Creative Explorations
Light
There’s more to understanding how light works in the
world than knowing the science of it, although that is certainly
essential. The work of a compositor is much like that
of a painter or cinematographer, in that a combination of
technical knowledge, interpretation, and even intuition are
all part of getting a scene “right.”
Other areas of digital production rely on elaborate models
to simulate the way light works in the physical world. Like
a painter, the compositor observes the play of light in the
three-dimensional world to re-create it two-dimensionally.
Like a cinematographer, you succeed with a feeling for
how lighting and color decisions affect the beauty and
drama of a scene and how the camera gathers them.
Several chapters in this book touch upon principles of
the behavior of light. Chapter 5 was about the bread and
butter work of the compositor—matching brightness and
color of a foreground and background. Chapter 9 was all
about how the world looks through a lens. Chapter 11
explored less straightforward ways in which After Effects
can re-create the way color and light values behave.
This chapter is dedicated to practical situations involving
light that you as a compositor must re-create. It’s important
to distinguish lighting conditions you can easily emulate
and those that are essentially out of bounds—although, for
a compositor with a good eye and patience, the seemingly
“impossible” becomes a welcome challenge and the source
of a favorite war story.
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