Tuesday, 18 December 2012

2013 Media Language - Lighting 1 (Shape & Texture)

When creating our short film, the aspect of style is massively important towards our end product. Throughout our planning and development stages of our short film we knew that lighting was a key effect within the films production process.

Film Noir
When researching lighting "Film Noir" was a great example of how light can be used to add effects and create a feeling within the viewers. "Film Noir" was often highlighted as the aspect of the films style, this is also refereed as a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, one that particularly emphasise cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. The time period that classic film Noir was used was stretched around the 1940's to 1950's and was used in some of Hollywood's greatest films to highlight important characters to give the viewers a more clear understanding. Film Noir of this era is associated with low key, black and white, visual style with both bright lights and effective shadowing.

 Film Noir usually contained a character who contained a cynical, hard hearted male character who encounters a beautiful promiscuous amoral, double dealing and seductive female. This theme and style is clearly linked to the era that film Noir was first established as woman had more power over Male's but this was shown differently in film Noir as woman's roles on screen did suffer. The photos situated to the left and the right of my text are examples of film noir ways of lighting.

As a group we all watched a short film based on Film Noir as this helped us choose our lighting techniques when using lighting for our short film. When watching the film we had to focus on the angle of the lights and how the variety of positions and techniques can vary, we watched this very carefully as there was alot of information to take in. Lighting is commonly used to highlight and create shadows that can be used to manipulate the space of the different scenes. There are two different types of shadows and these are:

  • Attached shadows: Attached shadows occur when lighting doesn’t illuminate parts of the object due to its shape and size.
  • Cast shadows: A cast shadow is when objects block the light source and “cast” a shadow.
When using lighting it can be used for a variety of effects, for example lighting can be used to highlight a charcters importance in a film, for example the film named 'Lolita' is a great example of this as she has been highlighted throughout the film where she takes part in, this highlight her great looks for the male viewers.

On the right I have used a example photograph that i found on Google. When looking at this photo it is clear that the male standing up is highlighted.The blinds appear to be blocking the light source from the outside sunlight and are forming a cast shadow onto the man standing directly opposite. The man has noticeable lines across his body from the pattern of the blind, this can reinforce the theme of being imprisoned. The noticeable pattern draws attention to him rather than the man positioned on the chair.  

1 comment:

  1. Add the You Tube link of the barn door test we did and the gobo effect (you could also add a web link to what a gobo lighting effect is) we did with the attempt at re-creating an impression of a blind to this post.
    I would like you to read this post out loud to yourself - this way you will hear the many writing errors there are and be able to make the necessary corrections.

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