Since we haven’t really covered lighting in the tutorials, I thought I would look into it some more. I’ve never really worked with lighting, in most of the projects I’ve worked on we just used natural lighting and soft lighting usually from a ceiling light. I’ve never really considered how it can affect a mood or contribute to the telling of a story, but as I started concentrating more on it’s involvement in films as I watched a few. I tend to watch more films from the horror genre, if it isn’t obvious enough from my previous posts, so when I research different elements and techniques in film it is more often than not to be a horror film.
Different genres of films have different conventions, and a stylistic aspect of genre conventions is lighting, and it is an important part of telling a story. Lighting is usually used in a different way in one genre than another, for example, it would be hard to use techniques of the lighting used in The Exorcist in a film like Napoleon Dynamite.
(Still from Napoleon Dynamite)
Napoleon Dynamite has used high-key lighting which really brings out the bright colours of both the characters and locations, and this helps tell the story of this teen comedy as it is quite light hearted and entertaining. If you were to watch this film with lighting techniques used in The Exorcist then it would be a completely different film. The low-key lighting used in The Exorcist helps create the creepy and mysterious atmosphere, as the darkness is associated with the story line of the young girl getting possessed, but if this was incorporated into Napoleon Dynamite, then this once socially awkward teen which was used for comedic effect, can be transformed into this mysterious character. If his character was filmed in low-key lighting, the darkness he is submerged in would make the audience feel more vulnerable and threatened. As his character is already quite reserved, this could add to the unknowing of his character and create a sense of fear of anticipation of what his character is capable of.
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I recently watched A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (a classic), and while watching I really took notice of the different uses of lighting to communicate things visually. (The stills below are all from this film).
The majority of this film is filmed in quite a consistent way in terms of lighting, as low-key lighting is used to communicate the fear the characters feel. The character of Freddy follows the consistent character trope of “The Monster”, so he is often filmed in low-key lighting to show the darkness that surrounds the idea of his character, which contributes to the fear in an audience.
Although as this film uses comedy through the character of Freddy, in most dream sequences, the lighting varies as he is actually constructing the setting to mock the characters/victims (as seen in the still above).
What I also found quite interesting whilst watching this movie was these two different (images below) uses of back lighting (which is ultimately the subject being illuminated from behind). In the first image, back lighting has been used to capture the silhouette of Freddy, which is very common in horror movies, as it makes the character seem mysterious as you cannot see their face. Although, in the second image, a victim is seen with back lighting but also front lighting, so that more of them is seen than just the silhouette. This communicates to the audience that although they are supposed to feel this eerie vibe, they are also supposed to concentrate on his expressions.
