Two workshops focus on lighting for video, movies

SHEFFIELD - Concrete Dream Inc., Digital Arts Shoals and the Film Commission of Northwest Alabama have partnered to offer two movie-making workshops this weekend at the Digital Arts Shoals facility in Sheffield.

The workshops offer learning opportunities on basic and advanced lighting for movies and video.

Steve Richerson, with Concrete Dream Inc., said the classes give people who are interested in lighting for film an opportunity to learn skills from professionals.

Industry professionals Robert Duke and Bill Schweikert, whose credits include "Walk the Line," "21 Grams," "Like Moles Like Rats" and "Black Snake Moan" will be instructing workshop attendees and providing them with hands-on experience.

"If people want to learn how lighting works or how to get a particular effect from lighting, that's what those workshops will cover," Richerson said.

He said lighting is a big part of making a film, music video or commercial successful.

"The actors give you emotion, but you can actually color the emotions by the way the set is lit or the actors are lit," he said.

The digital arts are an area of business that Richerson said he and the film commission and Digital Arts Shoals are trying to help expose and develop.

Joann Maxwell, film commissioner with the Film Commission of Northwest Alabama, said they have received big turnouts in the past with similar workshops.

This is the first time they have been able to host them at the new Digital Arts Shoals facility in Sheffield.

"Now that we have the facility there, it's a great place for the workshops to be taught," Maxwell said.

As a part of the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center, the Digital Arts Shoals facility's mission is to incubate, educate and inspire digital arts businesses in north Alabama.

Giles McDaniel, executive director of the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center, said he is pleased that Digital Arts Shoals can work with Concrete Dream Inc. and the Film Commission of Northwest Alabama and help host the workshops.

"Part of this synergy we're trying to build with the digital entertainment industry centers around job training and increasing skills of local people who are interested in this," McDaniel said. "It's about job skills

training."

Richerson said he anticipates that Concrete Dream and the Film Commission will continue adding workshops throughout the year to be held at the

facility.

For details, visit concretedream.com.

Kenda Williams can be reached at 740-5720 or kenda.williams@timesdaily.com.