond of joy around watching and making films. Plus, they’re 8-12 years old! Keeping the education playful is important to us all.
For this week’s shared film reference, I selected E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. 40+ years after its release, it's still a beautifully lit crowd pleaser that dazzles. The students all watched it before class and this allowed me to share film stills and a few behind the scenes clips to support our lesson.
As I outlined what we’d be learning, Samuel said, “I think this is really going to help me. I’ve noticed in my films that the room light makes everything look too wrong. Everyone looks fake.” (He’s ten, y’all. This observant at 10!)
To this I said, “Don’t worry. That’s because of color temperature and balance. It happens to all of us. Today we’re going to learn how filmmakers use “fake” lighting to make everything look more “real” or to make their films look more like how they want us to “feel.”
For the first half of the meeting we looked at images from E.T. and talked about the lighting choices, the use of color to create different moods and meanings, and how different lights and gels could be used to create those effects. We also learned about who is in charge of lighting in film production (the Gaffer!) and different types of lights. In the second half of the hour, we pulled out our flashlights + tissue paper and created film lights covered with inexpensive do-it-yourself gels. When we turned off the room lights and pointed the transformed flashlights at our faces everyone lit up red, blue and purple. The kids started running around lighting up their stuffed animals and stop motion diorama sets (made a few weeks ago in class!). It was magical. The class was delighted with the results.
For next week’s lesson, the students begged for more lighting. So, we’ll be learning about directional lighting, quality of light and how to make cookies (and by this I do not mean baked goods…but rather a lighting accessory that can throw really cool shadows on the wall!). I can’t wait to see what they think.
Thanks for reading! I hope you have a great week filled with storytelling and filmmaking!
~Shannon
PS - If your child would like to join us, learn more here!
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filmmaking - lighting - creative activity - club diary
