Creating depth with lighting

This exercise consists in creating a series of images with varying depth by movin objects in a dark room. When doing this, three different impressions of depth have to be obtained. They could be the same space appearing larger, smaller, cluttered, empty, wide or long. Having said that, the things that I got were the ones presented bellow.  

Layers of lighting.

I achieved this by leaving dark areas between two objects that were lit. The idea was to create depth but not in a sense of altering the dimensions of the room. It was just to have that feeling of, so to speak, 3D. And it was done in the easiest and most obvious manner possible.

Having a look at this still, it can be seen clearly that the effect hasn't been a much of success as the region in between is not completely dark and there is a shortage of darkness in the foregorund. This means that the sequence is an object, a black zone, another object and finally, another black zone. But what would have it been the result if there were a first very black layer in front? In all probability, it would have been slightly different and better. Furthermore, the object placed behind is not well not defined because the lighting was not good enough. A soft light is required and there's nothing to say about that but it's extremely weak and it's not able to see the figure well. 

Long and spooky

The technique of flooding the background with light was used in this case to achieve this goal. It was not difficult to do it and it seems that it worked, more or less, as it was expected. However, I couldn't make any difference with respect the size of the room which was really disappointing. So I had to accept that the only change created was that of the atmosphere preceived. From a quiet and, in a sense, safety place, to a spooky one.

We can see in the first still that the space is quite long as there are three different areas where some objects were placed. To be precise, we've got the toys in the foregorund, a few books in the middle and a teddy in the background. Conversely, in the second footage, even when the lights sources were the same, a simple variation on the exposure of the camera, made the scene spooky. The toys seem to appear from nowhere and, in the background we've got something else. Unfortunately, there was nothing aside from that. That is to said, the room kept all its dimensions. 

Other student's examples

I've chosen the following examples ought to I consider them as three exercises that achieve precisely that I couldn't make it - and I really wanted make it. 

The first one is a very good sample of wide-long effect. Just killing one light in the background and another one in the middle. In this manner, the author creates a diagonal movement that crosses the room and makes it wider than before - still 2. Besides, the light on the ceiling was off and as a consequence, the apparent height of the room was reduced. One of my ideas was to produce this kind of impact on the size of the room.  

The second example works on the same idea but, now, the large-small relationship is the one which has been modified. Although the student didn't realise about that, it can be seen without any doubt that the first room, with the foreground unlit, is biger than the second one, that has got a dark background. I reallu like this impression and I would have had something similar. I think that I could have done the wide-long link by using light sources at the edges of the space. Just switchin them on and off I guess I might have conveyed the feeling of a wider-longer space. Defintely, I shoud have a go at it. 

Finally, I really like how my colleague got the cluttered perception by lighting those points where the objects were. As easy as that. I don't know how I didn't notice that this thing could be done so simple. Looking at this picture, we can see that there are objects at the back and the front. And these two sets of things are lit with strong sources of light. This helps to enhance the result. I think it's a very good work.