Frank Smoking/ Sitting Shot 11

The image below shows the lighting and environment setup/ layout.

Below is an initial test render. The hardest aspect of preparing this scene was most definatley the lighting. For some reason this was perhaps the hardest scene I have had to light in the whole project. I was trying to get a composition as close to the original storyboard as possible, and have a shot to help inform the viewer of the layout of the apartment interior. Because it was a medium shot meant that everything was in the frame and I was limited to what I could do in order to create the illusion of lighting. I think that it is partly due to the fact that the shot is too flat and uninteresting. There are some nice aspects such as the subtle drop off of light on the back wall and the blue rim highlight that is created on Frank's upper arm and shoulder, however everything else seems to be very dull. The shot seems too balanced and the overhead lamp is not convincing enough. I thought perhaps I could improve things by altering the translucence attributes of the lamp shade or changing the texture of lamp shade, or perhaps the lamp shade should be completely opaque. I tried these solutions but none seemed to make much difference. It had to be the flat composition.

I decided to zoom in and have a lower camera angle. This was looking much better. I can now more easily veil Frank's face in darkness to make for a more interesting shot. I felt that having the hat in the bottom left of the frame and Frank's head in the top right would create an agreeable divide in the frame hinting that the hat was important for the proceeding shot. The lighting here still isn't perfect and needs some more tweaks, particularly on the centre of the table. The table and the hat need to be far more illuminated. But I do like how Frank is lit here.

What I shall do is divide the background, Frank and the table apart from each other and all will have different lighting setups. This way I can more easily control the lighting for each of the components and the merge them together in post.