Shaving and Two Kinds of Lighting

This morning when I was shaving, I used the top light in the bathroom as my main illumination and it was a bit dimmer than the vanity lights attached to the mirror in front of me. While shaving I noticed that the incandescent light had washed the room in a yellow-orange hue and cast a shadow across the right side of my face. This lighting was ineffective for the task at hand. I would have undoubtedly missed slicing a few whiskers from the darker side of my face due to the shadowing caused by the location of the main light. Although the ceiling mounted incandescent is easier on the eyes in regards to brightness, it is a less superior light as compared to the vanity lights mounted on the mirror in front of me. So I quickly changed light sources and went with the much brighter, and energy efficient fluorescent light. This particular lighting filled the room with a silvery-white hue and was much brighter. There were no shadows cast on my face as the light was directly front of me. I did squint at times while performing this task, but was able to finish with out any issues due to ample lighting.      

Diffused Lighting

When my group and I gathered for our first assignment, "Documentary Portrait", it was a very cold and overcast day. Some members of the group seemed to be concerned with what could be considered poor lighting as the sun was no where to bee seen. I mentioned that for this particular project, shooting a structure and not a person, it would work very well. The positives of this natural diffused lighting is that we wouldn't get any hard edges or heavy contrasts, and the light would be consistent and "spread out" evenly, leaving no issues with having to work around the light. If we were to shoot a portrait of a person then we would want to have a bit more directionality to highlight certain areas of our subjects facial features. But as we were using a house and its surroundings, the diffused lighting from heavy cloud cover, balanced the light evenly for us and allowed our group to have some good lighting for our Documentary Portrait.    

A Little Something For My Film Studies Class

My first film was made as a student project in my last year as a Digital Filmmaking student at Herkimer County Community College in New York. This semester was the first time I had picked up a video camera and was introduced to any type of video editing software. The camera used was a tape based, prosumer style camera, and the editing was done on Avid. It was truly a pleasurable experience for me as I finally felt the satisfaction of seeing an idea evolve into an on screen movie. A year after that I created a 24 minute short film titled Tooth & Bieber that was shot on a $200 budget with amateur actors and was shot in numerous locations in Upstate New York. I decided to spend time working in hopes of tightening up my "chops" but found that you either need to go where the work is and hope, or go back to school, work hard as hell, and hope some more. 


With the little production experience I have, I hope to learn more in regards to the jargon and principals of filmmaking as well becoming highly skilled in the techniques it takes to create high quality films. I also hope to learn much more through collaborating with fellow filmmakers as ideas should be shared and discussed; this often times breeds greater results in the overall outcome of any creative outlet. 


In 10 years I plan on being an intricate part of a team that will win the Academy award for Best picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Cinematography. This feat cannot be accomplished alone, so I want to learn as much as possible at UNCW and meet serious filmmakers that want to work hard and shoot for the stars. I also want to give back to eager film students and others like me who have worked hard in this business only to be shut out time and time again. The film business is a difficult one to get into and I have had very few people reach back to me when I reached out to them, I want to change that for others and give back as much as I can. 

After graduating from high school I spent the better part of 20 years traveling the country and looking around as much as possible. I do not like the grass growing under my feet just yet - there is much to be seen. I want to laugh, a lot. We should all laugh at least 20 tomes a day. Sometimes I forget though, and I find that I'm too serious or overthinking how to print a document in the library or wondering if my professors will be big and mean, and intimidate me into complete and utter failure. Then I realize that I should just relax and find something to laugh about.