"Beautiful" Lighting

One photo I really like is this poster from the documentary "Restrepo". It follows a U.S. Army Platoon in Afghanistan and this is a promo poster for it. It looks like the photo is taken after dawn or in late afternoon. The one soldier is standing on the hill, with the vast mountain range out in front of him, alluding to the unknown, as the soldiers' future is unknown while in these beautiful yet deadly mountains.

This second image I took from Apocalypse Now. I know I've used an image with that before but when I read this assignment, this particular shot came to mind immediately so I'm going to use it anyways. It's of Martin Sheen's character, Willard, emerging from the water. He has experienced a transformation. From the right side of his face, the light is an orange color, made to look like the illumination of a fire. On the other side is supposed to look like moonlight, casting shadows on the water from his face, mixing with the fog off the surface.

This is a random shot I found that I thought was very cool/creative. It's taken from a 60's film entitled Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. I like the use of shadows in the shot. The light source coming from the left that casts the actress' shadow that blends with the winding staircase. The lamp towards the left of the frame adds a cool element to the composition.

Portrait of a Place

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Goals

I'd have to say my goals in terms of film-making would be to one day have some sort of job in the industry. I really like photography and the beauty that it can reveal. I really do believe that pictures say  "a thousand words" and I'd like to be able to create those kind of shots. I'm really attracted to real life events, such as documentaries. So much stuff goes on in this world and people barely catch a glimpse of it, if they even see it at all. With documentary film, one can show the world something important to them and I would like to do something like that one day.

I'm also interested in motion picture film. I'm drawn to the small, independent type scenario where someone with incredible vision and a small budget makes shots that wow an audience. I'd really like to be involved in something like that as well.

As far as this class goes, I'd really like to learn the technical side of things. I didn't take 201 as seriously as I should have and I'm nearly clueless on the technical setting on the various cameras we have access to. I'd also like to improve my framing and lighting techniques. I feel like I have good ideas but I'm not quite ready to put them into film, and if I tried I wouldn't know exactly how. I need more hands-on work with the cameras and filters so I know exactly what to use to get the type of shot that I want. I feel like I can watch a film and know why they did certain things, or why they included certain elements (like what we did with The Professional) but I have trouble being able to get those types of shots myself.