Lighting practise

Lighting practice

 

We have been practicing a variety of shots with different lighting to create a specific effect on the viewer. There are a range of techniques that can be used to portray a character to be a protagonist, antagonist, or merely just a sinister persona.

Backlight

 Firstly we practiced having a large amount of natural light near or behind our target in order to darken the scene and create some sort of a silhouette around them. This technique is often used before the reveal of the character that may play an important role, to help build suspense and anticipation to who, or what, they may be.

Focused light

 

For this effect we used a torch to give off a direct beam of light towards the subject. This helps to darken out the rest of the scene and encourage the audience to focus on where the light is. This is often used in horror films when someone is in a poorly lit house or factory then a beam from a torch decides what the audience will see and where they will look. The fact of the audience having no control or what they must see creates suspense and fear as to what may happen next.

 





Close lighting

This technique involves using two different intensities of light to show both the focus character and a particular scene occurring in the background but with less focus. Here we have a bright, artificial light at the front aimed towards the main character to show focus on them but with a slightly darker light in the background on the other two characters to show that they still have involvement but may be a slightly less important role in the scene.