2013 Post 12: Media Language Lighting 2 (Quality & Direction)

Over the past week I have been focusing on lighting and a great video to watch to focus on lighting is Madonna's Vogue music video, it uses elements of light very well to highlight important features that the music video includes. These features highlight importance when watching the video and it is clearly visual with what the lighting used is trying to achieve. When watching the film for the first time we sat down and watched the video together, after we had watched the whole clip we started talking about what types and styles of light have been used and why they have been used.

In this picture it is clearly visible to see Madonna's face highlighted by light being used, we also had to think where the lighting would be coming from to create this effect of highlighting a key character in a video. In the picture I understand that the light is coming from in front of Madonna and it is above head height as there are shadows being created under her chin. After talking about this in our group and with our teacher the task became easier and easier as we had more idea of how and why lighting has being used.

In this picture a male is highlighted on the right of the photograph and the male on the left is in a darker toned lighting. This is because the male on the right needs to be highlighted as he has a bigger part to play in the music video then the character on the left. When watching the video it is clear what Madonna and the lighting used is trying to achieve, the actors who have a larger part in the video will often be highlighted to make this more clear to the viewers.

I have used this picture to show how light can be used from different angles to highlight objects that are important towards the film. For example in this picture it is clear that the highlighted object would be the small pillar as it has a important object on top that may have a effect on the film or what happens next. In the picture the light being sued has come from the right of the male character, I know this as there is a large shadow behind the male character and the lighting used would be coming from a high/mid angle as the shadow is bigger then the character.

In this photograph there are two highlighted areas that use artificial lighting, the lighting used highlights two areas that almost seem to be glowing. Madonna has used this style of lighting to create a glow effect and the glow is easy to create as it is a rectangular base that has lights behind it, this is a simple effect used and it creates a glowing effect where necessary. The pathway Madonna has created looks like she is going to be walking out to heaven, this shows how high class Madonna is as she has used lighting to highlight importance.

There are two types of different lighting that can be used when creating a video using lighting, the two tpyed of lighting that can be used are hard and soft. The soft lighting is more direct on a persons face that still shows details that are visible. Hard lighting is more doll and dark but focus's on creating shadows and effects around the character rather then focusing on using colour and a soft shadow. In the photographs below there are two types of lighting used, the picture on the right is hard lighting as it's doll and dark and creates shadows around the characters nose and eyes. The soft lighting photograph on the left is easier to see visually as it doesnt use dark lighting effects and is still in colour, this is what all soft lighting effects will look like visually.